cozzybob (cozzybob) wrote in cozzybabbles, @ 2008-10-05 12:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2x3, duo, heero, quatre, trowa |
[GW] A Way Of Telling
A Way Of Telling
Rated: R
Pair: 3+4 (very bitter), 1+3, hint of 1+2, and 3x2 at the end.
Warning: suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, dark humor, language
Note: I noticed that Mot and E wanted something happy after those cannibalism fics (note: this fic has nothing to do with cannibalism), and since I'm still trying to get beyond my block, I wrote this. It's... erm... happy! Very happy. Uh, yesh. Very, very happy. xD
Dedication: Therefore, because of the way I was inspired to write this, this fic is for anyone who did or plans to do the challenge at gw_dark, or just anyone who's a member of the comm. *kishies*
Summary: Trowa fails to commit suicide.
Suicide is man's way of telling God, "You can't fire me - I quit."
--Politically Incorrect
Death is life's way of telling you you're fired.
--Author Unknown
There simply wasn't enough moonshine in the universe. No matter how wasted he was, the heavy bandages that wound around his wrists signaled for all to see just how big of a shmuck he was. The doctor said something about counseling, but the others managed to talk him out of carting Trowa to the nearest asylum. They'd just leave him in a room with child-safety locks and plastic cutlery, anyway. Some were under the impression that you couldn't do much self-harm with a spork and those stupid serrated plastic knives, but clearly they'd never met a child raised by mercenaries before. Those plastic knives were sharp, and he'd seen an eye dug from it's socket with a spork, once. Captain used to say the best tools of interrogation could be found in a junk drawer.
The trick was to get creative. Unfortunately, while the glass jar of highly potent moonshine would make a very nice weapon when shattered, Trowa didn't want to waste the moonshine, and it was Howard's jar, whom Trowa rather liked, and it wouldn't be very kind to go breaking the man's property like that. Besides, the others made Trowa promise, and while Trowa rarely ever kept his promises, he did have a very tiny bit of integrity. Quatre had stood over his hospital bed looking superior with his arms crossed and lips curled into that familiar, Winner pout, Heero stoic, Wufei disgusted, Duo pissed at the world, and they each made him promise he wasn't going to off himself in their absence.
After all, as Duo said, it just wasn't fair that Trowa got to die first--if Trowa could go out all stupidly tragic and suicidal, with razors to his wrists and a song in his heart, than by God, Duo deserved the same thing. What made Trowa Barton so damned special? Duo wanted to know why Trowa didn't call--"If you're going to bleed out on the floor, you wanna make sure you do it the fuck right, you see? If I was there, we could've had a contest. See who died the fastest. Winner gets shotgun straight to hell, no waiting."
Quatre scolded Duo rather loudly in his calm, slightly arrogant, Winneresque way, and said something about maturity, clearly forgetting to whom was speaking. Heero just sat down in the chair on the other side of the room and stared at a very fascinating scuff mark on the tiled floor. Wufei grabbed Duo before he did something stupid, and shoved him out of the door with orders to get them all something to eat.
When Duo whined that he didn't have any money (and it clearly was a very petulant, four-year-old whine), Quatre slipped a twenty from his wallet, balled it in his fist, and pelted it at the bastard.
Duo gone, they each gave their tirades in turn. Quatre was second, claiming that what Trowa did was very "irresponsible," and whatever happened to picking up a phone and asking for help? That's what friends were for. "We're still friends, aren't we Trowa?" Nothing was said about the five years that had floated on by after Mariemaia, hardly a word spoken between them. Quatre was a busy man with an empire to run, and Trowa lived in a tiny three-room apartment (bedroom, living room, kitchen), without even the circus as an excuse to be utterly depressing. That Quatre wanted to be friends was a joke. They were never friends, not even during post-war, semi-sappy, exhausted conversations. You don't blow up your friends. You don't abandon them, you don't forget them. It's sort of a rule.
(There will be no mentions of crushing, lost loves, and The One That Got Away.)
But Quatre was slightly teary-eyed at the edges, ever the guilty old sap he'd always been, and it was only then Trowa realized just how frightened the blond really was for his sake. He'd never seen Quatre so shuttered, determined to hold his emotions in check. One would say that in spite of the glassy eyes and that faint undercurrent of sorrow, Quatre had become a cold bastard. He wasn't going to leave that hospital room without some form of apology.
So Trowa apologized for ever existing. "Yes, Quatre. We're still friends. We'll always be friends."
("You're not friends," a voice sneered from the dark. "You'll never be friends. You'll be in love till it kills you both. You'll fight, you'll shag, you'll hate each other till it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends.")
