By: Mad Mary Kidd

Pairings: 2+4, but platonic. Mostly. How do you express that in GW algebra? Anyone? Oh, and implied 4+3. Possibly unrequited, who knows?

Rating/Warnings: PG-13. OOOh, the angst. Oh, oh, woe is Quatre! No yaoi, much to someone's disappointment. Sorry

Disclaimer: They're not mine, I just wish they were

Intro: Post-war AU. All is explained.

OF DRUNKEN COMPANIONSHIP

Quatre Raberba Winner was drunk.

He was currently drunker - or 'more drunk', not that it mattered much either way - than he'd ever been in his short life, and was beginning to feel some of the more unpleasant side effects.

"Doo... Doo... Doo-oh," he managed. The braided American, who was the only thing preventing Quatre from falling right over, grinned across at his companion.

"Yeah?"

"I'm... I'm gonna -"

Duo halted their swaying progress and tried to lean far enough away from the hammered Arabian so that when the boy puked it wouldn't go all over his only clean shirt. Well, 'clean' was stretching it a bit, but that wasn't the point.

"Come on, get it all up," said Duo absently, rubbing his friend's back as the boy convulsed repeatedly, making the most horrible noises Duo had heard in a long time. He didn't mind. He waited patiently until Quatre stopped retching before renewing his grip and half supporting, half dragging the boy the rest of the way home.

"Sorry," mumbled Quatre a few minutes later.

"'S okay," said Duo amiably, privately glad he'd already done this part of learning to drink.

This evening he'd had much more to drink than the other boy, but Quatre hadn't had as much practice and could not hold his alcohol. Duo supposed it was probably his fault for allowing him to drink so much, but...

But.

They all had ways of dealing with it.

Wufei had done the sensible thing and renewed his martial arts training, ready for the next battle, whenever that would be. Heero had joined the Preventers, preferring to keep active and replacing his previous role with something else he could get his teeth into. Trowa had vanished without trace, which was at least part of the reason Quatre was so fucked up right now. And Duo himself...

He had taken to looking after Quatre.

When the war ended, Quatre's plans had fallen through. Due to some bizarre tax thing, (or maybe it was inheritance laws, Duo never could figure it out) Winner Enterprises had remained in the hands of his sisters and Quatre had been left with nothing. The Duo of a few short years ago would have laughed; poor little rich boy lost all his daddy's money! How does it feel to have nothing, poor little rich boy?

But the Duo of now could never think of laughing at his friend. He'd seen first hand how the loss of the family business had crushed the blond Arabian - and this was all before the departure of the one person the boy had ever really loved.

When Trowa left, Duo practically put himself on suicide watch.

It had been a long time before Quatre let himself realise that the boy he had loved from afar for so long wasn't coming back. The tears had taken a while to come, but when they finally had, Duo had been relieved. He'd lost count of the nights they'd spent in his, Duo's, bed, just letting Quatre talk or scream or sob or just sleep. He'd come so close, Quatre said, so close to telling Trowa how he felt, but the ex-clown had upped and left before Quatre could screw up the nerve to start talking. No forwarding address, no number, not even a see-ya-later. Just boom. Gone.

Son of a bitch.

Duo shook his head now, thinking about how Quatre could have made it through the loss of his inheritance if he'd had Trowa there to support him. As it was, all he had was Duo.

And some friend I am, Duo cursed himself. Letting him get like this. I just hope he won't want to do it again.

He propped Quatre up against the door jamb while he fished in a pocket for his keys, and let them into the dingy little apartment.

You'd think the Gundam pilots, who helped save the colonies and the earth itself, might get a bit of a thank you. But no. It was see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya. They were left to scramble together whatever kind of lives they could. And what did Duo know how to do, apart from be a pilot?

Well, there was always... No. It wouldn't do to go there. That was too long ago, too far away. That was better left on L2 where it belonged. Now he just slaved away as a part time mechanic, fixing bits of broken down mobile suit, not that many of those had survived the post war mass-scrapping.

He half-carried Quatre to his own room, laid him out on the bed and carefully extracted the boy from his shirt and pants, doing his best not to wake him, not that that was difficult. As an afterthought, he went to the kitchen to fetch a bucket, which he placed at the head end of Quatre's bed.

