"Wish Upon a Star "

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, AU

Pairings: 3x4

Summary: When you wish upon a star, it makes no difference who you are, unless you're the heir to the Winner business empire. So when you do find a means of escape, how long can you hold on to the fantasy, and the man of your dreams, before reality takes over?

"Wish Upon a Star "

Reality Check:

'Do you think we could we get a dog?' Quatre asked; the tail end of a midnight conversation when neither of them had been able to sleep. Trowa was the most perfect man in the entire universe in every possible way, of course, but as a mattress he was somewhat lacking. 'I'll look after it and everything.'

'Ten dogs, if you want them.' Trowa, who didn't seem to mind sleeping on the impossibly hard ground, was starting to sound drowsy. 'We can go to the shelter next week. I'm sure Duo or Cathy will look after it while we're off on our luxury holidays to the Bahamas and wherever.'

'Oh, it's holidays now, is it?' Quatre teased.

'Yeah.' Trowa reached up to ruffle his hair. 'Here's the way I see it; if I've got myself stuck with this ridiculously rich boyfriend, then I might as well get a few advantages out of him.'

'I think you've already got quite a few advantages,' the blond retorted coyly, swiping his tongue across Trowa's nipple.

Trowa just groaned. 'No chance, Cat. You've worn me out. I'm wrecked'

'Me too. I was just teasing, really.'

'Want to try sleeping for a bit? We've got to walk all the way down that mountain tomorrow morning.'

'Don't remind me. Can't you carry me or something?'

'Not the way I'm feeling right now. Maybe we can just stay up here for ever.'

'And live on nuts and berries and things,' Quatre said happily, tucking his head comfortably under Trowa's chin. 'Mmm. That sounds good.'

Listening to Trowa's breathing, he closed his eyes. Perhaps he could manage to sleep after all? Even if Trowa wasn't very comfortable, he was still warm and real and his two arms were wrapped around Quatre. On second thoughts, he wasn't sure if he wanted to sleep all that much; not when he was enjoying this so much. A world away from his real life.

There was a faint breeze out, stirring the canvas, and a high, wild cry that might be an owl or a fox. It would be amazing; actually to see a wild creature like that. Then there was another low, droning sound that didn't come from a wild animal. He thought he'd imagined it at first, then it became louder. Closer.

'Trowa, what's that?'

'What's what?' Eyes closed, Trowa didn't bother to stir.

'I don't know. Some sort of noise.'

'Probably a fox.'

'Not an animal. Like a car or something. It's a helicopter!'

'Shit!'

Quatre abruptly found himself sprawling on the ground as Trowa jumped up, grabbing his jeans.

'Stay there, OK?'

'But Trowa…'

'I said, stay there!' Trowa snapped, jerking the tent flap open. 'I'm serious, Cat. You get dressed and be ready to run if I say so.'

'OK.' Quatre did as he was told, pulling on his clothes with shaking fingers, and wondering how they'd suddenly been plunged into some sort of action film. Of course, the people in the helicopter had to be after him; choppers didn't just descend on deserted mountain tops in the middle of the night for no reason. It had to be bad.

'Cat?' Trowa called. 'You need to get out here. Now.'

There were two men standing with him when Quatre crawled out. Heero and Duo. None of this made any sense at all.

'What's wrong? How did you find us? Is it my father?'

Heero shook his head. 'No. But it's bad.' He thrust his laptop into Quatre's hands. 'Read this. I've talked to Rashid; he and Iria are doing their best to kill the story. They'll buy the paper if they have to, but you really need to see it. We'll be at the chopper.'

'There's no satellite up here,' Quatre said stupidly, holding the little computer as if it might bite him at any second.

Heero snorted. 'Not for standard equipment maybe. Quatre, just go and read it.'

Trowa followed him back into the tent. Quatre bundled himself up in the sleeping bag, and Trowa flopped down beside him, slipping an arm around Quatre's waist.

'Calm down, Cat. It can't be that bad.'

'Bad enough for Heero to fly all the way out here to find me in the middle of the night.' He was starting to shake, because it had to be very bad indeed.

