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"Keep In Time"Written By: Dentelle_noir Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing AC or the
characters. They belong to Bandai, Sotsu and associated parties. This
is a work of fiction and written for fun, not profit Rating: R Warnings: AU, sap, angst, fluff Pairings: 3x4. Summary: A suspicious accident leaves Trowa without
a skating partner, sentencing him to a year without competition. Quatre
is an injured dancer, trying to find a way to live without his joy.
Together, they make new rules and find a new path. "Keep In Time" Chapter 7 Hurried, frantic movement trying to be silent woke him. The attempts to hide the sound only made each one worse and more jarring, and at first, Trowa couldn’t figure out who was making that noise. Cathy never tried to disguise her movements in the morning. But, he was too sore and uncomfortable to be at home. Cracking his blurry eyes, Trowa realized that he was on a very ornate (and uncomfortable) couch. He had a foggy notion of driving Quatre home--and the blonde screamingly reminding him that red meant stop-- which meant that the person moving around was probably Quatre. He untwisted himself, wishing that he had the vertebrae of a cat since he insisted on sleeping like one these days, and made a small grunt of consciousness. Quatre, who was fluttering about madly, was over to the couch in an instant. He took a dainty seat on the coffee table in order to face Trowa(seeming to enjoy the sheer wickedness of doing so). He was already dressed for his class-- Capri-length, cling-wrap thin, black jazz pants were slung low on his hips covering the dipping ends of his black body suit while a white zip-hoodie and an extra long, pastel-striped scarf flowed from his neck to pool on his crossed thighs. “We tried to move you.” The blonde said with concern and apology, “Are you okay this morning? That couch’s terrible.” Trowa grunted “I’ll live” and woke up fully after a few minutes. He noticed Quatre already had a pair of running shoes on and his backpack dangling from his fingertips. “You need to leave soon?” Quatre smiled lightly, “Yeah. If I want to catch the bus in time I have...5 minutes to get out the door. I’m glad I got to say bye before I had to leave.” With a patronizing look, Trowa said, “I can drive you, you know. It’s not that hard to do.” Quatre blinked a moment, “Are you sure? You said that you do homework today?” Trowa began to stretch slowly, moving off the couch to stand and give his twisted, aching back a few long pulls. It didn’t help much. “I got it with me. I can give you a ride there, and hell, I can give you a ride home too. I can do my assignments in the car or lobby while I’m waiting for you.” Quatre looked dubious, “Well...you can drive me there, I guess...since I’ve missed the bus now.” He said with a rueful smile. Trowa grinned in victory. “But you have twenty minutes to get changed and all that.” Quatre stuck in with a slightly defeated pout, just so he could have the last word. Following Quatre’s directions, Trowa pulled into a lot amongst industrial warehouses situated near the highway (and nothing else). The place looked like a renovated house. Nothing but the rows of large trophies glinting down from their perch against the upstairs window portrayed it as a dance studio. Right behind them pulled in a shiny new Volkswagen, which parked a few spots down from Trowa’s space. Quatre got out of the jeep quickly, smiling brightly and waving to the other car. Out from the driver’s side of the Volkswagen climbed a tall, thin girl with a tightly maintained bun in her perfectly dyed blonde hair and a cream designer coat covering her to the thighs. She slid the imposing fashionable sunglasses off gracefully, then smiled when she caught Quatre’s form heading out of the lot. “Hey Quat!” She called over brightly, the warmth of her voice circumventing Trowa’s initial label of ‘anal bitch’. “We’ve been moved to the upstairs studio today.” Quatre frowned and changed directions slightly. Instead of heading to the main door, he let Trowa around to a side entrance only a few feet away from their parking spot. The stairs were dingy, narrow, and with Trowa’s tight and aching legs, friggan painfully steep! But Trowa kept his mouth shut, though he wanted to call Quatre’s school a dive when he almost gave himself a splinter on a broken section of banister. Upstairs was a flurry of activity as tall, determined dancers in demi-pointe shoes tried to move through the narrow hallway, which seemed to be all the dance studio was; It was made of nothing but a slim whitewashed hallway with one dressing room branching off at the end (with a completely open door, Trowa noticed) and an office of some sort at the far, long end of the L structure. He didn’t see any sort of lounge, though, and had resigned himself to doing his homework in his car when Quatre led them through one more door and into the studio. It was HUGE! The lack of hallway room was obvious in the face of the sheer expanse of free space. One wall was lined floor to ceiling with mirrors and a sturdy set of two-height bars were set at waist height into the walls. The floor was all white (with a multitude of