Things Nichol Would Never Say
By Jillian
(Disclaimer: I decided to celebrate a lack of laboring on Labor Day by writing a truly indulgent GW fic. Yeah, and when I indulge it usual is along the Nichol and Trowa lines. Yes, it's the impossible pairing, but adversary in fandom always sparks . . . sparks. So once again risking the ludicrous, I attempt to sully Nichol's heterosexual reputation. I hoped to keep the tone lighthearted too. I've given Nichol enough angst as it is.)
He didn't know whom Trowa Barton had gotten pregnant. Once he finished the article on fly fishing, he would stand up, walk over and ask just that, "Who'd you knock up, Barton?"
Of course, he'd used the same magazine to hide behind as the nurse brought the slender man into the same room and gave him instructions that they'd come for him after the birth. He had recognized Trowa as soon as his distorted person had walked past the half-window wall and then finally crossed into the doorway of the waiting room.
The room itself was cool enough that warm-blooded Douglas Nichol felt comfortable. The carpet was a neutral color, the chairs were pale green and arranged around small light colored wood tables with neatly stacked piles of magazines. The top one had the article on fly fishing, something he'd never tried but admitted being a little intrigued by. Next he had planned on picking up the automotive magazine to look at the more recent cars in the market, but that was before the hospital staff had escorted the troublesome Mr. Barton into the same room.
According the rules of personal space in an otherwise empty waiting room, Trowa had taken a seat on the opposite wall from Nichol and had taken to staring blankly at the television set that was propped up in the opposite corner. It was set to a news network and had bored Nichol after a few minutes of looped broadcasting of the same headlines.
Occasionally, Nichol would admit he wasn't reading the article on fishing and would sneak a look over the top of the magazine.
He knew Trowa from the war, when the ex-Gundam Pilot had infiltrated OZ security on Barge and had been stealing secrets for the colonies or whomever Barton thought he was working for at the time. While he'd tried to do his commanding officer's job and get rid of the Gundam spy, he'd instead found himself in the brig and then being returned to Earth when Barge was destroyed.
Now and again he felt a lingering bitterness that no one seemed to understand that what he'd been doing was trying all along was to loyally save OZ, but history chooses her own heroes and the cards had once again fallen in favor of Trowa Barton, a recognized war hero. Nichol found simple gratitude in the fact that the new government hadn't decided to sentence him to prison time.
A few years had passed, but the boy's features were pretty much the same, more olive skin than your typical Caucasian and unruly reddish brown hair that refused to fall anywhere but in front of Trowa's very eyes. The way the kid's knees bent reminded Nichol that a few years had passed since his service on Barge. Trowa was taller, but proportionally as lean. The fingers and hands that sat crossed in his lap were longer as well.
And now, Barton was getting strapped down with a kid. Nichol nearly snorted, before catching himself. What woman would find that gangly kid desirable?
Wincing, Nichol recalled the plethora of compliments that his Colonel had bestowed upon the spy while she belittled his suspicions.
He glanced over the magazine again, perplexed over Barton's magnetism.
That time Trowa was sure that nearly hidden face of the other occupant in the waiting room had been peering at him. Although, he was too tired to really care if another person recognized him and tried to ask him what it was like being a Gundam Pilot. Sinking as deeply as he could into the thin cushions of the chair, he tried to focus on the television and not fall asleep.
Nichol nearly dropped the magazine when he noticed Barton's chin start to droop and his eyes stayed closed during blinks longer than they stayed open. What a terrible father-to-be, Nichol thought feeling the outrage causing his temperature to rise along the back of his neck.
He began to formulate his lecture, taking delight in the subtle twist in meaning of a word he selected and imagined the way he would intonate a certain phrase. After a third revision, Nichol wondered if he should have simply confronted Barton as soon as he recognized the ex-pilot. The momentum he'd been feeling had decreased by a great percentage.
Nichol didn't have time to refuel his momentum, because right then, another nurse of a more matronly persuasion that Nichol recognized stepped into the open doorway, "Douglas Nichol? We have your test results."
The ex-soldier felt his throat tighten so that he couldn't draw in breath to respond. Instead, his numb fingers dropped the unfinished magazine sideways across the orderly pile in front of him and his knees unbent so he could answer her call. He tried to keep his eyes fixed on the woman as he walked the now impossibly long distance from his seat against the outer wall and toward the exit. But his resolve faltered and he turned down.
Without a doubt, from Barton's opened eyes and slightly parted lips and the way he turned sideways in his seat and gripped the wooden armrest with his fingertips, Nichol was found out.
"Oh my gosh," Trowa was amazed to hear the amazement in his own voice, "It's you!"