'Then we'll sort it out together, OK?' Trowa bent over and kissed him, very tenderly, on the mouth. 'The two of us. Whatever it is.'

'OK.' Laptop forgotten, Quatre kissed him back, desperately, needing contact and reassurance.

Trowa was chuckling slightly when they finally pulled apart. 'This isn't the best time to start anything, Winner. Just hold that thought, and we'll get this out of the way first. Deal?'

'Deal,' Quatre agreed, gripping his lover's hand tightly as he flipped the computer open. He had Trowa with him; he could face whatever this was.

His breath caught as he scanned the first few lines of print; obviously a mock-up story for a newspaper. 'Please. Tell me this isn't true.'

It had to be, though; he could see it in Trowa's face.

'You were in prison!'

'No, I wasn't!'

'Well, it's pretty much the same thing! And it was for assault. My God, I can't believe you did something like that. You half killed a sixteen-year-old boy! That's appalling!'

Trowa jerked away from him. 'You don't want to hear my side of it?' His voice was very cold.

'He was just a child! Trowa, how could you?' Despite himself, his eyes drifted back to the paragraph. It was very graphic, coolly clinical as a medical report, and all the more shocking for that. 'I can't believe you did those things to someone.'

'Right. You weren't quite so opposed to me half-killing those guys who were trying to hurt you. Maybe I should have sat down and quoted poetry to them? Or let them get away with it? Would you have preferred that? For the record, I was sixteen as well. The guy had been hassling Cathy for weeks, but she insisted she could handle it. One day I picked up her phone by mistake and read a text that bastard had sent her. It was very….explicit, the things he was planning to do to her. What should I have done, Quatre? Tell me, should I just have let things go on like that until he actually got her alone? '

'NO! Trowa, of course not. I'm sorry. I just….it doesn't say anything like that here. It says 'unprovoked attack'.

'Yeah,' Trowa said bitterly. 'And everything these rags print is so true that of course you believe it. He was a top student, and both his parents were on the board of governors and they had the best lawyers in Sanque. I was the new kid who was failing everything and was in a gang and had been in trouble a couple of times before. Who d'you think was the one they believed?'

'I'm sorry.' Quatre flinched at the look in those green eyes. 'Trowa, I am truly sorry. This is …I don't know. Why didn't you tell me?'

'Work it out, Cat. You nearly blew your top a few hours ago when I told you I'd smoked weed a couple of times.'

'Yes, but this is…..Trowa, please. I am so sorry. I shouldn't have doubted you, not for one second. This is all just so…unbelievable, and I totally overreacted.'

'Hey.' Trowa dropped back down beside him. 'I get it. I should've told you. I would have, at some point.'

'It's all right.' Quatre shifted slightly so they were touching; relieved when Trowa hugged him. 'I'm horribly puritanical about some things. It's the way I was brought up. But I've no right be judgemental with anyone.'

'Never mind that. Your family's not going to like this much, are they?'

'No.' Quatre said it in a very small voice. He would back Iria against some newspaper editor any day, which meant it was highly unlikely the story would ever actually be printed. She would still read it though, and probably think it her duty to tell their father what sort of man Quatre was involved with.

'But…I'll tell them what you told me, that you were defending your sister. Father will understand that. He'll probably approve; family honour is a huge thing on L4.'

'Thanks.'

'Trowa, how could they have known that about you? It's not on any of your records.'

'And how exactly do you happen to know that?'

'Rashid checked. It wasn't anything personal; he does it to everyone I meet and…oh! Did Rob know? I bet he told his horrible girlfriend!'

'Your bodyguard checked me out?' Trowa demanded incredulously. 'And you actually think that's not something you didn't have to mention? What the fuck, Cat? That's a serious invasion of privacy.'

Quatre gaped at him; he'd never even thought of it in that light. 'It's just ….something that they do for everyone I spend time with. They always have. It's only for my protection.'

'I'm not the one you need protecting from. Your life is seriously screwed up if you think that sort of thing is OK.'

'I don't, really.' God, this night was getting worse and worse. Why did all this …awfulness have to happen now, when he and Trowa had been so very happy? It wasn't fair. Idly, just for something to do, he flicked a couple of keys on the computer and the night abruptly got far, far worse.

