Warnings: yaoi, adult/unsettling content

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing is not mine. This story is not for profit -- please don't sue.

A/N: Really beware the "M" rating on this fic. In all honesty, I'm not sure FFN is the best place for this, but since it's the only place I really archive my stories nowadays, I guess I'll run the risk. This is the kind of strange (disturbing?) fic I often like to read but can't really write very well, so I'm a little surprised by its sudden appearance, lol.

Any Other Name

by Bryony

"Do you like your name?"

The boys were lounging naked on opposite ends of the bed: spread eagled, sated. Quatre's eyes, half-lidded, opened with the question. Trowa's foot, attached to a longer leg than his, played with Quatre's genitals, making concentration challenging. "I don't know," he replied, with difficulty. "I never really thought about it."

"So think about it now."

Quatre did so. His eyes squinched with the effort of it. Trowa watched. His toes continued to circle Quatre's balls. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of Quatre's face. The ceiling fan rotated in an attempt to produce cool air but it was hot and stifling in the room.

"No," Quatre eventually decided. "Not particularly."

"Why not?"

More thinking; then, "It's got a history. It's got…expectations and standards. A name shouldn't make you feel unworthy, but this one does."

"What would happen," Trowa asked, "if I took your name?"

"I don't think you could," Quatre replied with a laugh. It stopped abruptly when Trowa's big toe nudged into the space between his balls and his anus, and he let out a long grunt, uncontained, like a wild animal.

"Why not?" Trowa asked over the sound.

After taking a moment for recovery Quatre answered slowly, "There are…too many associations with me. People would know. You don't have blond hair. Or blue eyes. You're too tall. I have a big family. They would all know."

"What if I just took your name?" Trowa emphasized.

Quatre frowned. "I don't know," he said. "The relationship between name and identity…it's very confusing. I haven't given it much thought before. I haven't had to."

"I have," Trowa said, and Quatre turned his eyes away, embarrassed or ashamed.

"I know I didn't go through the same things you did growing up," he said softly. "I still grew up questioning my identity, though. I'm not saying it was the same as it was for you. But it still affected me."

"Tell me."

Quatre swallowed. "I'd rather -"

"I want to know."

Still he hesitated, uncomfortable, eyes roaming. "For a long time," he finally began, haltingly, when the silence grew too much, "I had trouble accepting myself as a person. I thought I had been conceived artificially and that just kind of…made me question what's humanity, I guess. And then I found out that, in fact, I was a natural birth. And that carrying me caused my mother's death. So it turned out I was the opposite of what I'd thought and that things were somehow still the same and yet different. So then I had even more questions than before."

"That's a sad story."

Trowa's toe found the puckered rim of Quatre's anus, slightly swollen and oozing the evidence of their recent activities. He smeared the drops of semen across the hole and slowly pressed inside, making Quatre's breath speed up. He said with effort, "Everyone has their own problems. Their own things that make life difficult. I try not to dwell on it these days."

"You're very innocent, aren't you Quatre?"

Quatre met his eyes again suddenly, startled. "I don't think so," he said.

"I think you are."

"What makes you say that?"

"Why do you disagree?"

"I -- I don't know. I just don't think I am. I don't see why it matters, anyway."

"Was I your first?"

"Wha-?" Then, eyes narrowing, he said firmly, "No."

Trowa smiled blandly. "How many others were there, before me?"

"That's none of your business," Quatre said coldly. "I've had enough of this conversation."

"Do you feel bad?" Trowa continued to probe, with his questions and his toe. Quatre shifted slightly, away from his foot. "About your past?"

"Parts of it. I guess." Quatre swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing visibly. "We all feel badly about something."

"What do you feel bad about?"

"Plenty!" Quatre swatted Trowa's leg and snapped, "Would you move your foot, please?" Trowa complied, bending his knee and slowly drawing his foot back down the sheet. Quatre eased back against the headboard, head and shoulders drooping. Trowa noticed a tear glistening at the corner of his eye. He said quietly, "For a start, I almost killed you once."

"So what? We were fighting."

"That's not the way I feel about it."

Trowa twisted his body until he was on his hands and knees, his face stretching towards Quatre's. He flashed his teeth. "What would make you feel better about it?" he asked, leaning still closer. "Would you feel less guilty if I almost killed you?"

Quatre's face was appalled as he stared Trowa down. "What kind of a question is that?" he retorted. "It's not funny."

"It's not meant to be."

Their breath mingled.

Then Quatre made to stand up and Trowa stopped him. "Killing me," he said softly, "or almost killing me, would not end my guilt. It would only add to yours. I don't want that for you, even if you don't care."

"I'm really curious," Trowa said. "How many others were there before me?"

Quatre's eyes were warm and wet and filled with pity. "That doesn't matter." He continued, "What's wrong, Trowa? You show up here looking to have sex and now -- what -- you want to kill me? If you tell me what your problem is maybe I can help. This isn't like you."

"Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just like Trowa Barton."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"This is what I know about names: Names enslave you. Human beings only give names to what they want to control. There was a lion at the circus. They'd given him a name: Bozo. Normally a lion would hate a person, because humans are scavengers not predators. But he understood me. Because, like him, I'd been enslaved by a name I didn't used to have."

Quatre reached out and touched Trowa's face and didn't take his hand away. "I'm not going to fight you, Trowa. This is wrong. What's happened to you since I saw you last? If you don't like who you are you don't have to be that way. You can change, people change all the time! Take control over who you are."

Trowa reached out and touched Quatre back and didn't take his hand away. He said, "I am."

And when Quatre Winner walked out of the room, he didn't have blond hair anymore.

-end-