And then Trowa thought, Wait a sec. I've heard that before somewhere... oh hell, was I'm quoting Buffy The Vampire Slayer in my head! Kill me now!!
Unfortunately, it was Wufei's turn. Quatre gave a dull nod and vanished to take a call on his cell phone, and Wufei approached the bed, next off the assembly line. Trowa imagined the four of them ordered neatly on a conveyor belt, and it was Trowa's job to stand by patiently while each of them... conveyed... the many reasons he was a shmuck.
Trowa was finding he'd rather liked that word. Shmuck. It held such beauty, you know?
Wufei said very little. There was the "How are yous" and the "I trust you'll be out soons," but Trowa sensed very clearly that Wufei was thoroughly disgusted by the events and those painfully obvious bandages gleaming like war badges around his wrists, roaring silently "I (barely) survived." Wufei gave his tiny nod of acknowledgment and slipped Trowa a small card with his number on it. Despite the disgust, Wufei said quite clearly, "I hope you get well." Underneath the words, were, If you ever need sanctuary, call this number.
Unlike Quatre, Trowa decided that he might just pick Wufei up on the offer. Wufei rarely tried to force his way into Trowa's heart the way Quatre had, and besides... Wufei was comfortable. They could be silent and thoughtful and devour Cathy's soup without saying a word, and that was the mark of true companionship. No matter how Wufei felt on the matter, he knew there was a reason for Trowa's actions.
Sanctuary. That was a pretty word, too.
Heero stepped up, and Trowa immediately felt guilty all over again. Heero was more upset than Trowa'd ever seen him, ready to burst even if his eyes were completely dry. His huge hands fidgeted with callouses, and Heero stared, wide eyes and a faint wibble to his lips. Trowa wanted to kiss him. He wanted to worry away that slight shake with his tongue, until Heero melted against him and they could the share the silence in a way Trowa hadn't been able with any other. He wanted to fuck Heero into reassurance, he wanted things he could never have, but it was clear, for a moment, Heero wanted the same exact thing and that was okay.
Until they both remembered that Heero had a wife at home, with two point five children, it wasn't a good idea at all. Disappointed, Trowa looked away, and Heero opened his mouth, slack-jawed and voiceless.
Finally, there was a quiet, "I'm glad you're alive."
Not, I'm glad you're okay, I'm glad you're feeling better, just alive, just Heero and his selfishness--even if you aren't happy, at least you're still alive.
Trowa said, "Yeah."
Heero nodded dumbly.
Wufei glanced between the two of them and quietly left the room (probably in search of Duo).
Silence suddenly wasn't a virtue anymore. Trowa found himself biting his lip before he had to stop, his fingers twisting into the cheap cotton blankets of the bed. He was remembering the methods--trick was to make the cut vertical to get a really good flow going, and then slump yourself over a filled, warm bath, and just lie there with the wounds stuck open until the water was pretty much diluted blood. That's how they found him, and they pumped three bags into his system before he was stable again. Trowa was very cold and so they gave him two blankets for company, but even that didn't stop the stray shivering, and suddenly Trowa couldn't help but ask, "Heero, could you turn up the heat?"
Heero was looking warm with a tiny bead of sweat lingering on his brow, screaming like a bow-legged slut to be licked away, but he did as Trowa asked and the little dial went up as far as it could go.
Heero asked, "Is that good?"
"That's fine," Trowa said. Trowa's fists were balled with the effort to keep his hands to himself.
Awkward. Heero scuffed his sneaker against the floor, making a mark, and then he stared at it. Trowa cleared his throat, tried to say something important, and then he just said, "So."
Heero: "So."
Yeah. Heero started shrugging adorably, and he licked his chapped lips. "I should probably get going," he said. "Visiting hours are almost over."
"Visiting hours are almost over."
"Yeah."
Heaving sigh. "Yeah..."
Heero shrugged again, an anxious thing, and he whispered, "Well, I should be..."
"Yeah," Trowa said again, his fingers flicking with a small shoo.
Heero smiled. Trowa's heart stopped.
But the smile wobbled down to a tiny little thing, and Heero grasped for the doorknob desperately. With one last glance at What Could Never Be, he whipped the door open and strode out before something foolish happened.
That was a long night. The morning after, they let Trowa go, on the condition someone was around to look after him. Surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly), Duo was still there and up for the job. He dragged Trowa off to Howard's place, who had a tiny little shack-like cottage on the edge of town, his illegal moonshine production vastly successful. Trowa slept on the hippy couch, occasionally smoking a stogy in between various jars of the good stuff.
