|
"Je T’aime"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: Romance, Drama, Angst, Humor, Fluff,
Smut, Religion, Religious Misogyny, religious homophobia, From Riches
to Rags to Riches, street gangs, Crime Lords, And Harems, oh my! Pairings: Trowa Barton/Quatre Raberba Winner,
Treize Khushrenada/Quatre Raberba Winner, Quatre Raberba Winner/Original
Male Character(s), Trowa Barton/Original Character(s), Chang Wufei/Heero
Yuy, Duo Maxwell/Hilde Schbeiker Summary: When Quatre runs away from his Auntie Fawzah who is determined to punish the "gay" out of him after he is caught in a compromising position with another man, he meets Trowa, the charismatic leader of a street gang, and falls hopelessly in love. AN: Gift fic for imgoingthereagain who requested
a 3x4 Lady and the Tramp. "Je T’aime " Chapter 1: Supper and Rebellion Coffee time was always a formal affair and seventeen year old Quatre Winner was expected to be dressed to the nines in his shirttails, slacks, and jacket. He stood on the small platform in his bedroom while his personal servant, Alhasan, brushed the lint off his clothing and tamed the blond waves on his head with a touch of Argan oil. At four o'clock sharp, he would head down to the parlor to share a pot of gahwa with his father, sisters, and Auntie Fawzah. "I hate this," he muttered as he buttoned up his suit coat and glared at his reflection in the mirror. Looking back was a petite blond who was far too overdressed for his personal tastes. His expression was petulant, making him look more like a child playing dress up. Alhasan chuckled, removed the pins from Quatre's waistcoat, and smoothed out the fabric. "It cannot be that bad." "You've never had to sit at a table with my father, sisters, and Auntie Fawzah for an hour. Trust me, I'd rather hang myself from the banister than endure that." "Now, we can't have that. What would become of me if you were gone?" Alhasan's voice dropped to a mournful whisper. "And I would miss you." Quatre's heart softened and he turned around, cupping his servant's face with a warm palm. "I am sorry. I did not mean to speak of such things so lightly, nor did I intend to make you sad. Of course I would never do something like that." He gave Alhasan his best puppy dog look. It never worked on his family, but on his handsome khadim, it always did the trick. "Forgive me?" Alhasan's eyes softened, never one to hold a grudge against Quatre. He closed his hand around the blond's and brought them both to his mouth, kissing the soft skin of Quatre's palm. "Come to me tonight?" "I shall try, but Auntie Fawzah will be here tonight and she is a hopeless insomniac who wears the polish off the floors with her endless pacing. I'll have to be extra careful. We cannot risk being caught." Alhasan stepped forward and hooked an arm around Quatre's waist, pulling him against his chest. He dipped his head down and took the blond's plush lips between his own in a passionate kiss, savoring his habib's soft whimper. He broke the kiss, but remained close, speaking against Quatre's mouth in a low, husky voice. "I cannot wait to have you again. T'is been too long since last time." "I know." Quatre smiled and cupped his lover's face. "I am sorry about that." "T'is not your fault. I know it is risky sometimes. If I had my way, I would whisk you away, far away, someplace where those who wish to keep us apart could never find us." Quatre snorted and turned away, checking his reflection one final time. "Don't tempt me. It sounds more inviting every time you tell me that." He glanced up to see Alhasan smirking at him through the mirror. "Then I shall call my efforts a success." *** Quatre was apprehensive as he made his way downstairs to the parlor. He wanted so badly to be able to go to Alhasan later that night, but was terrified of being spotted by his wandering Auntie who typically spent her nights pacing the floors and muttering Q'uran verses to herself. Quatre often thought if she wasn't so uptight about everything, she might actually be able to sleep. Unfortunately, that wasn't likely to happen any time soon. She'd always been that way for as long as he could remember. She often spent Saturday nights with them and stayed through Sunday supper, then she left to head back to her own estate on the other side of town. She was notorious for blurting out verses from the holy book at random and during moments that she felt Quatre and his sisters needed a booster shot of divine intervention. Before coffee, they prayed to Allah on their Urdus with their Misbahas clutched in their fingers. Then, they would gather around the table for gahwa, served along with a platter of dates. Quatre was required to stay for the entire hour and then endure supper that immediately followed. He was just grateful he no longer had studies to attend to after supper. He'd completed his curriculum far ahead of schedule, leaving his tutors and governesses to find new employment. His father urged him to attend University and Quatre was planning on doing just that when autumn returned. It had become like a beacon of hope for him to look forward to. Chomping at the bit, as his friend Heero would say. The prospect of freedom lay on the horizon, now less than a year away. The chance to escape his family sounded like paradise. Of course, he'd still be required to return home for Eid Al-Fitr at the conclusion of Ramadan and then again for Eid Al-Adha. He figured he could tolerate them much more if he only had to see them twice a year. Though he was tempted by Alhasan's proposal for them to run away together, it wasn't something he was seriously considering. He cared deeply about his khadim, possibly even loved him in his own way, but it wasn't what Quatre's fantasies about truly being in love felt like. He had considered the likely probability that he was simply deluding himself. His rational mind telling him this was as good as it was going to get and he should be happy he'd found someone so passionate, loving, and devoted. But his heart told him other