A/N: Wishing Kangofu-CB the happiest day of birth. I hope you enjoy this and thank you for letting me write you a thing!
A/N2: Title inspired by the HAIM song by the same name.
A/N3: Always, always thanks to Ro for beta reading and supporting me. You are, quite literally, the best. I also want to thank ChronicWhimsy, who graciously gave me another set of eyes and editing on this.
A/N4: Look, in the future I can hope we have all switched to metric like rational beings. But the reality is that I grew up on the Imperial system and I cannot be bothered to do all of the conversions from inches/feet to meters, especially with Trowa as a carpenter. I'm sorry.
Warnings: angst, language, sex
Pairings: 2x3
Ready for You
Chapter 2
Trowa realized he was overdressed as soon as he walked into the theatre.
It was a small space - Trowa wondered if there was a term for a theatre no bigger than a postage stamp. It looked like the room - seven flights of stairs up in a pre-colonial building that had seen better centuries and had somehow managed to avoid installing an elevator or, it was clear, air conditioning - was no bigger than Trowa's admittedly large-ish apartment. The ceiling was lower than he had expected - maybe twelve feet high - and the entire room, walls and ceiling and floor, was painted black.
It made the room seem even smaller, and narrow. It felt a lot like a communal coffin, especially with so many people crammed into the small space.
The atmosphere of the room was anything but funereal, however. There were maybe sixty or seventy people crammed into the room, and all were talking and laughing together, waving their programs in a desperate attempt to cool off, leaning over chairs and aisles to hug or kiss.
It was riotous. And casual. So painfully casual. There were people in tanktops, people in jeans that even Trowa would have thrown away rather than wear, people in dresses that in no way would be appropriate attire for a night at the theatre. Duo had texted him just two days ago, after a week of silence.
What are your opinions on post-Terran playwrights?
Trowa had stared at the text for most of the day, pulling out his phone and looking at it again and again, trying to decipher just what the hell Duo was talking about.
I don't have any.
Duo's response had been immediate.
Excellent. Meet me at the Malmoritte Theatre Wednesday night at 7:30.
And that had been it - no other texts, no hint at what Trowa could expect, no question of if he wanted to develop opinions on post-Terran playwrights.
Trowa, standing in the Malmoritte Theatre on Wednesday night, in his best trousers, his stiffest button-up shirt, and the only blazer he owned, loosened his tie and felt like an absolute idiot.
Maybe, he realized, that had been the point.
Maybe this was all some elaborate - well, not very elaborate - practical joke that Duo was playing on him. A poor attempt to get revenge for all the things Trowa had done to him back in the war? Or just Duo Maxwell having a laugh because he could?
Trowa forced his tense shoulders to relax, forced the hand holding the program to smooth it out from the nearly crumpled mess he had made of it.
He could still leave. He should leave.
As he turned to do so, however, he heard his name.
"Trowa! Hey, Tro!"
Shouting, across a crowded room.
Trowa's shoulders tensed again, drawing up to nearly his ears, and he forced himself not to reach for a weapon that wasn't even there. He turned around and caught sight of Duo.
He was sitting in the back row of the theatre, wearing a black t-shirt, his hair tied back in a loose tail, and he was waving at Trowa.
He could still leave.
Duo was smirking again, but it faltered when Trowa remained standing, hesitating. The arm he held aloft waved slower and slower, and then stopped. Trowa watched it start to slump downwards.
Someone tapped his shoulder, and he turned around again to see a woman in black.
"Sir, the show is about to start. Can I help you find your seat?"
"No. I know where it is."
He could still leave.
Instead, he made his way through the far-too-many people for fire code regulations towards the back row of the theatre, excused himself as he shifted his way down the line of people, and then sat down beside Duo Maxwell.
The other man was stiff, his body language guarded, the grin on his face forced.
Trowa wasn't sure what to say, and Duo didn't seem inclined to speak.
Even when the lights dimmed a moment later, and the chatter of the crowd around them faded to whispers, Trowa wasn't able to relax.
He sat in his chair, already an uncomfortable, slightly-warmed metal thing with no cushion, and held himself as still as possible while the theatre was plunged into darkness.
The lights came up on a single figure on the stage.
He was sitting on a box, dressed entirely in black except for a pair of giant white wings made out of… bandages.
And then he started to sing.
Trowa couldn't follow all of the words - the lyrics were in some bizarre creole of Terran English, Colonial Mandarin and… German? He knew all three languages, but the combination of them, as well as poor acoustics and a singing voice that Trowa could only politely describe to himself as horribly off-pitch, meant that Trowa was only getting every second or fifth word.