He'd heard the name when the woman had called it, but it wasn't until he casually caught sight of the other person that the memories came back. He still had trouble remembering certain events before the accident with Quatre's Wing Zero, not that he told Quatre who had suffered enough over the event as it was. Occasionally, something would trigger another recollection and the sight of the person that he remembered wearing an OZ uniform had no small effect.
"Nichol," His tongue tasted the name and seemed to remember the tangle of flavored emotions that it reopened. It was too much for Trowa to sort through, so instead he tried to restore some order to his slack-jawed expression and rather than sit in rapt surprise, he stood and composed himself to a more stoic front.
"Barton," the other man must have remembered him too, which made Trowa's stomach contract. When he knew so few people personally, it seemed different to be recognized by someone who he had used to know, "What are you doing here?"
Trowa responded lightly, "My sister, she's here. She's having her first kid."
The look on Nichol's face was so unguarded that Trowa knew he hadn't seen an expression of such surprise on the other man before. Then Nichol spoke, "You got your sister pregnant?"
"What?" Trowa spoke before his absolute bewilderment started to feel like he'd been insulted, "No!"
They continued to stare at each other, while the nurse smoothed out the front of her skirt apparently uncertain if she should interrupt. During that pause, Trowa began to remember that among the feelings he felt toward Nichol were a combination of rivalry and caution. He began to slip farther backward into himself, removing his obvious outburst at Nichol's ridiculous suggestion. In the same time, Nichol's face had changed to the complete color of a raspberry adopting the purplish tint to what Trowa had to assume was some measure of embarrassment. His brow furrowed in confusion and one hand absently rubbed through the dark curls at the back of his neck, those new but familiar gestures made Trowa swallow heavily.
"Of course not," Nichol repeated quietly and offhand as if speaking to himself, then, "You have a sister?" He pulled the last word back into his throat with an odd sound and appeared for a moment as if he would choke on it.
"Yes," Trowa nodded solemnly, blinking past his reactions to Nichol best he could and eager for a moment to collapse into the chair again as the stresses of the day were wearing him down.
"Well, er, ah, congratulations," Nichol glanced at the nurse and then back at Trowa, as if remembering she were there and why he was there for the first time since Trowa had called out to him. In passing, Trowa wondered what the ex-soldier was doing at the hospital. The nurse had said something while Trowa was half-dozing.
"Thanks," Trowa responded automatically, "Later, then."
Nichol followed the nurse out, and Trowa wondered why he'd said what he had.
Nichol had taken up playing the guitar in order to occupy the unexpected surplus of dull hours during his evening and weekends. Discharged from the military and working as a daytime security officer for a nearby laboratory, Nichol had more solitude than even his own introverted personality was used to. He liked being alone, he liked puzzling over concepts and politics, but the guitar lessons had brought him a pleasant variety.
He plucked at the string twice more before setting the guitar in front of him with an aggravated strength and crossed his arms with a huff. Tonight he was alone and his thoughts kept wandering back to the most uncomfortable moment of that day. It was a new and remembered irritation.
He knew that on Barge he'd spent several evenings as an insomniac, pacing the small allowance of floor his officer's quarters afforded him. Then he'd tried reading at the metal tables in the mess hall. Eventually, he tried jogging the corridors of Barge to exhaust himself to sleep and had been in particularly fit shape even if overly tired. His anxiety had the same source, Trowa Barton. Then Barton had been the obvious enemy that he couldn't prove.
Now, he was still an obvious threat, but he couldn't quite spell out why in any fashion that convinced himself.
He kept envisioning the surprised and pleased look on Barton's face and how it had cooled slightly, until his impulsive insult had shocked another dramatic response from the otherwise impassive features. Nichol had caught something familiar in the look Barton had given him: a knowing look that had mocked Nichol when Barton's position on Barge with the Colonel was stronger than any of her loyal officers.
Trowa handed the baby girl back to her mother and tried to look as interested as he should having become an uncle. He smiled, not hearing whatever it was that Catherine had been saying, but from the distracted way that she used a finger to stroke her daughter's face, Trowa knew his unspoken response had been good enough.
His thoughts, however, were furiously trying to reorganize how he understood his time as a Gundam pilot on Barge. He vividly remembered taking the OZ prototype suits onto test missions with Heero Yuy. He remembered sparring with Zechs, after meeting Milliardo Peacecraft once on an away mission to the new colony planet he and Lucrezia Noin were reinforcing. He remembered the amiable respect he had for Colonel Une even when she was a mentally disjointed officer serving under Treize Kushrenada. But, he knew that his relationship with Une had been stronger because of someone else.