scratches and scuff marks for decoration) in some sort of thick laminate that felt springy and cushioning. The short walls in the rectangular studio were covered with a state-of-the-art stereo system at one end with the door and a dozen or so chairs at the other. Quatre smiled with slight apology, “The only thing they have up here is the chairs. Usually they do the little kids’ classes up here and the parents like to watch. There is a lounge downstairs if you’d rather?” Trowa smiled and set his duffle under a chair, sitting down in an opposite spot and propping his legs over the duffle. “I’m good.” Quatre’s bright smile lit up the room and the blonde left Trowa to join with the other dancers happily. Students were already filing into the room from the chaotic hallway and in the studio, without coats or cell phones, they each looked professional and passionate. Each one wore a look of seriousness, each had the perfectly poised walk of a dancer, each was sporting the requisite bun and body suit of a ballerina, and for a moment Trowa could see the same fire in them as he had when skating. “Who’s that! I don’t want a guy in here, drooling over my ass as I try to practice,” One of the dancers complained loud and clear. She had ‘queen bitch’ written all over her. The same girl who had waved and spoken to Quatre at the car spoke up from her position bent over her leg raised up on top of the tallest bar and stretching, “He came with Quatre. I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Cosette.” She turned her attention back to her stretch. The Queen Bitch, Cosette, looked affronted, “Well, this class is for serious dancers only. We can’t have voyeurs like you distracting my training,” she cocked off, now addressing him directly. She sounded like a Skater, what with the attitude and all. Trowa knew how to deal with that, “Well, if I see you doing anything hard, I’ll make sure not to make any sudden movements that may make you loose focus. This is a stretch class, I’d hate to make you pull a muscle in your pinky.” Cosette smirked bitterly, then returned viciously, “Well, I don’t know where you got your information, but this is just nick-named stretch class. It’s Ballet basics. That means it’s extra practice for those of us who can already do this,” And with that she jerked up to the balls of her feet and then twisted two pirouettes before she slid down into a graceful arabesque. To add to it she then turned the position to attitude so she had her back leg over her head in a loose circle. It was the same position Quatre had pulled on him when they had first met! Poor girl chose the wrong trick! Trowa nodded patronizingly and slid his legs onto the floor and standing, “Impressive. What’s it called again?” With a swing of his leg, Trowa dipped his upper body down low and brought his leg up. Since he didn’t have any skate blades to grab onto, he caught his ankle and pulled his whole frame up, making a tear-drop shape when he dropped his head back. “Beilman?” Then Trowa dropped the leg and jumped onto his other foot, making the same tear-drop shape one handed with his left holding his right ankle, “or was that supposed to be a Cross-Beilman?” He dropped the position and stood erect, “Yeah, You’re right. I guess I don’t deserve to be here.” Cosette’s mouth dropped open, “what the HELL was that? Beilman? Who are you?” Another dancer, a very petite girl who looked startlingly familiar to Trowa, spoke up, “He would be Trowa Barton. National Gold Medalist Pairs Skater, Trowa Barton. Who happens to be currently holding tryouts for a new practice partner since his sister was injured.” Trowa suddenly put a name to the face, July Cameron, a regional competitor in Woman’s singles. She was one of the shortest competitors of her age, but as devoted as any. She was one of Petra’s girls. And apparently she had been approached about filling the spot Cathy left. She was watching him closely, looking for hints, obviously, if the choice had been made already. It was actually Quatre who spoke up net. He had lost the sweater and scarf and now stood in the tight black body suit, thin, wrinkling dance pants and a pair of once-white demi-pointe slippers on his feet. Reclining against the bar superiorly, head titled just to the left he looked very... Sexy. “I didn’t think that asking him to stay here would be such a big deal. He’d have to wait for me somewhere.” That pretty much calmed the hurricane in the dance studio and the girls flitted back to their positions to do some warm ups. They were all lined up at the bar when a woman, not much older then the students, strode in and called “Fifth Position”, walking down the row and checking each of the dancer’s feet. Under her orders the chaos of the dancers came together into a beautiful dance of arms, legs, and bodies moving as one to the flourishing instrumental in the CD player. After about 2 chapters of the book Trowa was supposed to read for English, the class broke from the bar and moved into the large floor area, pairing off amongst themselves. Quatre was approached by 4 different girls, all eager to talk to him, but he paired them with each other...It only took simple math to see that Quatre was trying to be the one left out... The book was down and Trowa was kicking his street shoes off to move onto the floor, making Quatre grin like the Cheshire cat, “Need a partner?” Trowa offered with a smile. Quatre spared a glance at the instructor (who smirked knowingly and acquiesced) and then bent down to touch his toes as instructed, “If you would?”