"Breathless"

Written By: Waterliliylf

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. All rights remain with Bandai, Sotsu and associated parties. No profit being made here.

Rating: R

Warnings: sap, angst, fluff

Pairings: 3x4, 13x2

Summary: Quatre finds himself introduced to an annoying young man, one he can't seem to get out of his head.

"Breathless"

Chapter 13:

[In which the scales gradually start to tilt in Trowa's favour… ]

He and Duo had lived in an apartment once, when they'd first arrived in Sanque. Nothing like Quatre's fancy building; even then they could have afforded better than the dump they'd lived in, but no one expected two new immigrants to have money. It had been better to keep a low profile until they sorted out covers for themselves.

There was a uniformed doorman to open the door with a flourish, and another to direct him to the lifts.

'Mr. Barton? Mr. Winner is expecting you.'

The guy even pushed the button for him; the penthouse, of course.

Even the lift was nice; plush carpets and a small chandelier and the gilded mirror was a fairly good reproduction. He wondered how Quatre had described him; horrible clothes and a ridiculous hairstyle, probably. Trowa made a face at himself in the mirror; he hadn't bothered to change out of his usual clothes. There wasn't any point; he didn't have anything that would be remotely right for a place like this, and he'd just look like he was trying too hard.

God, though. The things he did for Duo. He'd probably end up fucking proposing to Quatre, just to keep Duo happy and stop him feeling guilty about leaving Trowa. It had been months since he'd tried fixing him up with anyone, so he'd guessed just how this engagement was bound to affect him.

Still, he could survive one night with the prissy little blond. Hopefully. Not that Quatre was interested in him anyway, and he sure as hell wouldn't be once he saw Trowa's very non-penthouse style of living.

It was just one night. One night to convince Quatre of just how incompatible they were, and then Duo would hopefully back off his subtle-as-a-sledgehammer matchmaking schemes.

'The door's open,' Quatre called when Trowa knocked. 'I'll just be two minutes. I'm still getting dressed.'

On his drive into town, Trowa had tried to work out what the blond's home would be like. He hadn't been able to decide between aggressively modern and minimalist, which was the 'in' décor at the moment, or else something like the restaurant they'd gone to.

Both were wrong. It was smaller than Trowa had imagined a penthouse suite would be, and just … normal. There were a few nice pieces of art, including a lovely watercolour of an Arabian stallion that had to be an original Merquise, but there were also kids' finger paintings and a couple of Duo's sketches. A violin on top of a music stand, and lots of books and literally hundreds of framed photographs. Duo was in some of them.

It was nice, in an unexpected sort of way. Cluttered and lived in and warm.

'Make yourself comfortable,' Quatre called over the drone of a hairdryer. 'I'm so sorry, Trowa; I'm always running late, no matter how hard I try.'

He made it sound like a charming personality quirk; Trowa hated unpunctuality.

'Do you always leave your front door open?'

'Sometimes, if I'm expecting guests. Why not? There's security downstairs.'

Shaking his head over that sort of naivety – they really did live in different worlds - Trowa moved a stack of magazines from a chair and sat down. A couple of gay publications; an Amnesty International newsletter, flyers from a travel company that specialised in out-of-the way locations, and National Geographic. The magazines Trowa himself read, pretty much.

He hadn't noticed the cat at first; an elegant Siamese perched on a small velvet-covered stool. She hissed delicately at his outstretched hand, baring her teeth at him, and then deliberately turned her back.

Great. He could charm lions but Quatre Winner's cat wouldn't give him the time of day.

Not good enough for her owner either, probably.

'Your cat's not very friendly.'

'Oh, Samira's awful,' Quatre agreed cheerfully from behind the closed door; it was distracting to imagine him a few feet away, probably still naked. 'Just ignore her. She doesn't really like people. I'm barely tolerated and that's only because she needs a slave with opposable thumbs.'

The bedroom door swung open abruptly and he was confronted with Quatre Winner's blinding smile. He looked like he was going to a garden party; perfectly pressed khaki slacks and a lilac cashmere sweater.

'Hello! It's lovely to see you again.' He reached up to kiss Trowa's cheek. He smelled delicious, like he'd just bathed in coconut milk. Maybe he had. 'Can I get you a drink before we go?'

'No, I'm fine. I like this room.'

Quatre bent down to kiss his cat goodbye. 'It's awfully messy. I'm no good at being tidy and I don't like my cleaner to move things. Now, I have a bottle of wine for you, but I can't remember where I put it.'

Trowa couldn't help laughing. God, this dizzy guy would drive him insane. He was really cute though. 'On the sofa, I think.' He handed Quatre a gift bag that obviously contained a bottle and gestured to the door. 'Come on.'

The last time Quatre had been in his truck hadn't ended too well. The blond didn't show any sign he remembered, climbing in and chatting away happily. He finally shut up when Trowa pulled into his driveway, eyes huge.