things. Things like love should feel like soaring among the clouds, like the moment of elation one experiences while drowning. Like rapture, yearning, and agony all at the same time. His heart wanted someone whom, when he looked into their eyes, he saw Allah Himself. And with Alhasan, he simply had not experienced those emotions. While his mind told him he shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, his heart told him to wait for the Right One and all would be worth it in the end. He wanted someone to look at him the way he saw his friends, Heero and Wufei, look at each other. As if nothing in the world would be right without the other. They would die for each other, kill, steal, maim, whatever it took. That was the kind of love Quatre was looking for and he hoped that perhaps he would find a man like that at the University. He did feel some inklings of shame for sleeping with Alhasan, even though he'd told him on more than one occasion that it could never be a forever thing. Alhasan seemed hell-bent on changing Quatre's mind and he often wondered if maybe he was wrong about the concept of love. Instead of it being chaos and catastrophe and supernovas, perhaps it was more like a slow burn. Like law and order that would eventually lead to entropy. He never got to meet his mother. She'd died after giving birth to him, but from what his oldest sisters had said, his parents had the kind of love he yearned for. He'd certainly seen the evidence in old photographs of them together. His father's face was so soft, warm, and full of all-encompassing love when he'd looked at her. Something Quatre had never in his life seen in person, only in photographs that existed before he did. She had been French, born and raised in the City of Love, and Quatre thought that was about as poetic as it could get. Even more so considering her last words to his father had been, "Je T'aime," in which he'd whispered the sentiment back to her in his own native tongue, "Ahabak," a heartbeat before she breathed her last breath. That was how Quatre wanted to die. Whispering, "I love you," against his love's lips. *** "There you are, you rascal," Auntie Fawzah muttered as Quatre walked into the tiny prayer room and took his Urdu down from its mount. "Good afternoon, Auntie." Fawzah propped her fists on her wide hips and sent him a sharp look. "You're late." "My apologies, Auntie, Father." Zayeed gave him a faint nod and unrolled his Urdu across the floor, but Fawzah wasn't finished. "You realize promptness is a virtue of Godliness and must be respected." "Yes, Auntie. I will try harder to be on time." "There is no try, Quatre. You either do, or you do not." "Yes, Auntie. I will be on time from now on." "I'm going to hold you to that," she said. Her voice was naturally nasally which he assumed was a result of her abnormally large, hooked nose. Quatre didn't know her true age, but wagered she must have been in her sixties. She was his father's aunt who raised him as a boy when Quatre's grandparents were killed in a suicide bombing during a scuffle between protesters and police. It had been a dark time in their history where a change in government had created civil unrest and Zayeed's parents were caught in the middle. They were only two in nearly three dozen people who were killed in that attack. Fawzah was ridiculously wealthy. Quatre had once heard his second oldest sister, Marisa, joke that she had more money than Allah, only to be slapped by his oldest sister, Iria, for being disrespectful towards her elders. Fawzah owned four additional properties aside from her main estate which was rare for women. Granted, she'd inherited the money and properties from her late husband when he died of stroke ten years earlier. But she proved to be a shrewd business woman, good at handling money. To her endless fury, the men she dealt with had often likened her to a Jew and it never failed to send her into fits of rage. Quatre knelt down onto his Urdu and wound his prayer beads over his fingers, softly murmuring the incantations he'd long since memorized, and lowered his head to the floor in prostration before Allah. Afterwords, he sat quietly at the long wooden table with his Auntie, his father, and his three youngest sisters. Older than him, but still unwed, they remained at the house until his father and Fawzah found who they considered to be suitable husbands for them. He idly listened with one ear to Zayeed and Fawzah's quiet conversation, keeping his hearing perked just in case he was addressed, knowing he would be scolded if he was caught daydreaming. The rest of his brain did just that as he absently fiddled with a date. He imagined going to Alhasan that night, knowing how the amorous man would kiss him breathless and undress him with an aching gentleness before laying him out across his bed. His lips would kiss every inch of satiny skin, savoring the hitch in Quatre's breath as his mouth reached his sensitive inner thighs. Quatre would be taken to dizzying heights of ecstasy when Alhasan took him deep into his throat and slid oiled fingers into his opening. He would bring Quatre to the brink of orgasm and then pull away to slather his cock with oil. He was always so gentle when he first pushed into the searing clutch of Quatre's body, murmuring declarations of love and worship as he suckled the soft skin of his habib's neck. Quatre would wrap his legs around the narrow waist and smother his moans by biting down on his own knuckles. Alhasan had incomprehensible skills when it came to buggery, rolling his hips in the most erotic way, never failing to press into the place inside him that made him lose his mind. The soft whispers, the heatedly uttered words of affection, waxing poetic about his beauty, would inevitably send him leaping off the cliff into bliss as he came all over himself. He shifted in his seat at the physical memory and shivered, jerking his head up in surprise when Fawzah barked, "Quatre!" "I'm - I'm sorry, Auntie. I didn't hear you," he flushed in embarrassment when