. Trowa followed suit, bending his fingertips to his feet no problem. Then she called for the class to bring the tips to the floor, and then palms. The exercise that he normally did daily was pulling the tight, strained muscles he’d been abusing for days. Then they came up straight and had to do arm-over-arm stretches, Arm circles, and all the other things elementary-school gym class was about. After a few minutes, they were told to do the splits and, trying to show off his flexibility and gymnastic ability (splits were integral to skating jumps) he slid down into front splits straight from standing, only feeling the tightness an inch or so from the ground. Looking around though, he saw that each and every one of them had done it too. They were all moving into the ‘nose to your knee’ stretch one handedly. Trowa followed, slightly dejected that he wasn’t as superior as he thought, and felt the pull and protest of his back and hamstrings. Soon they were doing straddle splits and crawling hand over hand until they could pull straight from the straddle into a regular straight position. Next came the dreaded “Killer Stretch” where they put their feet together and grabbed their arches, pulling the whole body flat against the legs, pointing and contracting their feet to pull the calves and the hamstrings. It friggan HURT! More than usual, Trowa noticed. The fact that he had been neglecting his stretching since Cathy’s iron fist was gone was coming back to him loud and clear. They broke up into pairs then, Quatre swinging to face Trowa with a smile, “not too much for you?” He teased. Trowa scoffed it off (and internally made himself a promise not to neglect his stretching any more!). Quatre slid his legs into a triangle, pressing the bottoms of his feet together and placing his hands on them. He bent, trying to put his nose into his toes. “Can you push my back, just a little?” Quatre asked, trying for those last few centimeters. Trowa slid up behind the blonde, being faced with the smooth ivory back, standing out even more soft and pale against the dark stretch of the body suit. The dance pants were slung low, so when Trowa hesitantly put a hand on the blonde’s slim waist all that stood between his hands Quatre’s own skin was the thin spandex...which was hardly a barrier; Trowa could feel Quatre’s every breath, every twitch, and the warmth of his skin was sinking into his hands. Mouth suddenly dry, Trowa gently put pressure on his back. Quatre parted his feet just a bit so that he could touch the floor with his forehead, completely flat. He slid back upright, the movement putting him flush against Trowa, who was kneeling right behind him, arms still pressed intimately against his back. Trowa turned his head away first, clearing his throat quietly and sliding away from temptation. Quatre slid into the front splits again, his back leg landing almost in Trowa’s lap! The blonde lifted the back leg as much as he could, but it didn’t get high off the ground, “Grab my ankle and bring it to my head” Quatre directed, using his arms and muscles to lean backward with his whole upper body to meet his foot. His head was practically upside-down, looking up at the figure of Trowa hovering over him and giving his leg the support needed to keep it arched. He was able to look almost under Trowa’s fall of bangs, and he smiled giddily, “Two sexy green eyes, Hm?” He teased. Trowa startled, letting go of Quatre leg in the process and sending it near-crashing onto the floor. Quatre couldn’t keep the position anymore and settled back into basic front splits, giggling madly and trying, horribly, to apologize. After that, Quatre made Trowa do the same thing, spotting him for the stretch and bringing his leg to his head. After the Beilman, it was nothing, but the feel of Quatre so close to him, his knees brushing Trowa’s side as the blonde moved and the boy’s breathing so near his own was a whole new dimension to stretching. Trowa was thanking himself for not changing into the all-revealing dance pants and body suit of his own which he used in skating practice and had in his duffle. His pants were thick enough to hide what Quatre was doing to him. But the dance-belt Trowa was sure Quatre was wearing hid any response of Quatre’s side, damn it. A sudden CRACK of hand against hand brought their attention back to the teacher, who was directing the class back to the beams for raised stretched. With the smoldering eyes of Quatre on him, he followed like a sheep. Facing each other, Trowa propped his own leg up on the bar when his toes almost touched Quatre’s own raised foot, and then he bent over it, fingers brushing Quatre’s fingers as they both reached. Following directions, Trowa found himself learning to pliate (which the snickering from the TEACHER told him he was terrible at) and kicking his foot up as high as he could (at which he was actually better then most) and