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"Rock"Written By: The Plotting Housewife Disclaimer: Gundam Wing belongs to Bandai, Sotsu
and associated Parties. This work is written for pleasure not profit. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Threesome - M/M/M,
Polyamory, Depression, Suicide Attempt, Implied/Referenced Homophobia Pairings: 3x5x4 Summary: When someone you love is in pain, the
only thing you can do is be their rock until they are strong enough
to stand on their own again. "Rock "
“Mr. Barton, I’m calling you in regards to a Mr. Quatre Winner.” He nodded dumbly though the caller couldn’t see him and tried to take a breath despite the squeezing sensation in his lungs. “Yes?” “You’re listed as his emergency contact and I just wanted to inform you that Mr. Winner was brought in a little while ago -” “Brought in...where?” “St. Mary’s Receiving Hospital. He was brought in by a Mr. Duo Maxwell. Do you know him?” “Ye - yes. Yes, I know him. What’s happened to Quat? Is he…?” “I’m sorry to inform you that Mr. Winner attempted suicide this morning via drug overdose. We pumped his stomach and he’s resting comfortably now…” Trowa didn’t hear the rest. The deafening rush in his ears drowned out everything around him, rendering him numb with shock. Was that rushing sound the pounding of his heart? It felt like it was trying to break through his rib cage. “Thank you,” he whispered as the receiver slipped from his hand and hit the desk with a loud thunk. He was too stunned to move, or even react. It was his worst nightmare and now he was kicking himself for not recognizing the signs that one of his lovers was in deep trouble. He’d chalked Quatre’s behavior and withdrawal from himself and Wufei as the normal progression of grief. It was understandable after all he’d gone through. The media had been reprehensible in their treatment of Quatre and that alone was horrific enough. His family was even worse. None of his sisters were able to accept that their brother had entered into a union with not just one man, but two. The headlines and internet discourse about Quatre’s relationship with he and Wufei were atrocious. Quatre had been publicly denounced from the Muslim faith by L4’s leading clerics. People on social media platforms joked that Quatre wasn’t ‘man enough’ on his own. That he needed two men ‘sticking it to him’ to make up for his ‘lack of masculinity’. Speculation about their sex life was rampant, ranging from vanilla suggestiveness to outright graphic detail. Trowa nearly vomited when he’d happened upon an ongoing discussion in the comments’ section of an article that wasn’t even trying to hide its homophobia. When he reached the part where someone was gleefully describing Quatre being ‘spit-roasted’ between the ‘gypsy circus freak’ and the ‘anal-retentive chink’, he’d slammed his laptop closed and hurled it out the window, shaking with rage. The treatment from Quatre’s family was even worse. Trowa could only imagine the pain of being disowned once, but twice? Quatre’s sisters had not only disowned him, they had gotten together in secret to plot the removal of his position as the CEO of WEI, citing incompetence and sexual deviancy as the reasons he was not equipped to run their father’s company. An army of lawyers later and Quatre found himself without a job, or a family. Trowa and Wufei tried their best to reassure him that he did have a family. That they were his family and they always would be. Trowa thought they were finally getting through to him. Last night and this morning, it had seemed as though the depression was lifting. He and Wufei were trying to get him a position at Preventers and Une was doing her damndest to work him into the schedule. Of course Quatre would get the job, but in the meantime, both Trowa and Wufei insisted that he needn’t worry about money. Even if he didn’t have a shoe in at Preventers, taking care of him was always top priority. Wufei had barred him from using the computer, or his phone. Considering Quatre only seemed to be using them to look up what people were saying about him, Trowa decided that was probably for the best. He should have known something was wrong when he’d left that morning, even though Quatre insisted he was fine. Trowa thought it was a pleasant, but currently unusual turn of events when Quatre was noticeably more amorous the previous night, begging both of them to make love to him with soft pleas and fluttering lashes. He’d taken them inside his body with the sweetest acquiescence and wept with joy from the physical manifestation of their love and passion for him. He hadn’t much been in the mood lately and Trowa and Wufei had missed making love to him so badly, they didn’t question it. They were just ecstatic that Quatre finally seemed to