'Gosh! You never told me we had to drive up a mountain. What happens if your truck breaks down?'

Trowa grinned. 'Then we walk. It's not actually that far; the road curves around a lot.' He glanced at Quatre's beautiful, polished leather shoes. They didn't look up to a hike; he'd probably have to carry the guy. 'It's OK. I've never broken down yet.'

'Why don't you get a properly paved road?' Quatre was clinging to the edges of his seat as the truck bounced around the track.

'It would cost too much. And I don't mind it.'

'I bet you don't get a lot of visitors though.'

'I don't want a lot of visitors.' He stopped the car and got out to swing the gate open. Quatre's eyes, reading the Trespassers will be Eaten sign were huge.

'How many dogs do you actually have?'

'Right now? Ten.'

Quatre gulped audibly. 'Really?'

'They're not all mine. I have a couple boarding and some that are here for training. It's OK. They're all shut up for the evening; you won't have to see them.' He'd never done that much for any visitors before. After all, the dogs lived there; visitors were there on sufferance.

'Thank you. I'm not sure if Duo told you but I'm a little nervous around dogs, especially big ones.'

'You never had pets growing up?'

'Cats, yes. And horses. But my father's allergic to dogs.'

'Are you?' Trowa gave him a sharp look as he pulled up in front of the house; whatever tiny, infinitesimal chance they had of getting together, it wouldn't work if Quatre couldn't be around his pets.

'I don't think so. I've been around Laragh and I'm not sneezing or covered in a rash or anything like that.'

'Good. Now come on in.'

Trowa held the front door open, found he was holding his breath with it. People tended to love or loathe his house. He didn't normally care which, but he wanted Quatre to like it.

'Wow.' The blond literally danced into the middle of the huge room. 'This is amazing.'

'Thanks.' Trowa ducked his head; he was no good at getting compliments. Or giving them. He'd designed the house himself, pretty much, with Duo's help, and they'd more or less built it together, with just a bit of help from Howard and some guys he knew in the building trade. It was open plan, all of it, with a few screens you could shift about for privacy, and a couple of mezzanine levels for the bedrooms.

'I love it.' Quatre was flitting about, looking at his books and the couple of photographs, and the few pieces of furniture Trowa had made himself, and coming to a halt in front of the painting over the fireplace. 'This is one of Zechs', isn't it?'

Trowa nodded. The painting was the most valuable thing he owned, after the actual house and land.

It had seemed appropriate, somehow, to celebrate his official retirement (more or less) from the murkier corners of the art world by taking legitimate ownership of a painting. Duo's idea, naturally. And he'd loved it from the moment he saw it hanging in the Khushrenada Gallery.

'It's so beautiful.'

'Yeah,' Trowa crossed the room to stand beside him. It was beautiful. The soft colours of sunrise on a river, and a heron in flight.

'I love herons,' Quatre said quietly. 'They're my favourite birds, after flamingos. I go running by the river a few mornings a week; if I'm lucky I see grey herons.'

'I'd hate to live in a town.' Trowa stretched up one hand, touched the bird's neck and then the artist's signature, in its characteristic swirly, green letters. 'You know him, don't you?'

'Zechs? Yes, I've known him all my life. Do you?'

'A bit. I've met him at Treize's a few times.'

'Isn't it strange, how we know so many of the same people?' Quatre turned away from the painting. 'And we never met properly until last week.'

Trowa shrugged. Of course they had met. Duo was relentlessly sociable; always asking people over for meals, or arranging nights out. He'd never really paid much attention to the blond before. He was one of Trieze's people. And he'd always had someone on his arm, drooling over him.

'Can I get you a beer or something? The wine's going to take a while to chill.'

'That would be lovely, please.' Trowa grinned to himself; opening the fridge. Quatre sounded like a well-mannered schoolboy sometimes. His mother was probably very proud of her polite son.

He'd imagined Quatre would take a few polite sips; he didn't seem like a beer-drinker. The blond surprised him by tilting the bottle and tossing back half the contents. 'There's something I need to tell you.'

For some reason, he expected it to be about Duo. It was a surprise when Quatre told him about a Chinese guy that he'd met.

It was fucking great news in one way. Duo couldn't expect him to romance Quatre if Quatre had met the man of his dreams. Shit, his whole plan for the evening had been to convince Quatre of just how unsuitable they were, and he probably wouldn't need much convincing. It was, also, just a little bit galling.

He just shrugged, draining a few inches of his own beer. 'Nice for you. Why're you bothering to tell me?'

Quatre's tongue tip touched his upper lip – the way he did when he was thinking about something. It was pretty sexy. Kissable. 'I thought I should.'

'Why?' Trowa persisted. 'It's not like I think you're accountable to me. We went out once; that was all. And you obviously don't think it, or you wouldn't have hooked up with some new guy. Or maybe you would; it's not like I know you at all, is it?'