holding it there (in which he owned them ALL, including July). They moved through a few more bounding stretches now, leg, arm, and body movements that were much more difficult than the basics they had been doing earlier. Trowa was feeling his own protesting muscles stretch and loosen with stretch after stretch. And he was allowed to watch Quatre the whole time. Under Trowa’s gaze, Quatre was pushing himself like never before. He wanted to show Trowa what he could do, damn it. Quatre was breaking a sweat by the fourth kick-hold (since his kick was just as high as his head, and holding it was fucking murder!) but the little hint of surprise, appreciation, recognition of skill in Trowa’s eyes was well worth the effort and tinges of pain. The little hums of appreciation from Trowa was bolstering his ego like he couldn’t believe. That’s what he blamed it on. It was Trowa’s appreciative noises, that gaze of recognition, and the gaze of want from the other girls when they looked at Trowa (sizing up what kind of a chance they had to steal him) that made him do it. The teacher made another crack of hands and the girls moved to the centre to line up as always. Quatre had only participated in this part a few times (and even then, he never did it fully). But this time, under Trowa’s gaze, he lined up with everyone else. Cosette was first (she prided herself in it) and with a few bobs from flat foot to the balls of her feet to loosen up she moved. Five steps demi-pointe, A turn, a step, then a little leap. She landed on her left in fifth position, then did another leap into a mid-air split, landing with another demi-pointe step-step-turn. It was perfect, of course. The other girls followed suit, moving into the jumps perfectly. July missed a step at the beginning, and that buoyed Quatre’s confidence even more. It was his turn and he raised on demi-pointe. The pain stabbed through him, but he fought it into submission. Step, Step, Step, step legs was protesting loudly, but he would not give in in front of Trowa. He could do this! It was nothing more then a simple little leap. He’s done it before since his injury. Quatre pushed off the floor into the little leap, moving to land in his left. Quatre’s whole leg screamed in protest as the lightning pain shot straight up his body and his leg folded under the strain. From Next in line, Trowa saw everything. He was rushing out to catch him before the blonde even made the strangled grunt of pain. Grabbing him under the arms, Trowa held strong, keeping the blonde from even hitting the floor with his strength. Quatre’s face burned in embarrassment and the throbbing pain coming from his entire foot was pissing him off more then warning him. He was so sick of being injured! Quatre eyed the other end of the room. One more jump and a turn and he would have finished. Fuck. Trowa’s arms were strong around him, and Quatre grabbed them, hoisting himself onto his screaming legs with their aid. He was going to finish this if he fell after each fucking step! He pushed himself upward (Trowa’s arms loosening, but not letting go) and Quatre forced his feet into fifth position and readied for the next leap. “Don’t be stupid!” Trowa hissed when he realized Quatre wasn’t just getting up, he was going to continue! But Quatre never looked at him, just at the destination. The blonde tried to push Trowa’s arms off and readied to leap again. Trowa moved his grip to the blonde’s waist, and held tighter. Quatre understood. With a push, Quatre leapt in the air, Trowa’s arms pushing him up even higher then his own legs allowed him to fly. High above Trowa’s head, Quatre was light and perfect in his arms. It was almost the same as having Cathy in his arms again, but Quatre was different. He had more subtle movements, was less feminine in construction, but still, he knew how to move with the lift naturally instead of fighting it. When gravity pushed him down again, Trowa moved with him, slowing the blonde so that his feet just brushed the floor on the landing and his arm moved from his waist to his hand instinctually, giving Quatre the freedom to make the last, perfect, demi-pointe turn on his own power. The smattering of applause filled the room, bolstering in power as more hands joined in with support. Trowa moved to support Quatre some more, while, as a pair, they turned to look at their audience. The teacher spoke first, “That was a wonderful lift.” She said, moving over to them to bend and take Quatre’s foot in her hand. He hissed in pain, his whole body tensing as she touched it. “You’d better go sit down, Quatre. You pushed it way to hard today. But, damn, was it stunning.” She said, smoothing over bruised egos with her sincere smile. Trowa wrapped his arm around Quatre’s waist to support him and moved them to the chairs. From his duffle, Trowa pulled out his sweater and handed it over (since Q seemed to have lost his along the way, but needed it now) sitting down beside him to make the blonde prop his foot on his lap to let the protesting muscles relax and heal. Quatre was smiling, despite everything. “We made a good pair.” Quatre finally remarked.
With a glint of a smile, Trowa nodded.
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