Warnings: yaoi, slight angst, sap running all over
Pairings: 3+4/4+3
Notes: Really, beware the sap. Beware the oddness. *shakes head* Very much so.
*****
Look
by Orerinia
*****
Trowa Barton ran an old antique shop. It was small and cramped, items piled up the walls, the smell of brass and other old metals permeating the room. It was how any good antique shop should be. And his antique shop was one of the best. He had nearly every old relic people could want--or he had it in at one point or would have it at another. His place was popular and it brought in the money.
It was also ran his life. Not that he minded. No, he did not mind that running it took up most of his time. He did not mind that he had no life outside of running it. His only living relative was his sister--married and living in a foreign country--and while she made it a point to call him at least every week and badger him about taking some time off, it never worked.
He liked the way his life was. He never had a thought to change the way he lived it. He was like many people--eyes looking in one direction and never glancing to the side to see what else he could be doing. Or what life truly could be.
That was until he stumbled across a young man and started playing Look.
Trowa's apartment wasn't far from his shop. It only took fifteen minutes to walk to it and that was what he did every day. He walked across several streets and through a park to get to his shop. Then, near the end of the day he would take the same route back, eyes always pointed straight ahead. It was his routine, shine or rain, warm or cold, summer or winter, he would take the same route.
So it was of no surprise that on a Tuesday, during mid-summer, the sun still relatively high in the sky due to the season, that he could be seen walking home from the antique shop. It was a surprise, however, when walking through the park he tripped over the young man laying on the grass, who was gazing at the sky, arms crossed underneath his head. This happened for course, because Trowa was looking forward, not down or up, to the right or left, just forward.
"Ommpphh!"
"OUCH!" Perhaps it would be better to say that Trowa tripped on the young man and fell on top of him. "Get off of me!"
Trowa tried . . . and succeeded after a few seconds, finding himself kneeling on the ground, his dress pants without doubt having a grass stain or two on them, his once neatly tucked in shirt now un-tucked and awry, and panting softly. The young man sat on his butt, knees brought up slightly, rubbing his shoulder and gazing at Trowa through pale-gold bangs with blue-green eyes, his own clothes in a disarray.
"Sorry. I didn't see you."
The young man made a sort of half-sound, like he was going to laugh in disbelief. "If you didn't see me, you must have been blind."
"I am not blind, I just wasn't looking where I was going. I'm sorry, all right?" he said back almost defensively.
"Oh, so you're one of those people. Not surprising. It's as good as being blind." The young man shook his head and fell back to lay on the grass once more. "Apology accepted. Now you can go about your business and forget this ever took place."
Without a doubt the young man was insulting Trowa, yet he didn't get half of what he meant. It irritated him to the core and so he crawled over--somehow standing and walking such a short distance to the young man seemed ridiculous--and blocked the young man's view of the sky with his own head. "What are you talking about?"
The young man almost looked surprised as he answered, "You're one of those people who never Looks." The way he said it made it sound different, more important somehow. "You go about your life, never really living, because you don't Look at what's going on around you."
Now Trowa did become defensive. "I do look at stuff, I just wasn't looking where I was going today."
The young man was amused, it could be seen in the set of his lips and the slight twinkling of his eyes. "You're dense, you know that? How often do you not look where you are going?" He rolled so he was no longer gazing up at Trowa from his back, but was now on his stomach, his arms propping him up and his head turned in Trowa's direction. "That's not what I was talking about, anyways."
Trowa rocked back on his heels, "Then what were you talking about?"
"Look at that little girl over there. The one on the bike." The young man jerked his head in the girl's direction.
Thinking the young man must be crazy, Trowa turned his head and watched the little girl. "Okay, I'm looking at her. She's wearing coveralls with yellow shirt under and is riding a blue bike around a basketball court. Is that it?"
"No, Look at her! Don't state what she's doing or what she's wearing, just Look at her."
Even more confused, Trowa went back to watching the girl, driving by an almost insane urge to find out what the young man was talking about. "She keeps almost losing her balance and keeps stopping to put her feet on the ground. She's obviously just learning to ride."