And finding Nichol that afternoon had begun to solidify the unknown questions he'd had about his time on Barge.
Rivalry was an understatement. He remembered how during his first few days that Nichol had managed to turn the entire crew against him so much so that he feared that even his exceptional flight scores and Colonel Une's signature on his acceptance papers wouldn't be enough. But, miraculously, his patience and Nichol's impatience had turned to Trowa's advantage. After verbally undressing Nichol in several key decisions, rumors of Nichol's disfavor outweighed any suspicions of the new OZ test pilot.
He smiled absently at the irony that the only soldier on OZ that had seen Trowa for the traitor he was would be the infamous Cassandra for Barge. He had admired Nichol's dangerous perceptiveness and taken no small pleasure in watching Nichol squirm uneasily in his seat when Trowa had first been invited to the OZ strategy discussions on Barge.
Before leaving with Heero to gather data on the unknown Gundam, Trowa remembered searching for Nichol's holding cell. He'd the authority to confront Nichol if he wanted to. He had been tempted to tell everything to Nichol. Tell the OZ soldier that he'd been right. That he was a Gundam spy and that he was going to leave with the prototype suits and meet up with his Gundam ally. Except, he couldn't risk telling the truth so foolishly when Duo and Wufei were still prisoners.
He wasn't sure if he wanted to tell Nichol the truth to twist the knife wound of Trowa's victory deeper or if he felt some sort of sympathy for his unfortunate but best enemy.
Instead, Trowa'd simply stood at the viewing window and watched his antithesis resigned as he sat against one corner of the cell. Head forward so that his dark hair hid his face. Stripped of his uniform and waiting judgment from his colonel and OZ.
Trowa distantly heard Catherine's voice, and somehow he knew that she'd asked him to sit. As he did, he realized that he had felt sympathy for Nichol. And something not unlike admiration.
"How the hell did you find me?" Nichol sputtered, half drunk on whatever it had been that he'd found in his refrigerator. He hadn't been able to sleep for the first time since he'd met Trowa on Barge and that connection alone had sparked his almost forgotten rich temper. Next he knew it was two in the morning and Trowa Barton had somehow followed him home.
"This is a bad time," Barton seemed to suddenly realize where he was and what he was doing. Even with the long coat and his hands stuck deep in the pockets like a scolded child, Nichol could see that Barton was no longer a child or a teenaged assassin. He seemed genuinely surprised at his own behavior.
"What do you want?" Nichol was careful to enunciate best he could around the thick obstacle of his tongue; he leaned against the door, the cool metal of the knob caught in his fist like the head of a cane, "An apology? Well, I'm sorry. I should have realized you weren't the sort to have relations with a family member. You liked to sneak around with authority figures, like Une." Nichol winced partially from the piercing streetlight and partially because he was drunk and drunk enough to know he was sounding very stupid.
With the damn expressionless patience that Nichol was starting to remember all too well, Trowa simply stood evaluating. And Nichol knew what he must look like, sloshed out of his senses, bent over and bleary eyes. A right handsome ex-soldier.
"We're really not at our best this moment, are we?" Trowa said graciously that made Nichol curl his lip. From somewhere deep in his throat, Nichol felt himself give a reflexive growl. The next thing he knew, Trowa's eyes had widened and a perplexingly true smile spread the young man's lips into a gutsy laugh.
"What?" Nichol took a step back, rather frightened.
"I'm sorry," Trowa seemed bewildered by his own laughter, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh. I came because, because I had remembered that I should apologize to you. You were right all along, then. You know. About me."
"What does it matter?" Nichol's head would only stay clear for pocket of time and he was finding it difficult to comprehend Barton's comments. He was apologizing for being a spy? "You won the damn war, already. You win. I lose. That's how it works."
"But you were the only one that was ever close . . . to," Trowa paused, his smile fading as they were talking about serious times. He stared at Nichol, and Nichol was quite sure the boy wasn't seeing the drunk man that had answered the door.
Nichol continued to stare at the young man who seemed perpetually perplexed over the thought that had crossed his mind.
"What it is?" Nichol said, feeling a more cheerful buzz as the alcohol's more pleasant effects started to work on his system. The fresh air seemed to be helping as well.
"I-I," Trowa couldn't seem to close his mouth around the next words, "I'm not into guys."
Nichol started to laugh helplessly, now doubled over from the convulsions of his stomach muscles. He worked to pull himself up the door and managed only to sway a little bit on his feet, "That's okay. I didn't really want to have sex anyway."
Trowa's startled expression made Nichol lapse into another volley of laughter that made his head feel lighter and seemed to purge his system of several years' worth of bitterness.
