Title: Wash

Rating: PG-13

Series: Gundam Wing

Pairings: 13+6 (Treize/Zechs)

Notes: Some stories just write themselves.

It started in the bath, as so many things do. Treize was wearing a rose in the top buttonhole of his jacket that day, and as he undressed he set it aside carefully. I wasn't thinking about him, though... I wasn't thinking about the way the shadow of a few stray strands of his hair moved across his face when he looked down to unbutton his shirt. I wasn't thinking about the way that hair would darken when he got it wet. I wasn't even thinking about the way he looked up right after un-knotting his scarf, and watched me watching him, his face impassive.

I was thinking about the rose.

He'd lain it on the lip of the bath, red delicacy against cool blue tile. I envisioned what those colors would look like if they were blended together at the edges, like an oil painting.

Treize got in first. -He always does. It's a ritual we have.

I followed him under the bubbles, and found the warm ceramic edge of the submerged bench by touch. -I still don't know what color the bottom of this bath is. Treize moved to the other side of the tub, letting the weight of the water slow his movements like double gravity. He sank into the bubbles there, and blew one towards me, from the crest of a foamy mountain in front of him. The bubble hung motionless for a second in the air between us, then exploded against my shoulder and was gone.

All around us hung the scent of the rose on the edge of the bath, and others of it's kind.

No-one does roses like Treize. Where others sweeten the scent until it effectively blocks out everything else, Treize had found a subtle fragrance that stopped just this side of bitter, and left room for the cool, quiet scent of the white stone-work around us. An intelligent smell.

Which brought me back to the rose...

Treize, -who can be a spooky bastard when he wants to be, reached up without warning (but in no hurry), and picked up the flower in question. He didn't look at it, but leaned forward and handed it to me, his fingertips finding the gaps between the thorns by which the stem could be safely held without conscious thought. I took the rose from him. Treize retired to his end of the bath, and leaned his head back against the edge, closing his eyes languorously. I watched the tensions of the day we had just waded through melt from his face one muscle at a time until his lips were slightly parted, and I wasn't sure whether he was asleep or awake. I remember envying him.

I thought about the battle I'd never fought, the battle for the Sank kingdom. The one Otto had won, -and lost- by ending his life. I had decided, while looking over the rubble-hole left by the removal of Tallgeese, to seal Otto's ashes into the palace wall when I had it rebuilt. It never occurred to me until I was reviewing the flight-recording for the Tallgeese's recent activity, that I'd never told Otto my real name. 'Long live king Zechs!' he'd cried out...

He'd gone to his death following a shadow. A shadow with blood and speech, with some genuine substance, but still a lie. I imagined what I would have said if I had told Otto who I really was. The phrasing. Where we would be. How I would stand, how I would move, when I would pause to let him respond. I pictured Otto's reaction. He would have loved me just the same, I think. It was a pleasant fantasy.

"Zechs."

I opened my eyes.

"Your hand," Treize's finger followed his gaze. I looked down at my hand, and saw that the thorns of the rose had bitten deep into the skin of my palm as I'd made a fist around it. I had roses seeping out through my fingers, and blossoming in the mounds of pale bubbles beneath them. Treize was now in front of me, though I hadn't seen him move. He uncurled my fingers one at a time, and took the rose away. He dipped the rose underwater and swirled it around a few times, then held it before my eyes, and pulled the red ball of petals off of the stem with his other hand, his eyes never leaving mine. I watched him roll the petals around in his hand until they were separated from each other, and then flick the clean, empty stem up onto the white marble floor, forgotten. His petal-hand opened after this was done, and released a swirl of soft red disks into the bathwater. Some of them floated and clung to clumps of foam before slipping down between the bubbles. Then Treize reached for my hands.

"Let me," he said, softly.

I let him. Only one of my hands was bleeding, but he took both of them, and washed each one as he had the rose. My blood entered the bathwater, and surrounded the two of us invisibly. I closed my eyes for a time, then opened them for a time. Treize never stopped, but he never hurried. He would wash first one of my hands then the other, folding the hand in question between both of his hands and dipping it into the water, fingertips tracing puncture wounds or unbroken skin, whichever it chanced to be. He did this over and over. When he was washing my undamaged hand, my skin would sing to him, and when he touched my thorn-cut hand, it would cry to me.

Finally there was nothing left on either of my hands but a few small red points that had given up on bleeding, and Treize pressed my palms together between his own. He didn't kiss them, or me, and he didn't seem to notice the rose petal that had drifted to shore on his forearm during the washings. He just washed my hands, paused, then gave them back to me.

And strangely, they did look cleaner.

-end-