"You're still not Looking at her!" The young man folded his arms and buried his head within them. "It's hopeless."
One thing the young man did not count on was Trowa's determination to figure out what the hell he was talking about. He could be stubborn that way.
He sat there for ten minutes--ignoring the young man's questions on why he was still there--and watched the young girl start riding her bike, go for a few feet, and then stop. Start, go, stop. Start, go, stop. Start, go, stop.
Then he saw it. He saw how the little girl's brow crinkled, how her knuckles turned white from gripping the handlebars, how every time she stopped she looked in the direction of a woman sitting on a bench by the basketball court, and how the woman smiled gently at the little girl. He was really Looking at them. "The little girl's scared, unsure, and determined. Her mother is giving her encouragement."
The young man raised his head slowly, blinking in surprise, before laughing and sitting up so he could place a hand on Trowa's shoulder. "You can Look. I didn't think you would be able to."
Trowa looked with his green eyes into the young man's blue-green ones. "I can do surprising things."
And as it should be, they found they couldn't look away from each other. They sat and stared at each other in silence as the world went by . . . until Trowa stood up and walked briskly away without so much as a goodbye.
*****
On his way back and forth from the antique shop Trowa kept an eye out for the strange young man, half looking forward to running into him again and the other half dreading it. All the while he found himself watching people in a different way. The way they moved their hands, the expressions on their faces, and the way they held themselves. He found himself reacting to it as well, talking his employees on something other than business, chatting with his sister after actually listening to her, and all around being more social. His schedule didn't change a bit at the time, though.
But getting back to Trowa and the young man, seeing as how it was the young man who had initiated Trowa into Looking.
It was on the next Tuesday that Trowa ran into him. Well, not exactly ran since Trowa did see him--laying on the grass again, gazing up through the branches of a tree at the partially-cloudy sky--before he could trip over him and repeat last week's incident. So it was, with no small part of trepidation on Trowa's part, that he walked over to the young man, looked down at him from where he stood and said, "So you're back again."
The young man raised an eyebrow. "As are you. Now can you either sit down here and Look with me or go on your merry way doing whatever."
That certainly wasn't the greeting that Trowa was expecting, but the young man seemed to be someone out of the ordinary, so it was possible to expect non-expectable things from. Yes, that made no sense, but that was what Trowa thought. He sat down beside the young man and leaned back on his elbows, staring at the sky, too. "What are you Looking at?"
The young man smiled, "The maple leaves."
"Huh?"
He laughed lightly, "Don't ask. Just Look."
So he did. He Looked at the maple trees. This time it didn't take him nearly as long. The way the light from the sun shown through the leaves, highlight the edges in burning gold and shading its veins into dark lines. How the whole of each leaf and its branch wove into a bigger picture. How one thing was turned into many and how the many turned into one. Leaf. Leaves. Tree.
They lay next to each a long while. An hour at least. Perhaps two. Time didn't matter. It only ended when Trowa got up and left, not a word said. He did not want to leave, but he had work to do and finish.
*****
It went on for quite some time. Every Tuesday they met and Looked. They Looked at something together or at different things. Sometimes they talked to each other and sometimes they didn't. When they talked they told each other many things. Trowa knew the young man was a partner in a major business, that he had a white and gray cat who chewed on his fingers, that he lived alone, among many other things. The young man knew about his antique shop, his sister, and other things as well.
However, there was one thing about each other they did not know and it was on the sixth Tuesday after they met--when leaves were just turning yellow, orange, and red, as the summer cooled down into fall and days grew shorter, that Trowa brought it up.
They were not really Looking at anything at that point, it was nearing the time when Trowa would get up and leave, still not opening his mouth for a goodbye. "My name is Trowa Barton. Yours?"
The young man didn't answer for a time, idly twirling a dying flower--its petals turning brown along the edges--in his hand. It put Trowa to the belief that perhaps he shouldn't have asked, but it was vanquished when the young man answered back, grinning. "My name is Quatre Raberba Winner."
"Ah." And they settled back to Look for the rest of the time Trowa stuck around.