his sisters tittered, though they were silenced a moment later with a sharp look from their father. Fawzah sniffed haughtily. "Daydreaming again, I see. I asked if you were cold." "No, Auntie. I am sorry." "There's no place for daydreamers in this family. Daydreamers are irrelevant, worthless. They achieve nothing in this world. Winners do not dream about what they want. They go forth and seize it." "Yes, Auntie." "Verse One. Say it with me, Quatre. O' you who have true faith! Do not give preference above those of Allah and His Messenger. And have consciousness of Allah. Unquestionably, Allah is the All-Hearing, All-Knowing..." Quatre dutifully recited the verse, hearing the echo of Fawzah's and his own voice bounce off the high ceiling and wished he could be anywhere but there. *** Supper was as insufferable as ever and Quatre absurdly contemplated impaling one of his eyeballs on his salad fork just so he could get out of it. He pressed his finger tip against the prongs and wondered how he'd look with an eye patch. "Quatre, have you given any more consideration about studying abroad? India is beautiful this time of year," his father informed him. "No. I think I'm going to stay in Jordan." Zayeed was indifferent either way. He looked down at his plate without comment and speared a piece of lamb with his fork. "It wouldn't hurt to broaden your horizons, Quatre," Fawza said. Quatre didn't know why he did it. Would spend hours wracking his brain, trying to figure out what possessed him. It wasn't as if he didn't know what the answer would be, but some strange impulse had him blurting out the question before he could stop himself. "Why don't they get to go to University?" He asked, indicating his sisters, now wide-eyed with surprise. He stared down at his plate with flushed cheeks when he heard the clank of silver striking china, knowing without a doubt that he'd just damned himself. Fawzah was too busy sputtering in outrage to answer. Zayeed did it for her. "You know University is no place for a woman." "Why not?" Zayeed looked taken aback, his mouth working to explain a valid reason and his brain providing none. "Because, a woman does not need an education when she has a husband." Quatre chewed on a piece of lamb and decided since he'd already thrown a wrench into the staunch routine known as suppertime, he may as well go for broke. "So, when are we going to stop treating women like extensions of ourselves? They're not accessories. They're people." "Blasphemy!" Fawzah screeched, standing up so quickly, her populous backside knocked her chair backwards. Quatre flinched as it clattered loudly to the floor and waited for his verdict, his judgment for committing such an inconceivable offense. Fawzah pointed a shaking finger in his face. "You will not question the way of things, young man. It is not your place to question Allah's plan. For He is Allah and his ways are righteous. Our place is to obey!" He realized he must have been a glutton for punishment because despite the logical part of his brain screaming at him to keep his stupid, blasphemous mouth shut, he opened it again and said, "Allah's ways are to treat women as inferior? That just seems so wrong." Fawzah's face was an alarming shade of red, bordering on purple and she sounded like she was choking. Her lips bulged out into a strange purse and then she bellowed, "Get out of my sight, you heathen! No more supper for you! You are to go the prayer room right this very instant and beg Allah for forgiveness. So help me, no Winner is going to spend an eternity in Hell! Then you are to go straight to bed. If I see even a glimpse of you before morning, I will turn you over my knee and take the strap to your hide until you're black and blue! No go!" She pointed to the doorway that led out to the hall. Quatre glanced at his father and sisters as he stood up and deposited his napkin onto his plate. They all wore identical expressions of shock. No one talked back to Fawzah, not even Zayeed, and certainly no one questioned Allah's plan in her presence. He'd just committed the unthinkable. He gave them all a respectful nod and turned, avoiding his Auntie's damning gaze as he followed her still outstretched arm and exited through the threshold. He made his way to the prayer room and unrolled his Urdu, kneeling down and chanting his prayers of forgiveness, though his mind wasn't really focused on receiving forgiveness from a God he had trouble reconciling with for multiple reasons. He didn't know what had gotten into him. He'd never done anything like that before, but he found it almost liberating. Delightfully refreshing. He'd gotten himself in hot water and there were punishments to be had, but he couldn't help but feel a little proud that he'd stood up to his tyrannical aunt, even if it was only a little. He realized she wasn't a towering, untouchable entity who held unimaginable amounts of power over him. When all was said and done, she was simply a woman. Just as human as the rest of them and suddenly, she wasn't as scary as he'd always believed. He pressed his forehead to his Urdu, his thoughts returning to Alhasan. He was determined to go to him tonight. His khadim would be concerned for Quatre's well being, would chide him for speaking out of turn and getting himself into trouble. But Quatre would simply kiss the knot between his dark brows until it was smoothed away and reassure him that everything would be okay. He would slide his leg up the man's broad back and roll his hips, demanding to be buggered again, and Alhasan would forget about everything but the sensual blond beneath him. Their lovemaking would begin again and continue until the sky turned from black, to dark blue. Then Quatre would retreat back to his own room and crawl into his bed to bask in the tingly languidness of sexual afterglow. As he bent down again, his mouth curled up into a smug grin, realizing he'd finally succeeded in getting out of supper after five years of numerous attempts. Better late than never.
~ * ~ Chapter 2 |
