[Gundam Wing] Tea
Title: Tea Author: Trio Maxwell-Chang Fandom: Gundam Wing Pairing or POV: Treize/Quatre Written for: --- Special Note: An odd little piece. The pairing was suggested to me, and this is the result.
They had occasion to share tea together once. When everything was said and done, when it was all over, when the only thing left were memories, that was a time Quatre remembered most. Oh, he'd shared tea with the others, but no one else understood the intricacies of the act, the graceful dance performed when two people shared tea. In that, he and Treize understood each other perfectly.
Really, it had been the last thing he expected when he was thrown in that barren cell of a room, black and blue but not bloody. He'd thrown himself at the door as it shut, slender form slamming into it with a dull, bone-shaking thud. And he'd been left alone, the room silent save for his own voice. They brought him dinner each night, but said nothing to him, and Quatre, whose sanity lay in some degree of emotional touch, be it friend or stranger, found himself nearly sobbing in desperation by the end of the second week.
It had come then, the boon that kept him sane through another week and up to his rescue. Duo had been very vocal about how impressed he was that Quatre had survived three weeks of solitary, and the blond never revealed that it was Treize Khushrenada himself who'd preserved the pilot of Sandrock. Because at the end of that second week, they shared tea.
His bruises had mostly healed by that point - a few were the brown-green of almost gone marks, and the rest had turned invisible, phantom aches that plagued Quatre more in his memory than in reality. He sat tucked in a corner, watching as the guards brought in two chairs, a table, and a tea service on a tray. He couldn't understand it, but wasn't fighting - it had to be just another of his imaginings. It certainly seemed as realistic as any he'd come up with so far. He rose when the tall, ginger-haired man stepped inside, their eyes meeting for a single moment before Treize smiled. His arm swept out, elegantly gesturing at the seat opposite him, and Quatre found himself obeying - anything to keep the general around until he regained his balance.
They talked, though later, Quatre couldn't remember what he'd said. Pleasantries, he suspected. Niceties about the weather and the year. If he'd made the general angry, he couldn't tell. And Treize seemed somewhat forgiving of his not wholly coherent state. The rituals came easily - Quatre had been trained in how to take tea since he was a child, flawless manners instilled in him until he could mutter the right things in his sleep. And it was a proper tea right up until the end, when Treize reached out and grasped his hand, stroking it gently as he murmured something that Quatre either couldn't hear or couldn't understand.
For minutes on end, they sat like that, hands linked and two startled, aquamarine eyes gazing at Treize from above pinking cheeks. When Treize let go, Quatre almost moved after him, stopping himself just in time. An apologetic look, and the general was gone. With him went the furniture, and Quatre spent one more week huddled in the corner, his one hand covering the other protectively, as though to preserve Treize's touch.
He often lingered out in his flower garden, brows furrowed as he thought about Treize, thought about their one tea together. He was grateful to the older man, though in his heart of hearts, he knew he'd been manipulated. Another couple of weeks, another tea, and he might have joined OZ just to survive. He'd been seduced by Treize, and he would never admit it to the others.