*****
They should have seen it coming. At least, Trowa berated himself on the fact that he should have seen it coming. What coming? some might ask? Well, the fact that they were falling in love.
It started a little things. A brush against a hand. A hand ruffling hair. A hidden meaning within a word. Then it grew. It grew to a caress along a cheek. One laying their head a top the other's chest. Hands always holding.
This all happened on Tuesdays. Whether in bad moods or good moods, bad weather or good weather, they always met on Tuesday and never any other time. They did not track each other down to their jobs. Nothing like that. They only met on Tuesdays.
Of course then, it was on a Tuesday that the snow first fell and Trowa realized he felt something more for Quatre than affection. It certainly took him long enough to get to that point.
First snowfalls are magical. Almost everyone agrees. Even ask someone who dislikes snow and they will usually say 'Yes, first snowfalls are magical.' It may be that this is one of the reasons what came to be, came to be.
Trowa had met up with Quatre as the blond made a snow angel, his arms and legs moving together through the thick, slightly damp white stuff that had already accumulated quite a bit within a short time period. The same damp white stuff that continued to fall thickly throughout the area.
Trowa cracked a smile and reached down to grasp Quatre's gloved hand within his own. Quatre allowed this, but instead of Trowa helping Quatre up, Quatre helped Trowa down. Laughing, Trowa landed on top of Quatre and together they rolled about in the snow, starting a short, impromptu snowball fight.
They shouted, dodged snowballs, attacked the other with a vengeance and had a good time together. Laughing, they collapsed to the ground together, both laying on their backs, Trowa on top of the snow and Quatre's head in Trowa's lap. That's when they started Looking at things.
Trowa Looked at the bare branches of the trees, how the tops were covered in white and everything seemed untouched. He Looked up at the sky, where a patch of clear blue with the sun could be seen. He Looked at the sun, mused how it was no longer the warm, bright gold of a summer sun and was now a cooler, pale-gold of winter and he compared it to Quatre's hair. He compared a lot of things to Quatre and, yet, he couldn't compare anything to Quatre, for Quatre was something . . . more.
The way his thoughts worked it wasn't too long before Trowa was Looking at Quatre. Looking at the way the thick snowflakes drifted and stuck themselves on this eyelashes. The way the blue and green eyes of his swirled. The way the faint blush of exertion was still evident on his face.
There might have been many reasons for what Trowa did. It might have been the first snowfall. It might have been that he let himself get pulled too far into his own thoughts. It might have been that his self-conscious had enough of Trowa's daydreaming about Quatre and it had decided to put things into action. It might have been any of these things. Or none of them. Or all of them. Whatever it was, he did what he did.
And that was to sit up slowly, Quatre never moving from his lap, but just looking up at him strangely as Trowa wrapped his arms around him and leaned down to . . . kiss him. He pressed his chilled lips against Quatre's own, never thinking just doing, and Quatre responded, wrapping his arms around his neck and kissing back, both tasting the fresh snow as it melted between their lips.
They sat like that, in the midst of whirling snow, until their bodies demanded air and they pulled back, each wearing a stupid, goofy grin.
Quatre's eyes sparkled mischievously, "I didn't think you were ever going to get around to doing that."
"I can do surprising things." He kissed the tip of Quatre's nose, melting the white crystallized water that had landed there.
They laughed and for several hours stayed together. Then they parted.
*****
The next Tuesday Trowa went to the park to meet up with Quatre.
Quatre wasn't there.
Trowa waited for hours.
Quatre didn't come that day.
He didn't come the next Tuesday, either. And Trowa had a feeling he wouldn't see Quatre again. Not ever.
He could have tracked him down if he wanted to, but it didn't seem right. It wasn't right in his mind. If Quatre wanted to have a relationship with him, he would have stuck around. And since he hadn't, he obviously didn't want to start one.
It never occurred to Trowa that something else might have been the reason for Quatre's absence. Well, let's just say it didn't occur to him until on the Thursday after the second Tuesday when he got a phone call. A phone call that had him driving to a hospital across town within minutes of the call.
