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"Hurricane"Written By: Miss Murdered Disclaimer: I don't own the GW characters - am
just borrowing to torment for my amusement Rating: NC 17 Warnings: yaoi, m/m sexual relations of varying
degrees of smuttiness and roughness, angst, language, dark Quat and
Tro' Pairings: 3x4x3, brief mentions of 1x2 Summary: "There is a moment that I think of when we are in bed together, before the reality sets in, when we are lying side by side and he is the Trowa I could be with and I am the Quatre he could love." A/N: I admit, that I am not usually a fan of the
3x4 pairing as I don't see it working long term as the characters
are so different. As such, if you like the pairing happy and non-angsty
then this fic is not for you. If you want to read a darker version
of the Quat and Tro' pairing then welcome… The fic is inspired by the song Hurricane by 30 Seconds to Mars Beta'd by ELLE as always. "Hurricane " Chapter Four Do You Really Want Me? The paperwork on my desk is piled into different categories.
My current secretary, Claudia, has done this for me in some fit of
trying to be overly diligent. She has been trying to catch my eye
since HR sent her to me – I suppose the rumours of my promiscuity
have her hoping that I may sleep with her and thus treat her to a
glimpse into the world of wealth and privileged that a Winner has.
I wonder this as I stare at small sticky notes pointing me in the
direction of where a signature is required. I think, sometimes, that we are in AC 206 and I wonder
why I am still primitively signing paperwork with a pen yet there
is something oddly charming about signing my name in ink, a medium
with a permanence that cannot be replicated with a tablet or an easily
copied electronic signature. Instead, each of my pen strokes is slightly
different, each signature the same loops that I always do, but subtly
different each time. I complete the signing and buzz her in to collect the
contracts so that they can be copied in triplicate or whatever happens
to these pieces of paper. Scanned, I imagine, filed, pointlessly kept
in the great archives. I sometimes find it amazing the power that
my signature has – the hiring of thirty new construction workers
on a mining satellite, the increase in budget for the R and D department,
a pay rise for a loyal employee – and then occasionally, the
firing of individuals, the closing down of failing resources and the
cutting of budgets. All in a pen stroke. It makes me think of Wufei
and his sword. Sometimes, indeed, it is the pen that is mightier than
the sword. Claudia walks into the office and I take notice of her
as she intends me to. Her clothing is work appropriate but probably
verging on not suitable, a tight pencil skirt, a tight blouse with
just one button too far undone and her stiletto heels make her move
with a certain sway of the hips that I don't know if she exaggerates.
I could – I know I could as she bends provocatively to pick up
the papers but I only dismiss her from my office as swiftly as she
arrives. Once the door closes, I glance at the agenda for the
latest board meeting that I should read through and decide I don't
want to. Instead, I reach down for my bottom drawer of my desk and
open it, pulling out the innocuous papers that I've put in there as
subterfuge until I knock the hollow false bottom with my knuckles,
finding the small indent around the edge where I can easily extract
the small lock box is there. I prise it out and lay it on my desk,
my fingers quickly inputting the same code I used to activate Sandrock,
briefly letting the sadness of destroying the machine that meant so
much wash over me. The lid opens a small way and then I am able to
open it fully to see the items I keep locked, hidden. One is a gun.
Another is a part of Sandrock when Duo decided in some fit of sentimentality
that he wanted to collect small parts of our machines once they exploded
in that vacant valley in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest. We
let him, looking at one another with a knowing glance as Duo started
climbing over rubble once the heat had evaporated and found pieces
that at least looked like they came from our respective Gundams. The last is a cell phone. It is old, antiquated, out
dated. It can barely be used to do anything more than call and receive
messages yet I know this is intentional on his part. It is battered.
It is marked by a knife blade as though in boredom and I bring it
out, turning it on. He did not provide me with a way of charging the
damn thing when he left it for me. It's so archaic it was impossible
to purchase something to put the small SIM card in that was similar
enough or to buy a charging device. I ended up discreetly asking a
member of my R and D department to retrofit some method of charging
it. While I could have surely spent some of my company's vast R and
D budget on producing some more updated device, I did not as I thought
that this small, battered electronic said something about Trowa. I turn it on – the button sticky and difficult
to press down. It takes minutes to buzz in my hand, slowly taking
its time to come to life, the technology far too old. I remember when
he first gave it to me, told me that it was untraceable, that he'd
altered it so that he could contact me wherever he was – and
I turned it on and off every few hours. Then I realised how infrequent
these communications would be so that I only did it daily. I now did
it less frequently – weeks would pass between me even thinking
about the thing – and I kept it here, in my L4 Headquarters office
rather than anywhere else as I tended to spend more time in my office
than anywhere else. That was a depressing thought. It takes time to find any form of signal and my attention
has drifted from it to the screen that keeps me updated with rolling
business news broadcasts. The phone finally buzzes to indicate a message
and a part of me is surprised. It is only two weeks into January.