It wasn't until a second actor walked out onstage that he realized just what he was watching.
A woman, blue dress flowing around her as she spun in circles towards the man, wore her long blonde hair loose around her shoulders. Except for two thin braids that held it back from her face, and a straight line of bangs across her forehead.
She threw herself at the man, who caught her gracefully and then, still singing, dropped her onto the ground.
Around them, the audience laughed, but Duo remained silent and Trowa could only stare.
The woman picked herself up again, threw herself at the man yet again - this time leaping into the air - and once again, he caught her. And once again, he dropped her.
She stood up to throw herself at the man once again, but was stopped by the arrival of a third actor.
A man, dressed in a long black cassock, his face shadowed by a hood and a large, ornate gold cross dangling from his neck, strode onstage, guns in each hand, and proceeded to shoot the winged man.
Trowa watched in horrified disgust as the winged man pretended to be hit, still singing as his body writhed with the impact of a ridiculous number of bullets.
He fell to the ground, and the woman launched herself at his prone body.
And once again, he caught her, holding her aloft for a moment before throwing her onto the stage floor.
The figure in black started to sing.
Trowa turned to Duo.
"Don't worry, it gets so much worse," Duo said in an undertone, not even looking at Trowa.
Trowa wasn't sure how it could get worse.
-o-
It did, as Duo had predicted - or perhaps, already knew - get so much worse.
By the time the lights went out on a scene of splayed bodies, as the woman in blue stood alone onstage singing - Trowa guessed - about the purity of death and violence as the midwife to love - Trowa wasn't sure what the hell he had just spent two and a half hours watching.
The lights came up again, and all around them, people stood up to clap and cheer.
Trowa gratefully followed Duo's lead and remained seated, his hands folded in his lap.
The actors stood up from their death positions, and together, the company of fifteen actors bowed. And bowed. And bowed.
Finally, the applause died down to a few scattered claps, and the lights above the audience came on.
Trowa and Duo remained seated while the audience filed out.
He expected Duo to turn to him and offer an explanation, and maybe Duo would have, but a figure cut through the retreating audience and bounded towards them.
It was a woman, petite and dark haired, with delicate features and a plethora of tattoos that her short floral dress only partially obscured.
"I can't believe you came!"
She was grinning, and threw her arms around Duo. Still seated, Duo awkwardly patted her back with one hand.
"Of course I came. Had to see your opening night."
The woman released him with a snort of laughter.
"Right. Whatever. You came because you want to be able to tell Avery just how awful his play is in excruciating detail."
Duo smirked, genuine mirth and animosity curving the expression into one that Trowa was intimately familiar with.
The woman turned to Trowa and arched an eyebrow.
"Are you Max's newest-"
"He's a friend," Duo hastily interrupted. "Old friend. Trowa, this is Ines. Ines, this is Trowa. Ines had the dubious honor of directing this clusterfuck."
Ines rolled her eyes, but didn't seem in the least offended by Duo's estimation of her work. She held out her hand and Trowa shook it.
"Nice to meet you. Please, please don't hold what you just watched against me."
Trowa released her hand and arched an eyebrow.
"Assignment for her Master's degree - she had to direct this garbage that Avery wrote."
"Avery from your study group?"
Duo shuddered.
"Yeah. That one. Thank fuck there's just the one. He's working on his creative writing Master's degree, and taking Post-Terran Diaspora Narrative for shits and giggles."
"He's not very good," Trowa said without thinking.
Ines stared at him with wide eyes, and then burst out laughing.
"I like this one, Max! Bring him to the party!"
Trowa looked over at Duo, whose face was trapped between a smirk and a frown.
"I dunno, Ines. Trowa and I weren't really planning on-"
"Oh, come on! There's free drinks - well, not free. Free for you, but Avery's shelling out for the bar. Don't you want to make him pay for you to get disgustingly drunk?"
Duo still looked torn, and he shot Trowa a questioning glance.
Two and a half hours ago, Trowa would have gladly said no and just gone home, deleted Duo's number from his phone, and tried to forget running into him after all these years.
But now, after having sat through that… Trowa felt he was owed a free drink. Or a dozen free drinks.
"Let's go."
Duo rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath that Trowa didn't strain to hear.
Ines grinned and, when Trowa stood up, reached out for his arm and looped her arm through his.
"Good. You can tell me all sorts of embarrassing stories about Max."
Duo snorted and stood up. He led the way down the aisle, and Trowa and Ines followed.
"Is there any other kind?" Duo asked, the self-deprecating comment ringing more hollow than humorous to Trowa.