Quatre had been in an accident the Friday after the first snowfall. Some stupid, drunken idiot who though black ice was a myth had slid into his car. Now he was in a hospital and the only reason Trowa knew was because on of Quatre's sisters had tracked him down. He gave silent thanks to the young woman.
It was the same young woman who greeted him at the hospital. She was a doctor there, her blue eyes relieved and wary at the same time. A strange contrast to see in someone.
She introduced herself to him, he didn't catch her name, preoccupied as he was with Quatre. Quatre had been hurt--was hurt, he had to see Quatre. What he did catch as she ever so slowly led him to Quatre's room was that his left leg had been so badly damaged from the jagged and torn metal of the car as it crunched around him, that they feared they would have to amputate it at first. As it was, it was possible that he would never be able to walk without the assistance of a cane. Shrapnel and glass had cut across his face, barely missing his eyes and his left arm had been fractured. The good news, she said with a sad shake of her head, was that there were no internal injuries.
When they neared the end of a hall, the woman slowed down and grasped Trowa's elbow. "It took me forever to find you and the only reason I did was because Quatre told me your name . . . after he told me how much he li . . . no, loved you. I called you because he seem to have this insane idea that if you see him, that you won't 'Look' at him the same." Her sky-blue eyes drilled into him, "I don't know how you did it, but you changed him somehow. Before he was a daydreamer, always wandering around the country--the world--even when I advised him to become more grounded. He didn't listen to me, but after he met you . . . he did change. He stuck around and become more dedicated."
She paused, "I called you because of that. But if I find that you don't 'Look' at him the same way because he might no walk normally or anything like that, I will rip your entrails out and hang them on a fence for birds to eat."
Let it be known sisters have a tendency to be vicious when younger siblings are in danger of being hurt.
Trowa smiled wryly, "I think you would get along with my sister."
"Hmm," she pointed at a door, "he's in there. Now go reassure him."
*****
It was dark inside Quatre's hospital room. The blinds were drawn and the only light in the room came from a lamp in a far corner from the bed. The body in the bed seemed small, a hoist keeping his leg up slightly, his arm in a cast hung in a sling, and gauze over parts of his face. As with many people stuck in hospitals he looked small, lost, and alone.
Quatre must have known he was coming for he was not surprised when Trowa sat in the chair by his bed. He confirmed it a minute later by saying, "She told me she was going to call you. I told her not to, but she still did. I was hoping you wouldn't come."
"I did come, though." He bit his lip. "Your sister said you didn't want to see me because you were afraid I wouldn't Look at you the same. Why did you think that?"
"Because I can't Look at myself the same." Tears welled up in already red-rimmed eyes. "I'm scared to Look at myself. And if I can't, who can?"
"I can. I will." He ran a caressing finger down Quatre's cheek, carefully avoiding bandages. "I was so scared when your sister called me. For nearly two weeks I thought you wanted nothing to do with me, then I find out you were hurt. Seriously injured. I was scared, so scared. When your sister told me about your injuries I was angry at the person who caused your accident, but I was relieved at the same time. You're alive, Quatre. That's what matters to me. I would do anything for you. I can and I will Look at you the same way."
A soft sob escaped from Quatre and he reached with his good hand for one of Trowa's. "Can you promise? Can you? If not, I would rather you just leave. Please? Tell me?"
He spent a moment considering, "I should promise and I can and will Look at you the same way . . . but I think I shouldn't." He knew he was on the cusp of shattering Quatre, but all he could hope for was that he would understand. "I think I shouldn't because I don't need to Look at you anymore. I don't need to, because I always See you. I See you in my dreams and during the day. I See you and I love you. I don't need to Look, do you understand?"
Quatre's face was indecipherable in its emotions and for the briefest moment Trowa feared he didn't understand. Then his eyes closed and he smiled. "I See you," he whispered, opening his eyes to reveal their swirling blue-green, "I See you and I love you."
Trowa, then, carefully leaned over him and brushed his lips against Quatre's in a kiss.
Hospital rooms can be places for many things. Some bad, some good, some so, so. Some were for endings, some for beginnings. They mean different things for different people. This hospital room was a starting point for a new beginning.