We saw each other at the war anniversary party and I have become used
to spending months apart from him, wondering and thinking of him. The message is cryptic as, of course, he is still careful.
Always so careful. I find my pen used to sign contracts and write
down a series of co-ordinates. 48.8567° N, 2.3508° E. I then
fold the piece of paper and do not search for them immediately. I
will go home, sit on my laptop with my own private servers that Heero
had set up for me when I gave him some employment after his disastrous
tenure as a Preventer. However, the co-ordinates are not the only
thing contained in the message which is unusual. There is one word.
Capital letters. COME. Trowa never demands that. He sends the co-ordinates.
He waits. He does whatever he does and knows, probably with justifiable
confidence – aware of the unwitting fascination with him that
I've had since I was fifteen – that I will come on my own terms.
Yet, he demands. He doesn't ask. COME. I almost wonder if it is some
joke, some double entendre, some way of referencing our violent game
of lust and rough bloody kisses but then he has never asked me to
go to him. Not until now. At home, on my own encrypted server, I discover the
co-ordinates lead to Paris and I remember his small place on the edge
of the red light district, remember the first time when he met me
at the Pigalle Metro station in the rainy streets and walking past
prostitutes and sex shows which he seemed to find amusing. Maybe he
always imagined me more innocent than him – less knowing as I
was brought up wealth while he slept with a dozen men on the ground.
Maybe he wanted to shock me – always trying to do something to
make me think worse of him than I did. I think a part of him wanted
me to disapprove of everything he'd become. I never have been able
to. For a moment, I look at my screen and think of that
one room in a shared house in Paris, I think of his bed, I think of
his body and the brush of his hands and I am reduced to buying tickets
under false names, under the false passport I have used for discretion
for a long time now – an identity as meaningless and as false
as Trowa Barton. It is easy still, despite my public persona, to slip
away undetected, to change my clothing, to put false contacts in and
dress in a style unexpected of me and arrive on earth unacknowledged.
I know my staff are too well paid, too diligent, too willing to cater
to me and that they will not question the unexpected absence. I cancel
all the appointments on my electronic calendar, I pack and all the
while the word COME etches onto my brain and I falter as I put items
into a duffle bag. COME. Now – now he wants me explicitly. And I have never
been wanted by him so much that I can't help but feel unsure. Uncertain.
Not knowing why. My fingers reach for my own cell phone and I dial a
direct line, an extension at Preventer HQ I have so rarely used and
for a second I think that this is the right thing. He is there and
it would be better if… "Maxwell," I hear the voice answer on the
other end of the line. I don't say a word, disconnect the call before I can
say anything or make any noise that gives away my identity, before
any visual connection can be made between L4 and Brussels. I sit down
beside the duffle, run fingers through my hair and contemplate what
I almost did. He would laugh that I've spent the last ten years trying
to save him when he does not need to be saved. That this, that tipping
off Duo and Wufei, would be my attempt to save him – that I might
think him better in a cell than in a world where he is killing people
for a living. I want to laugh at myself the way he would laugh at
me – brutal, harsh, short. Yet I contain myself, change my clothing,
ring for a cab to the spaceport and attempt to leave without being
observed. I have never been as subtle as Trowa. Never been as
able to creep through the world unnoticed and I am stopped before
I make my exit, Rashid's voice rife with concern and I am aware he
knows too much. He knows that I am connected to him, that we drift
and part yet always merge back together. I can almost say that he
has always disapproved of Trowa – from that moment he came out
of his Gundam and stayed with me during the war so early on…
when he was so mysterious and fascinating and everything I wasn't. "Master Quatre." I turn towards him and I see his expression, stark,
and grave and serious. He is the nearest thing I have had to a father.
I would class him as more my father than my father ever was –
the Magunacs my family more than the Winners – so I feel his
gaze more intensely as he inspects my frayed jeans, my ratty sweatshirt,
my scuffed sneakers, my brown contact lenses and he knows where
I am going. I wonder how many times he knew what I was doing –
how many times he knew during business trips I was sneaking away like
some teenager to find comfort in a man who could never love me or
want me or need me but I did not care. I wonder if he saw us on the
security feeds in Hawaii. I wonder if he judges me more intensely
the older I get. The worse Trowa's crimes become. The more the violence
escalates. "You shouldn't go." He can't tell me what to do, of course he can't, but
he wants to advise me. Just as Duo did. Warnings. "He needs me," I say convincing myself that
he does. My voice is firm. My eyes hard, my jaw set – the sort
of face I have used in the boardroom, at the controls of my Gundam,
behind the barrel of a gun. He acquiesces, my employee despite every connection
between us and I leave, the cab waiting outside the grounds. COME. Not even a request – an order. And I obey.
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