be coming around. Now he knew what that had been about. It was Quatre’s way of saying goodbye. He’d been closed off that morning. Chipper, but there was a wall around him that Trowa, who was always so attuned to him, could not penetrate. Quatre had been concealing his plans to take his own life with a carefully constructed empathetic barrier designed to prevent his lovers from knowing. Two hours later and Trowa was slamming the phone down into the cradle and abandoning his work. He tore through the office, scouring the cafeteria, breakroom, and men’s room in his desperate search for Wufei. His heart was lurching inside his chest, beating with painful thumps and he repeatedly swallowed around a throat dry with barely-concealed panic. He eventually spotted his lover leaving Dr. Po’s office with a stack of reports in his hands. Weak with relief at the sight of him, Trowa increased his pace to intersect the other man’s path. “Trowa? What is it? What’s -” Wufei stopped short and caught the almost feral look in his lover’s eyes, his own widening with dread, knowing it was something serious. Knowing immediately that it was about Quatre. His voice dropped to a mere whisper as if he was terrified to speak it aloud for fear of it coming true. “Is he alive?” Trowa nodded and blinked back tears. “Overdose. They’ve pumped his stomach. He’s recovering now.” Despite his efforts to contain them, the tears spilled down his cheeks. Wufei’s arm instinctively curled around his back and he dropped his head onto his lover’s shoulder, feeling raw and vulnerable. “I should have known, Fei. I should have gotten rid of all that stuff. I could have stopped him. I left him there to -” “This is not your fault, babe. Okay? At least not all of it. I left him alone this morning, too, thinking he was okay. There’s no way we could have known.” “He was blocking me. I could feel it. I should have said something to him...demanded he tell me what was going on.” “He wouldn’t have told you, you know that. We both know how he is when he wants something and there’s not a soul in the world capable of stopping him until he gets it.” Trowa could hear a slight waver in his lover’s voice, though he didn’t need to to know Wufei was as shaken by this as Trowa was. He wrapped his arm around the other man and they held each other tight for a moment, gleaning comfort and strength from the other that they direly needed. “We need to get to the hospital.” “Yeah.” Wufei let him go, sniffled and wiped his nose. “I’ll go talk to Une. Get your stuff and I’ll meet you at your desk.” “What do you think is going to happen to him now?” “It’s common procedure for patients who attempt suicide -” Wufei steadied him as Trowa staggered from the mention of suicide. “Easy, baby. It’s alright. He’ll get a psych evaluation and he’ll probably have to be admitted to the mental health ward.” Trowa choked on the lump in his throat, his hand flying up to cover his mouth and stifle the sound. The thought of his love locked away in a psyche ward was too much to bear. The knowledge that Quatre had tried to take his own life, destroying him from the inside out. He’d been there before himself. It was a dark and lonely place and knowing that Quatre was now in that place made him want to lash out at everyone who had ever hurt him. Make them hurt as badly as they’d hurt their love. Wufei grabbed his arms and pressed their foreheads together. “Hey, it’s going to be alright, okay? He’s in the best place right now. Lots of people go through the psyche ward and come out the other side much better than when they came in. Alright? But he’s got to know we’re there for him and he needs us to be strong, just as he’s always been strong for us. Can you do that?” He had to. There was no other option. Quatre never once hesitated to be the strong one, the one to shelter and comfort when either of his lovers were down in the drudges. Now it was time for them to return the favor. Trowa owed Quatre his life and his happiness. He owed them both. Now it was time for him to step up to the plate. When you love someone, it’s the only thing you can do. He wiped the tears from his eyes and took a deep breath, steeling his expression into what was jokingly referred to among the pilots as the ‘Mission Face’. Decided, tenacious, no nonsense. The, “We have a job to do and we are going to do it no matter the cost,” face. For Quatre, for Wufei, he would gladly pay any price. He pressed his lips into a firm line of grim determination and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.” Wufei smiled, though his eyes were sad and lined with stress. A man who was trying hard not to show that his heart was being wrenched from his chest. He rested a hand on Trowa’s shoulder and said, “Good man. Go get your stuff. I’ll be right there.”