'Shit!' The beer bottle in Quatre's hand was abruptly slammed on to the table. It was like hearing the Pope swear. 'How dare you say something like that? You are so damn right that I'm not accountable to you, Barton! You said yourself, we had one date, and you made it very clear that you were only interested in me for sex.'

Trowa blinked. 'Excuse me? I did no such thing.'

'Yes, you did,' Quatre yelled at him. 'You practically threw me out of your truck when I said I didn't want to sleep with you.'

'What did you want me to do? Sit there and discuss soybean cultivation with you for an hour before you went to bed? Fuck it, Winner, you were all over me and we were both about to come anyway. I didn't think you were going to act like some nun if I suggested going into your place where we'd be a bit more comfortable.'

'I'm used to being propositioned with a little more finesse, actually,' Quatre snapped back. 'And stop laughing at me. It isn't funny!'

Trowa wiped his streaming eyes with one sleeve. 'Oh, come on. Where's your sense of humour? You mean you'd have slept with me if I'd made some flowery speech about it first? Quoted poetry to you?'

Quatre, to his eternal credit, grinned. 'It still isn't funny. And I never sleep with anyone on the first date.'

'And on the second?'

At some point, during the mutual yelling, they'd leaned across the table toward each other. Now, their faces were only a few inches apart.

Quatre licked his lips, a bit nervously. 'Is this a date?'

'It sort of was, up 'til you said you'd found someone else, yeah.'

'Oh. I really didn't think you were interested in me.' He looked very young suddenly; not his usual confident self. Trowa wasn't sure how old he was, actually; a few years older than Duo, maybe. Twenty four or five? A bit younger than Trowa's twenty six. 'In any case, I'm not sure that I want to be involved with someone who's in love with one of my closest friends.'

Trowa took a long swallow of beer, playing for time. 'What does that mean?'

'You and Duo. You love him, don't you?'

Another long mouthful. 'It's complicated. You wouldn't understand.'

'Try me,' Quatre suggested tightly. 'And please don't say he's like your brother or something. I disapprove of incest.'

Trowa found he was grinning, suddenly. Christ, he was something else; this one. 'OK. About me and Duo; you know we both grew up on L2. Right? He was seven when I first met him; or he thought he was anyway. Neither of us know our birthdays. He'd been in this orphanage for a year. Did you know about that?'

Quatre nodded, which was surprising. Trowa hadn't realised Duo confided in him that much; he normally never talked about that part of his past.

'Well, the place was firebombed one night. The priest in charge had been making waves for the local drug dealers, trying to get kids cleaned up, to get the pushers run out of his neighbourhood. I don't want if they planned for the whole place to go up; but a lot of the structure was wood. Anyway, Duo got out; he's a survivor. I met him a few weeks after. I'd been by myself for a while but on the streets, it makes sense to have someone to watch your back. We looked out for one another.'

'Were you ever lovers?' Quatre had his chin cupped in both hands, leaning over the kitchen table to look at him.

Trowa sighed. 'It wasn't just about sex. It was about other stuff. I knew you wouldn't get it.'

'I think I do, actually.' Trowa hadn't realised before that there was green in his eyes. Aquamarine. 'Treize has told me some stories about being in the army. About that sort of….bond, is it?...that you form between other people when you're in danger all the time?'

'Something like that.'

He tended to forget that aspect of Treize's past. It just didn't go with his present; owning the gallery, being photographed for the celebrity columns, cooking his finicky gourmet meals and fussing about the perfect wines to complement them, but he was something of a military hero.

It occurred to him, suddenly, that maybe Treize wanted his life to be that way; in order to distance himself from things he'd done in the past. Trowa could understand that, actually.

One of Quatre's fingers traced a pattern in his spilt beer on the table top. 'He never talks about Africa, much. One of the things he said, was that he survived, well, coped, I suppose, by taking care of the people in his immediate command. That if he could keep them safe, whatever the cost to himself, whatever it meant he had to do, that he could justify the things he did, and find a way to live with himself.'

'Yeah.' Trowa stood up abruptly. Shit. Even Duo probably couldn't put it like that. Trowa wasn't sure if he could have verbalised it himself the way Quatre had. The guy probably thought it was a disaster if he broke a fingernail, or ripped a thread on his sweater, and he'd just summed up Trowa's life. 'I should get started with dinner.'

'May I help?'

He'd never have thought it, but Quatre was pretty capable in the kitchen; good enough that Trowa left him alone with the sauce while he went to check on the animals for the night.

He got through that by concentrating on the routine, not letting himself think about the things Quatre had said. Not until he was back at the house, and couldn't avoid it any more. It wasn't like he could spend the whole night avoiding the blond, although he gave himself a few minutess' grace by slumping into the hammock on the back porch.