Trowa had used a slight trick to access Nichol's address from the nurse's station. He'd been careful to appear as if he were only stretching over the countertop and had the good fortune of Nichol being the last patient to cross by that particular desk. Trowa was curious. The memories were strong, but he didn't know how far he could trust them. They were only memories after all.
It'd been some time before he'd been able to escape Catherine, promising to return to her first thing in the morning. But when he'd started the engine of his car, he'd not pulled in the direction of his home, but instead set out for the subdivision in which he expected to find Nichol's house.
And he hadn't been thinking to realize what time it was when he caught himself knocking on the door of the house that matched the address he'd found. When Nichol opened the door, Trowa again felt the force of seeing one of his lost memories in person. While they shared slight insults, Trowa felt more content amusement than he'd experienced in several years. And in the luxury of peacetime, he noticed that the warmth of the exchanges was more than simple fondness.
Just then, Nichol had stretched back shaking off the edges of sleep that he'd apparently been trying to conjure. Trowa saw him with new perspective. He'd had a crush on this man. Of course, he'd always been quite fond of Quatre and he knew there had been someone else in his memories with a man's voice. But after the amnesia his subconscious had kept that thought buried deep inside his heart. Of course, he remembered the nightmare of frustration that Nichol had caused in potentially jeopardizing Trowa's mission. Nevertheless, in the sleepiest corners of his disciplined emotions, he had once admitted so much to himself.
But he hadn't ever really put together what those feelings were pointing toward. Unexpected as that was, Trowa immediately denied it: "I'm not into guys."
He knew he had said it aloud when Nichol's laughter broke his concentrated thought. The older man rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand and seemed unable to stop laughing for a moment except to offer his reply, "That's okay. I didn't really want to have sex anyway."
Which puzzled Trowa further, because he didn't feel as if he were being mocked. Instead, he found Nichol's strange humor quite parallel to his own.
"Listen. Trowa." Nichol shook his head, the smile intact but the laughter muted, "I, I think you should go home. And I need some sleep. But if you're back at the hospital tomorrow," Trowa nodded, "Then we can continue this conversation then. Okay?"
Nichol offered a limp, dismissive wave and closed the door without preamble.
Trowa noted with some interest that he didn't feel as embarrassed as he thought he might, but oddly encouraged. So that when he was visiting Catherine the next morning he confided most of the events with her as she tried to appear interested in her brother's story while balancing her sleeping girl.
"I don't remember you talking about him before," Catherine said, in passing. But it was enough for Trowa to expound on another tangent he'd been considering on his long drive home the night before.
"I didn't remember him, the amnesia wasn't completely cured by my time in the Zero system. I remembered everything about the people that I was reunited with, but my subconscious didn't know who to bestow this feeling upon until I ran into him here yesterday."
"What was he doing in the hospital?" Catherine did look up then, "Trowa, you don't think he was getting tested for, well, you know there are some pretty dangerous diseases out there. I don't want you exposing yourself to something."
"Cathy! I can't sleep with him. I hardly know him," but Trowa knew that in his bliss of discovery, he'd been willing to overlook what could be an obvious concern. And Nichol had said he was turning down sex, not Trowa. Perhaps there was something to Catherine's concern.
"Sure," Catherine fixed him with an intense gaze that he remembered being followed once by the best punch to the jaw he'd ever received, "That's what you say. Ask him, Trowa. Don't be naïve."
Nichol found himself in the waiting room, but with a different set of expectations. He'd gotten more content rest in the few hours of sleep he'd received the night before than he could remember. He couldn't deny that it was due to the unexpected proposition that he read from Trowa Barton's visit to his house. Of course, he felt a raging uncertainty but resolved to let a daylight conversation with Barton steer the direction of their reunion.
Something in this older Trowa Barton had brought back the energy his life had been missing. He half wondered if his bitterness was not only that Barton had bested him, but that Trowa had left him as well.
He was sitting in the same chair that he had the day before. Since the waiting room was on the first floor just next to the main entrance, no one had asked him if he needed help. He was leaning forward on elbows that rested on his knees, hands loose between them as he stared at his shoes and the neutral colored carpet.
In time, he knew that he was being watched and he lifted his head to see Trowa standing a few feet away.
"Nichol," he seemed to relish the syllables of Nichol's name, "After Barge, I had an experience in battle that made me forget everything that had happened before. Until yesterday, I didn't remember you. In remembering, I've remembered more than I realized at the time, which was that, I . . . I might have disapproved of your position in the war, but I did admire many things about you as a person. I saw things that the military never acknowledged. Your sharp-sighted insight, how you were able to work with Lady Une's sickness, and that you followed every order to the letter. A bit stupid that last one though. Really." Trowa shook his head, lifting one hand to his forehead.