***
Trowa’s nose prickled as he walked through the corridors of the hospital on their way to Quatre’s room. The smell of disinfectant, of sickness and pain was overwhelming and he remembered the last time he’d been in one. Ironically enough, that had been for Quatre, too, after he was stabbed on the Libra by that Catalonia girl. Trowa had to be physically dragged from the blond’s side by Rashid just so he could be taken by the other three pilots down to the cafeteria where he refused to eat. Duo, Heero, and Wufei had to resort to bribery, coercion, threats, and then ultimately, force feeding him. Duo had even gone as far as to joke about showing him Quatre’s nudes if he just ate one more bite, though he quickly learned that such a method was not conducive to his safety after Trowa tried to throttle him from across the table. Those first forty eight hours were dicey and riddled with tension and anxiety. There had been complications during Quatre’s surgery and he wound up flatlining on the table twice while the surgeons removed the kidney they could not save. It was tricky due to the blood loss and Heero was forced to donate over three pints of his own to save his life. Quatre was given a fifty/fifty chance of survival and if he made it through the first forty eight hours, his chances increased to sixty/forty. The next day, it was seventy/thirty. And so on. On the fifth day, he finally cracked his eyes open and Trowa nearly wept from the overwhelming surge of relief and elation. Actually he did weep, though Duo more accurately described it as ‘bawling like a wee baby’ and took great pleasure in reiterating the story to everyone they knew. Ad nauseam. Now here he was again, smelling those same smells as he walked through the maze of hallways to get to his love. Thankfully this time, he had a second love to lean on which made all the difference. He reached for Wufei’s hand and threaded their fingers together, no longer giving a shit who saw, or what anyone thought about it. Wufei said nothing, but squeezed Trowa’s hand in return. He was tense, anxious. Trowa could sense it and he realized that it wasn’t just Quatre he had to be strong for. He had to be a rock for both of them. When they approached Quatre’s room, they spotted Duo in the doorway. Their friend turned to them, his normally jovial and mischievous face was sober and heavy with sadness. He held his arms out and Trowa threw himself into them, the waterworks turning on again when he realized that Quatre would likely be at home, dead or dying if it wasn’t for Duo. “Thank you.” “No problem, man. It’s a good thing, though. We were supposed to catch some brunch. I guess he forgot about it. When he didn’t answer the door, I let myself in. Found him in the bathroom. Hey, Fei. It’s good to see you. Heh, I just wish the circumstances were different.” Duo held his hand out, but surprisingly, Wufei grabbed his arm and pulled him into an embrace. “I just can’t stop thinking about how different this would be if you hadn’t shown up,” he whispered into Duo’s shoulder. Trowa could hear the tears in his voice and soothingly rubbed his love’s back. Duo held him tight and said, “Hey, you can’t think like that, man. What ifs are useless wastes of energy and stress. I was there and that’s what matters. He’s here. He’s gonna be okay, buddy.” “You know I can hear you guys, right?” Quatre’s frail-sounding voice drifted into the hallway and Trowa immediately turned and rushed into the room with Wufei following him like a shadow. Their blond lover was semi-reclined in the bed, looking tiny and exhausted. There was a narrow feeding tube up his nose and a line that went into the back of his hand, but aside from that and the little pulse monitor clamped around his finger, he was unattached to any machines. He gave his boyfriends a weak, and decidedly guilty, smile as they hurried towards him. Once they reached the bed, Quatre was swept up into their arms and he clung to them desperately, as if they were the only thing keeping him from drifting away. The tears came fast and furious the moment he allowed himself to feel their pain and their fear, feeling lower than dirt for doing this to them. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Trowa leaned back, cupped Quatre’s face between his hands, and pressed feverish kisses all over his mouth, cheeks, nose, and forehead. “I’m sorry, baby. So sorry we didn’t see it, that we didn’t help you when you needed it.” Wufei crawled onto the bed behind Quatre and pulled him against his chest, his arms closing securely around him. “Don’t you ever scare us like that again, you understand? Christ, we almost lost you! Do you know what that did to us?” Quatre broke down and turned in Wufei’s arms, unleashing everything he’d been bottling up for the last five months. “I feel like such a failure. I’ve failed everyone, including you. I couldn’t - couldn’t -” “Damn it, Quatre, you did not fail us! You did not fail your family and you did not fail your father. They failed you.” “Then why -” “Why? Because they’re ignorant cowards who can’t accept who you love, that’s why,” Trowa told him. He reached for Quatre’s hand and placed it over his chest. “You tell us. Does this feel wrong? Does this love we share feel wrong?” Quatre sniffed and wiped his nose. “No.” “Then how could you ever think it was you that failed them?” Quatre’s face crumpled again. “I - I need help! I thought I could do this by myself, but I can’t!” He buried his face in Trowa’s chest and wept, broken and scared. Trowa could feel it coming off of him like heat and he felt crushed beneath the influx of such terrible pain. He did his best to soothe, whispering declarations of love and tenderly stroked the tangled blond hair. “I’ve been so depressed and I don’t know how to make it stop. Why am I so weak?” “You’re not weak, baby. Hey, listen to me. You’re not weak. Everyone, I mean everyone needs someone at some point in their life. We all have moments where we can’t do it on our own and that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that.” He lifted his love’s chin up and stared into the teary eyes. “You are the strongest person I’ve ever known and I’ve never been more proud to be by your side. I love you.” He met Wufei’s damp eyes. “We love you. And we’re going to help you get better.” Wufei wrapped his arms around Quatre, pulled him down to the bed and against his chest, pressing his lips against the back of the blond’s head. “But we can’t help you if you don’t talk to us, baby. If you shut us out, you’re not only hurting us, but you’re neglecting yourself of the support you need.” Trowa crawled to Quatre’s other side and laid down, taking both his lovers into his arms. “Don’t ever withdraw from us like that, baby. It hurt so bad not knowing what was wrong.” Quatre clung to him and tucked his head beneath Trowa’s chin. “I was scared to,” he admitted. “I didn’t want you to think I was weak. I convinced myself that the two of you would be better off without me. I was so stupid.” “You ever think anything remotely like that again, we’ll tie you to the bed for a week and prove to you how wrong you are,” Wufei told him. Quatre turned his head and grinned up at him. “Kinky. If I’d known that, I would have said something sooner.” Wufei tapped the blond’s button nose and gave him a stern look. “No more secrets.” Quatre’s expression sobered and he nodded up at Wufei with solemn doe eyes. “No more secrets,” he promised. “I love you. I love you both so much and I’m so sorry.” “Don’t be sorry,” Trowa insisted. “Just get better. That’s all we want. We want you better. We want you happy again.” “Oh, you guys are so sweet. This is the most precious thing I’ve ever seen,” Duo simpered from the doorway. “It’s like one big gay family reunion. I feel like I should be releasing a flock of white doves, or some shit.” Quatre snickered into Trowa’s chest while Wufei glowered over his shoulder at the jokester behind him. “Piss off, Maxwell. We’re having a moment.” “I can see that. Just making sure you two strapping young gentlemen don’t take advantage of blondie while he’s in his weakened state -” He held his hands up as both Wufei and Trowa glared at him. “I mean, no offense. I’m no kinkshamer, but -” “Get out, Maxwell!” “Alright, I’m goin’. I’m gonna hit the cafe and see if there’s anything edible. You want I should bring you guys somethin’?” “No, we’re fine,” Trowa told him, gazing tenderly at his lovers. “We have everything we need right here.” “Jesus, you guys are so cheesy.” “Maxwell -” “I’m going, I’m going.”
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