Shit.

Just as well he'd found someone else, really. Let this unknown Chinese guy get sucked in by all that dizzy innocence, until Quatre turned his universe upside down with a couple of precise sentences.

He didn't even notice the blond had come out until Quatre spoke.

'It's all right. I've left the gas on really low.'

'It's OK.' Not really thinking about it, he extended one hand, and Quatre let himself be pulled into the hammock beside him. He wriggled to get comfortable, ending up with his head tucked under Trowa's chin. All that silky blond hair was ticklish against his skin.

'Does he know?'

'Don't you ever give up?' Normally, this sort of persistence would have driven him mad. He was inclined to let Quatre away with it, for whatever reason, which was saying something for Trowa Barton who never talked about his feelings, or let other people probe at them. It was dangerous. 'It's none of your business, anyway.'

'It might be,' Quatre said carefully.

'You have someone else.'

'So have you, apparently,' Quatre said tartly. 'I'm not sure I do really. We've been out once; we haven't made any definite plans to see each other again.'

Trowa snorted. 'What, he hasn't called you either? You must be losing your touch.'

'Oh, he has called. Lots of times. But he's tied up at work for the next few days. I do know he wants to go out with me again.'

'Anyone would.' Trowa said it without thinking and Quatre gasped.

'I think that's the first nice thing you've ever said to me.'

'I'm not good with compliments.'

'Wufei is.'

'Better stick with him then.'

'Maybe I should. I can't decide if I even like you or not. You're a total jerk, most of the time.'

Trowa grinned; he'd presumably picked that expression up from Duo. 'Maybe I don't want you to like me. Maybe I don't want to like you either.'

Quatre sniffed; a graphic little sound in the silence of the night. 'Everyone likes me. Why ever would you say something like that?'

'Because it gets old pretty soon; liking someone and then losing them.'

The blond wrapped one arm around his waist. 'I imagine it was awful when he left,' he remarked conversationally. 'But he's one person. It doesn't mean you have to lose everyone you'll ever care for.'

Trowa removed the arm, very deliberately, and got up, taking care not to tip Quatre out. 'Historical precedence says otherwise, actually. It's probably time to check on dinner. Do you want to eat out here? It's getting cold, now the sun's gone down.'

Quatre followed him inside; they managed to fill the next twenty minutes with talking about favourite food, and recipes, and then sat down to eat.

'I'm glad you asked me here,' Quatre said suddenly, accepting a glass of wine. 'Aren't you going to have some?'

'That's up to you.' Trowa placed the bottle, and an extra glass, in the centre of the table. 'If I drink any more, I won't be able to drive you home. D'you want to stay?'

Quatre pushed some rice around his plate, considering. 'I'm not sure. Do you have a spare room?'

'No.'

Those blue eyes drifted over to Trowa's two big couches. 'I suppose I could stay. If you wanted me to.'

'Up to you.' Trowa took a slug of the water he'd poured for himself. This was stupid. Better off just to take him home and forget about him. 'If you don't mind me saying, this other guy sounds more like your type. Someone who'll probably write you a sonnet when he wants to fuck you.'

'That's what Treize said.' Quatre laughed suddenly. 'Oh, not about the sonnet, although I'd rather like that. That Wufei was more my type.'

Trowa's mouth twisted. 'If Treize says it, it must be true. I can't imagine what you're even doing here if you talked to him about it. He's not exactly my number one fan.'

'Why don't you like him?'

Trowa shrugged. 'I have issues with the way he treats Duo.'

'What?' Quatre's eyes widened. 'He adores Duo. I'd love someone who worshipped me the way Treize does.'

'Would you really? You wouldn't prefer a partner who treated you like an equal in the relationship? You've no idea how much Duo's changed in the last couple of years. Here, I'll show you something.' He thrust back his chair, scraping it noisily on the floor, and rummaged for the photograph.

'This is Duo, the year before he met Treize.'

A younger Duo blazed out of the photo. He'd just won a dirt-track race; they were officially illegal in Sanque. Too many injuries. Duo's helmet had fallen off at some point, his hair was mostly hanging loose, and he had a big scrape down one cheek. And that manic grin that Trowa hadn't seen in way too long; Duo Maxwell on a serious adrenalin high.

Quatre took his time studying it before handing it back. 'He doesn't look very happy, does he?'

'What the fuck does that mean? He was perfectly happy before he met Treize and got shut away in that gilded cage like Treize's little pet.'

'I think he looks as if he's determined to look happy.'

Trowa snatched the picture back. 'You don't know anything about it.'

'I know he loves Treize very much.'

'Yeah.' It always came back to that, in the end.

Quatre squeezed his hand, very gently, and then poured him a glass of wine.

'I'd like to stay, please, if you'll let me. You can't possibly expect me to drink all of this by myself.'

 

~ * ~

Chapter 14

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