"Just in case," he whispered to the now sleeping boy. "I don't wanna be scraping cold puke off the carpet tomorrow," he added, but his tone was gentle. He knew he should be going back to his own room by now, but something - affection? Brotherly love? - made him stay put, just standing there watching Quatre sleep. After a few minutes he shook himself mentally and turned to leave, but a sleepy voice halted him.

"Don't go, Duo. Stay with me."

"I can't, Quatre. I have to go back to my own room."

"You don't have to," said Quatre, sounding a lot more sober than he had fifteen minutes ago. "Please? I really don't wanna be alone."

Duo sighed. "You just better not get puke in my hair," he said, trying valiantly to be annoyed.

"I won't throw up again," said Quatre. "I promise."

Duo undid the top three buttons of his shirt and pulled it over his head, before unzipping and removing his pants. He climbed into the narrow bed and settled Quatre in his arms, as the other boy sighed dreamily and drifted off to who knew where.

Other thoughts came unbidden to Duo's mind as he lay there holding his closest friend. The last time they'd been this close.

They'd been lying in Duo's bed, Quatre having talked himself almost hoarse. Without warning, the blond had leaned over and kissed Duo's mouth, snaking an arm around Duo's waist and sliding it slowly lower and lower. Duo had been shocked into inaction for a second or two, but when he recovered his wits he grabbed Quatre's wrist, arresting the progress of the boy's wandering hand.

"Don't, Quatre," he said softly, but firmly. "It would be a mistake."

"I want this, Duo. I do. And I know you do too."

"No you don't. You just think you do. And anyway, I don't think of you like that."

This wasn't strictly true. But he'd come to realise that the line between "true" and "a lie" was sometimes a grey area, and there were times when something that only looked like a lie in a certain light was better than the naked truth. Sometimes the truth needed to be buried for the sake of friendship, he told himself, and feeling horribly guilty anyway. It was lucky he wasn't the religious type, or he'd have been repeating Hail Marys for months.

"Duo, I'm so lonely..." wheedled Quatre, and if Duo's resolve had broken at any point it would have been then. He could see the other boy's eyes filling with tears, as they so often did these days, and cursed himself for not giving the boy what he thought he needed. But Duo knew that this was exactly what Quatre didn't need right now - to be taken advantage of, to be used, to have things unnecessarily complicated with the only real friend he had.

"No, Quatre," he said gently, although had the circumstances been different he would have leapt into bed with this beautiful boy without a second thought. "It wouldn't be right."

"Why?" said Quatre, the pout of his lips making Duo's knees weak. For all his apparent innocence, Quatre was a devious little flirt when it suited him. Contrary little bastard, Duo decided.

"Because I'm your friend. And I want to keep on being your friend," replied Duo. "I'll be close to you, I'll hold you, I'll listen to you scream and cry and I'll watch over you. But I won't sleep with you. I don't work like that."

"I don't understand," said Quatre. "We're so close we're practically lovers anyway - "

"So you think that's a good enough reason to fuck? Do you think that's why I'm here? That that's what I want from you?"

"What do you want from me then, Duo?"

"I want to see you happy again. I want you to be the way you were before. The happy, bouncy Quatre I used to know."

"Then bring Trowa back!" Shouted Quatre, nearing hysteria, tears pouring down his face.

"I can't. And I won't replace him for you either. You missed your chance with him and I won't be your second." The instant the words fell out of his mouth Duo knew he'd probably gone too far.

Quatre's eyes narrowed and he gasped as if Duo had slapped him.

"Fuck you," he spat.

"No."

Quatre had stared at him for a long moment, angry tears sliding down his cheeks, before throwing himself out of Duo's bed and stalking back to his own room. Duo had let him go.

Now he held the drunken boy in his arms, burying his face in waves of soft, golden blond hair, inhaling the scent that was equal parts the sweet talc Quatre used, second hand cigarette smoke from the club, cheap beer and that underlying, inimitable Quatre-smell, all laced with the sharp tang of boy-sweat and a hint of his earlier beer-recycling incident. Duo smiled as he breathed in the scent, and held the sleeping Quatre a little tighter in his embrace as he drifted off to sleep.

FIN