So now here he was, moping on about his failed attempt to kill himself, and the very low degrees one would go to make another feel guilty about that attempt in the first place. But all guilt ever did was make a guy want to die, which is why Trowa did it in the first place. Some memory about a kid missing an eye and the mercenaries laughing up a storm, laughing right with little no-name and his merry band of freaks. Other memories--tree, hammer, rape, embarrassment, a wired cross. Whispers of I Should've Done Something Different and I Should've Been A Little Braver. I Should've Been Stronger, Smarter, Faster.
Duo, much to Trowa's chagrin, slept on the hippy couch opposite. Apparently, he didn't have an apartment within the city, and he didn't have enough cash for a hotel, so crashing at Howard's place was the best option (as Duo never asked about Trowa's place, perhaps he just felt more comfortable in Howard's love shack). With high-noon buzzing through the shaded windows, Howard was out somewhere in the green pastures selling his disgustingly powerful liquor. He'd left that late morning with a hangover, a dull wave, and promises to be good.
Trowa was still drinking away his sorrows. He refused to sleep, because that brought nightmares and panic attacks, but maybe if he drank hard and fast enough, he'd forget the look on Heero's face, Wufei's unspoken disappointment, and the way Quatre seemed to whisper from every pore, "You should've come to me."
Duo was far less maintenance. After his initial display of immature jealousy, Duo seemed to shrug off the entire incident and accept it for the way things just naturally were. Which probably said quite a bit about Duo's state of mind, and maybe something else about the way he actually viewed the world... but then, Trowa wasn't one to argue. He was stuck with the God of Death on suicide watch, and if that wasn't the most asinine thing he'd ever heard in his life, his name wasn't Charlie. Which it wasn't. But you get the idea.
Anyway, Duo was dead to the world, sprawled ridiculously across the couch with his long legs flopped over the edge, his braid wrapped around his neck like a noose, face buried in the suspiciously green-and-brown-stained cushions--it was only noon, after all, and no reason to actually get up and do something productive. Trowa had spent a good part of the morning watching Duo sleep, secretly admiring the way he'd stretch like a great, white cat, his mangy t-shirt riding up those wash-board abs, the small concave tea-cup of his stomach rumbling every other hour in a sort of starved contentment. When facing the back of the couch, Trowa could watch the s-bend of Duo's spine, tongue slathering at that perfect little coccyx just above the bend of his ass. Every now and then, Duo would moan something so blatantly sexual, Trowa squirmed in his seat.
At one point, he stumbled into the bathroom to take a piss, and while Trowa was there, he stared down at the ache in his groin and heaved a sad little sigh because this was the mark of true loneliness. A suicidal man should not be forced to stare at Duo's cute little rump for hours on end, listening to those faint moans and sighs, and do nothing. If he were a better man, he'd give Duo a good seeing to for being such a freaking slut in his sleep. But Trowa wasn't, and so he stumbled back to his couch, still aching, drinking and staring and sighing away the very lest vestige of his pride.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, behind razors and Quatre's eyes and a thousand tiny corpses, Trowa was still thinking about Heero. It didn't seem proper to have a hard on for Duo, while he was still yearning for the quiet understanding Heero had once shared with him--it didn't matter if the bastard was married now, Trowa had always wanted the things he couldn't have. And he had a right to that, because he was shmuck. Fuck, but he was lonely. Was that wrong? To want a little bit of understanding?
As he thought this, Duo rolled over and opened his eyes. He blinked, yawned, scratched his delicious little ass, and yanked the braid from around his neck, tossing it carelessly behind his back. He blinked at Trowa again several times, several hundred nanoseconds of confusion, before his mind seemed to clear in a purple haze, and he said, horsely, "Tro. 'Sup?" Trowa shrugged, and Duo tossed a hand, shrugging away any awkwardness. "What time is it?"
Trowa scanned his eyes to the wall clock above Duo's head and the window behind him. It was very blurry, and seemed to wobble a bit. "Two... um... t-two... ish," he said.
"Really?" Duo doubled back, and glanced up at the clock himself. "Huh. Must've been tired."
"Uh-huh."
"Uh, speaking of," Duo glanced back at Trowa, and waved obscenely at his bandaged wrists. "You look like shit, Tro."
"'Course. Yah. Shhit. Ever w'nd'r? 'Bout s'it?"
"What?"