'Oh, God. No.'

'What is it? What?' Trowa reached for the computer and Quatre jerked it away.

'Nothing. Please, don't look. It's …there's something we need to talk about.'

'Quatre. Show me.'

Quatre. Trowa had never called him that before, except once or twice as a joke. He wasn't joking. He was as deadly serious as Quatre had ever heard him.

'Can you please let me tell you something first?'

Trowa just took the laptop from him, wordlessly.

This was it, then. Quatre closed his eyes, seeing the printed words dance past, merrily destroying his entire life. Someone who knew him very, very well, had sold their story to the press, and it was all on Heero Yuy's computer screen, in black and white.

'You slept with prostitutes?'

Oh, God. Who had done this? The Maguanacs had known, and Iria and his driver, but none of them would do this. Surely. It had to have been someone who worked in one of the clubs, or maybe someone he'd been with.

'Trowa, it wasn't like that, really. It wasn't like paying a prostitute; you just paid a fee to be admitted to these places; like admission.'

'Like going to the cinema?' Trowa asked bitterly. 'It didn't occur to you to tell me any of this?'

'I – I thought you'd have worked it out.' That wasn't entirely a lie. 'I told you I went to saunas and massage parlours. On L4, they're just euphemisms for, well, other things.'

'Oh, I see. It's entirely my fault for not being up to date with slang on your screwed-up colony. Sorry about that. I guess I needed an interpreter to clarify things.' He hadn't moved, physically. He was still sitting beside Quatre, but it felt like there was an ocean of ice between them.

'I don't get you. You think it's OK to dig up personal details of people's private lives for your own benefit; it's OK to pay people for sex in these brothels or bathhouses or whatever you call them. Your life is totally messed up! Fuck, I'm even scared to ask if you used protection on these little jaunts.' Trowa looked him straight in the eye. 'Should I start worrying?'

Quatre swallowed, feeling like he was breathing ground glass. He and Trowa hadn't used anything, the last few times.

'I swear, I have always been careful.'

'Yeah? Sorry, but I'm not really inclined to believe anything that comes out of your mouth right now. Tell me one thing, am I supposed to be insulted or flattered that you never offered to pay me?'

'That's a horrible thing to say!'

'Well, that's how I'm feeling right now.'

Quatre dashed one hand across his eyes. He had to try to stay calm, to fix this. 'Trowa. Will you please, please, just listen to me? I listened to your side of things, about what happened.'

Trowa didn't grant him so much as a nod, but he didn't leave either.

'What they've written here,' Quatre glanced distastefully at the screen and immediately looked away again. 'Some of it's true but it's all been …distorted. Yes, I went to some places like this, and I hated it, mostly, but there was nowhere else, and sometimes I just desperately wanted to be with someone and on L4 there isn't really any other way to do that. Yes, I paid an entrance fee because that's what you have to do. It was always totally consensual, and I was always careful. I swear.'

He took a deep breath, trying to stop his voice shaking. 'Yes, I believe there are places on L4 where you can do the sorts of things it says here.' Quatre wanted, suddenly, to be sick. 'I have never, never been anywhere like that. You probably won't believe me but that's the truth. I don't think anyone's going to believe me. On L4, some people think that if you're gay, then you have to be a child molester, and you have to be into awful, awful things, so that's probably what my family will believe if they read this.'

He couldn't, for the life of him, have stopped the tears at that point. 'Trowa, I'm sorry I wasn't honest with you about everything in my life, but that's who I am. I'm sure you utterly hate me right now, and if it's any consolation whatsoever, this is going to ruin me, totally. I very much doubt that my father will ever forgive me, or my sisters. I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sure you'll never believe anything I say, ever again, but I never meant to.'

'Cat.' He was pulling the tent flap open when Trowa's hand gripped his arm tightly. 'You don't just get to run out on me like that.'

Quatre blinked. 'I thought you wanted me to leave.'

'Yeah. Well.' Trowa let him go and then suddenly put both arms around him. 'You're not the only one who gets to over-react. I'm sorry.'

'I don't blame you for one second. Truly.'