"But you stopped me," Nichol found himself frozen in his seat, even as he knew Trowa was still grasping the formula of his thoughts and trying to put them in words, "And I've deserved everything that has happened to me since." He heard the acceptance in his voice. Somehow the laughter the night before had redirected his perspective.
"I don't know," Trowa shrugged, "I don't have memories of your past four years. I wasn't there."
"No you weren't," Nichol could hardly imagine how anything could have been different before this point. He couldn't have accepted Trowa a day earlier. But since it had happened when it did? He felt the odd circumstances of his life now like a purpose driven destiny.
"I have a memory, of when I realized," Trowa's voice sounded closer, as Nichol had dropped his eyes back to the carpet trying to absorb what he was hearing without the visual distraction, "It was the day I left Barge. I found the files of your case to see where they were holding you. To see what sentence you were to be given. Une had marked you for treason."
"Which in OZ . . ." Nichol said, surprised, ". . . is execution."
"Execution. And usually by some covert operative so it didn't look like OZ supported capitol punishment. I changed the operative."
Nichol felt Trowa's lean fingers along the side of his face, then as they entwined in his curly hair, gently pulling his face upward.
"I didn't want anyone to kill you, except me." Kneeling now, Trowa's green eyes were close and earnest wanting his trust, "And I didn't want you to die. I did what I could, and it seems in the chaos, Une never discovered the alteration in her orders. Or that there wasn't an Officer Barton left to fill the role of executioner."
The somber expression Nichol saw on Trowa's face reminded him that Barton's original orders were to be a terrorist. And somehow, the heart of a lover had wrestled against that identity even as he had tried to do what he thought was best for his people. His sister, and her chance for a child. For Nichol. Somehow, Trowa Barton had followed his long journey and it had led him here. Back to his sister. Back to Nichol.
He was very aware of Trowa's touch, "So, now that OZ is gone. Are you still going to follow out those orders you created for yourself?"
Trowa's worried expression broke at those words and with the strangest humor, he almost laughed, "Perhaps I should. Like this." And Trowa pulled Nichol for a first kiss.
Which was too brief, as Nichol almost immediately felt Trowa push away.
"What?" Nichol squinted, his emotions quite wrung through enough as it was.
"Why are you here?" Trowa asked earnestly.
"What?" Nichol repeated, unintentionally clicking his jaw, "What exactly are you asking me?"
"The hospital." Trowa gestured around at the waiting room, "Who did you knock up?"
"WHAT?" Nichol guffawed, "Excuse me. No one. I've been quite faithful to the memory of a delinquent young soldier that I wanted to undress." He felt quite pleased by the terrible pun.
"So why are you here?"
Nichol could tell the question was a genuine one, and shrugged around his answer, "I'm, eh, a little paranoid, sometimes, about getting sick. One of the kids at the shelter had strepthroat and I wanted to get quick tested."
"At the hospital?"
"Yes, they do that here." Nichol tried to relax his defensive inclination.
"You work at a shelter?" Momentarily Trowa seemed distracted.
"Volunteer, it helps kill a few hours on the weekends." Nichol fought against false humility. Apparently Trowa was impressed.
"And the results," Trowa absently wetted his lips.
Nichol laughed, "I'm fine."
"Throat's fine."
"Yes." Nichol shook his head in amazement, "Would I kiss you if it wasn't?"
Trowa's next expression was one of such profound relief that Nichol laughed again, but because he was baffled at Trowa's extreme reactions as if the younger man was finally relaxed and unable to mute his feelings. Glancing over Trowa's shoulder and seeing no one around, he caught Trowa for another kiss to demonstrate exactly how healthy his oral fixation could be.
"Mmm." Trowa tapped against Nichol's shoulders with his palms asking for release, although he seemed reluctant to stop.
"What now?" Nichol growled, wishing that they were someplace less public. Watching as Trowa rocked backwards on his heels then did some acrobatic trick to spring up on his feet.
"Wait a minute. I have to find a hospital phone. I have to call my sister."
"Why?!" Nichol stood less gracefully, and stopped himself before he reached after Trowa.
"She wanted me to tell her if things went okay."
"Good grief, Trowa. You remind me of my father," Nichol immediately wished he hadn't said that, "Why don't we simply go up and see your sister together. I'd like to meet her."
Trowa's smile was proof enough that Nichol had recovered well, "I'd like that. But I should tell you, my sister's in a committed relationship."
"Don't worry, I'm quite certain where my interests lie."