"Yeah, s'it. Just sayin', I don' r'lly und'rst'nd... um, why's it brown? Huh? Sshould b' purpl. Be prettier, the' they wouldn't hhhate it... haaaate it so... sso much. Yeah?" Duo stared, and Trowa found himself giggling. It wasn't often Maxwell was tossed into a dumb shock. "S'like if I wer purpl, w'th sparkles, an' pink ribb'ns, th-they wouldn't haa--"
"No one hates you Trowa. And, wow, wasted. Isn't that bad with massive blood loss? Not that you'd care, but--"
"'M Shtupid. Razors. Sheeya." Trowa spat at the floor hatefully, and Duo winced--the saliva was gooey and dry, with the faint reddish tinge of bleeding gums. Trowa watched Duo wobble out of his vision for Howard's tiny kitchenette. "Shoulda used a gun," he muttered. "Swallowed th' barr'l."
A glass of water was thrust into Trowa face. "Here. Drink that."
Trowa pointed his left hand in the imitation of a gun. "Bang!" In his mind, Duo's brains coated the walls, and he was happy.
"Trowa--"
"Oh, yeah." Instead, Trowa grabbed the glass. Duo was fine. He toasted to the other man's health. "Down th' hatches!" He drank most of it one quick swig, before he realized it was water. He frowned at the bottom of the glass, and gave it back to Duo. "S'dil... dil... delooted," he said. "Y'r whiskey sucks."
"I know." It was Duo's turn to give a sad little sigh as he huffed back into his seat across from Trowa. They kept eye contact for a long minute, and then Duo glanced away, peering through the blinds of the window. Trowa watched, mesmerized by the sharp black slashes barred across Duo's face from the afternoon sun. It looked like a prison sentence, the both of them forever banned from sunny paradise. Gothic, vampiric, supernatural. That was Duo's face. That was Duo. Glamorous tragedy.
"Y'r so pretty," Trowa said. He wondered what Duo would like bathed in blood--you only knew how pretty a man really was, when he was screaming in agony.
Duo glanced back and raised a brow. In Trowa's drunkenness, it seemed rather come hither. "Am I, now?" In reality, Duo was simply confused. Even if he was pretty, he didn't hear the words often.
"Yeah. Bet nobod hates yoo. Ev'rybody likes pretty peepl."
Duo gave a sharp snort and rolled his eyes. "Tro, don't be a shmuck. You're fucking gorgeous, didn't you know that?"
"Shmuck."
"S'what I said. Don't change the subject. You're very nice on the eyes, Trowa."
"Not."
"Are too."
"Not."
"I'll prove it."
"Yeah?"
And suddenly, in the cyberspace of a millisecond, Duo was there, in Trowa's space, on Trowa's couch, his calloused, dirty hands on Trowa's jeans. "Yeah," Duo said, their eyes connecting with a hot, white spark.
Trowa suddenly noticed the light stubble on Duo's chin, like a fine course carpet dotting along his jaw. Trowa wondered if he had one, because he hadn't shaved since the day before yesterday. He stroked the stubble, and moaned a little.
"S'not fair," Trowa whispered.
Closer now, Duo was hushed. "What's not fair?"
"Wan' you to be Heero."
Duo stiffened. His nostrils flared, and his eyes widened, and he seemed very, very annoyed for the slightest moment. And then melted.
"Yeah. I know," Duo said.
"Yeah?"
"Want the same thing."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"But I'm not..." Duo slid into Trowa's lap, arms hung over his shoulders as they lowered down, closer, hovering their lips over each other. "I'm not Heero. You know that, right?"
"'Course."
"We're filthy. We're bad. We're scum."
"Yeah."
"Don't deserve 'im."
"Yeah."
"You know..." Whispering. So close. "Quatre would say I'm taking advantage of you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. You mind?"
"No' r'lly..."
"Huh. Good. 'Cuz I didn't really give a flying fuck..."
And then they were kissing. Contrary to expectation, it was soft, sweet, with a bitter aftertaste. When Duo pulled away, he crudely wiped his mouth the back of his hand, and shook his head to clear it.
Before he could say anything, Trowa was pulling him back down again, waves of lust and emotion crashing around them. They only rose up to the surface to breathe, like whales in the arctic.
Each died a little death. When they revived, clung together in the rolling scents of sex, weed, and spilled moonshine, the idea of waking up again wasn't so terrifying. For a moment, Duo understood. He said nothing, and Trowa didn't have to answer back.
--Fini.
Note: The "you'll never be friends speech" Trowa is referring to is credit to Buffy The Vampire Slayer as spoken by Spike, during the episode Lover's Walk. It just sort of snuck itself in there. ;P