Trowa gave him a faint smile. 'I guess neither of us is at his best when these sorts of revelations drop out of the sky, right?'

'Right,' Quatre agreed shakily, folding himself into the curve of Trowa's warm body. 'I love you. I've never loved anyone before, really. I don't want to lose you.'

'I'm not that easy to lose, Cat.' His voice was slightly muffled, lips pressed against Quatre's forehead. 'I guess I'm going to have to start getting used to those interruptions whenever we try to get away together. I'll get better at handling them. Give me a few more weeks and I won't even bat an eyelid when some newspaper digs up dirt on us. Just tell me one thing. You don't have a wife and kids stashed away somewhere or anything like that?'

'Nothing like that, no.' Heavens, it was the oddest sensation, wanting to laugh and cry all at once.

'Good. I really don't want to have to share you with anyone else. Like I said, I want you to be the one special person in my world.'

'I want that too,' Quatre said hurriedly. 'It's the only thing I really want. To be able to be with you.'

'Two minds with but a single thought,' Trowa murmured, tilting Quatre's chin up to kiss him.

'That wasn't the thought I was having! We can't, Trowa. Not with Heero and Duo out there.'

'I suppose.' Trowa sounded reluctant. 'Maybe we should go out and reassure them that we haven't killed each other off or anything?' He loosed the tent flap to poke his head out, and immediately butted heads with Heero, who was leaning down.

'Sorry. Quatre,' Heero said hesitantly. 'I'm really sorry, but you need to hear this. Now.' It's Iria. Apparently, we're not the only ones who got tipped off about the story. Some journalist called Iria to ask for a comment.' He slipped a small radio on to the ground between them.

'My brother most certainly is not gay,' Iria Winner was declaiming in a ringing tone. 'This is all a scurrilous campaign by people who are opposed to L4 signing a treaty with Sanque. Quatre isn't a homosexual; one of the reasons he accompanied me to Sanque in the first place was to propose marriage to his girlfriend.'

Oh, shit.

Quatre didn't think he'd ever used that word in his life, even mentally.

'Is that true?'

'No. No. Not really.'

'Define not really.'

The reporter's voice on the radio cut into the silence. 'Isn't it true, Ms. Winner, that an ex-boyfriend of your brother is currently threatening to out him as homosexual?'

'It is not! The person in question is a sadly disturbed individual who has indeed made certain false allegations in the past. Quatre is not a homosexual, and I look forward to him announcing his engagement very shortly to a beautiful young lady, who happens to be a citizen of this wonderful country.'

'How much of this is true?' Trowa demanded again, hauling Quatre up.

'Some of it.' He didn't dare to meet those furious green eyes. 'Some of it is true. It's always been expected of me to marry. Iria thought it would be a way to stem any allegations about me being gay, and it would look good for the treaty if I married a girl from Sanque. I did go along with it at first, then I met you and since then I've told Iria, and my father, that obviously I won't be marrying anyone.'

'Obviously,' Trowa echoed in a tone as bland as clear water. 'I see. It doesn't seem like your your sister heard though, does it? According to what she's just said. There isn't really anything else to say, is there? I expect you'll be wanting to head straight back to the city now and see your sister. I'm sure your PR people will have a plan to cover all of this up for you. That's how it works, isn't it? You throw enough money at people and you can get away with anything you want. You'll be able to forget all of this in a few weeks.'

'Trowa! Wait, please. I – I don't understand. I don't just want to forget all of this! I want to be with you!'

In the moonlight, Trowa could have been a statue. 'Too bad. I'm not for sale.' He raised his voice slightly. 'Heero. Quatre's ready to leave now. Duo, d'you want to go back to the city in the chopper or stay here tonight?'

'I'm not leaving!' Quatre protested, trying to find logical thought out of this swirling nightmare. 'We can't just end this. Not now. Please.'

'It's over. You have done nothing but lie to me since the first time we met. I've had enough, Quatre.' He reached out and touched Quatre's cheek. 'Reality check. It was never going to work. It was a nice little fantasy while it lasted, but it was never going to be more than that. I should have known that from the start.'

 

~ * ~

Chapter 31

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