"Well, if he's an old friend, then I'm sure he's got stories I've never heard!" She leaned in to Trowa. "Did you know he was the Duo Maxwell? The Gundam Pilot?"
Ahead of them, Duo's shoulders stiffened. He looked over his shoulder at Trowa, a casual glance that nevertheless managed to convey a hell of a lot.
No one here had any idea who Trowa was - the perk of not having his face and name splashed all over the Earthsphere on wanted posters or vid reels - and Duo had no intention of telling anyone who Trowa was.
Trowa forced himself to relax.
"He never mentioned it," Trowa said cautiously.
Ines rolled her eyes.
"Of course he didn't. He's all humble and-"
"It's not humility," Duo interrupted her. "It's just not worth talking about."
"Not worth- Max! What you did for humanity was-"
"Please tell me it wasn't like that," Trowa was the one to interrupt her this time. He jerked his finger back towards the stage.
Duo gave a strained laugh and shook his head.
"Oh, hell no. So much less singing."
Ines snorted a laugh, but she mercifully let the subject drop as they made their way out of the theatre and back down all of those stairs.
The party was being held at the bar across the street, and after surviving a homicidal taxi driver, they entered the bar.
Which immediately erupted in applause.
Trowa wondered if this was about Duo - more about him being a former Gundam Pilot - and he saw Duo once again tense up, saw him glance towards the door and his fingers curl into fists by his sides.
But then Ines stepped away from Trowa and held her hands up.
"Thank you, thank you, everyone! I'm so glad you could be here tonight! But really, we should be applauding the playwright. Avery! Avery, you dick, where are you?"
There were more cheers and another round of applause as a tall, broad-shouldered man with a mess of curly dark hair piled on his head stepped forward. He was the only person dressed more formally than Trowa - in a three piece suit and precisely tied bowtie.
He accepted the accolades with a smirk that reminded Trowa of a man too short-sighted to properly estimate his own value.
Eventually, he waved his hands to gesture for silence.
"Thank you, thank you, everyone! As you all know, this little project has been a labor of love that I've sweated and bled over for almost two years. But finally, finally, I'm beyond happy to share this story with all of you. Our story - the origin of the future we live in, the culmination of humanity's actions. I hope that my attempts did it some justice."
There was more cheering. Trowa noticed that Ines and several others were silent, half-heartedly clapping. Jehan, the shaved-headed man from last week, was standing near the bar. He lifted a nearly empty glass in Trowa's direction.
"Thank you, thank you," Avery said again. "Now, let's see - how about a critique from our resident expert on The Last Great War?"
Trowa wondered who Avery was talking about, but almost immediately, he realized.
He felt bile rise in his own throat as he looked over at Duo.
His clenched fists were so white-knuckled Trowa wondered if he was going to dislocate something.
The Last Great War.
Trowa had a feeling that Treize Khushrenada would have loved that. He hated it. He hated even more that Avery had used the moniker as the title for his play.
Duo forced a casual shrug, and offered up a smirk that was very nearly a sneer.
"Oh, you know me, Avery, my tastes run in a different direction. Besides, my field isn't-"
"Duo, Duo." Avery walked over and threw his arm around the shorter man, pulling him close.
Trowa wondered if he was about to watch Duo murder someone in public.
He looked around, eased closer to the exit, and tried to put himself in a position where he could assist.
"Come on. Even if you can't give me a proper analysis, how did it feel, huh? Bring back old times? Capture the essence of what it meant to save humanity? Come on!"
Duo looked directly at Trowa, and Trowa could acutely feel the other man's absolute misery.
Trowa had the unwelcome and thoroughly uncomfortable urge to help him.
"It was… a lot to take in. It's a big story, and there was a lot going on." Duo shrugged again, the movement faltering with the weight of Avery's arm across his shoulders. "You tried to get the feel for all of that."
It was clear that Avery wanted more. It was equally clear, at least to Trowa, that Duo wasn't going to say anything else.
Avery opened his mouth, but Ines stepped forward again.
"Hey, didn't I hear there was an open bar? I think the playwright needs to get his director a drink to celebrate this!"
Avery rolled his eyes, but finally released Duo and moved toward Ines.
The rest of the bar's occupants turned towards each other, shifting into groups, and the volume of conversation quickly rose.
Duo shoved his hands into his pockets and scowled at Avery's back.
Trowa realized that Duo really, really hadn't wanted to come to the bar after the show - and that the scene that had just played out was likely why.
He felt guilty, which wasn't a new feeling in regards to Duo. Still, he had almost forgotten what it felt like to betray Duo.
"You want a drink? I could sure as hell use one," Duo spoke up.
Trowa nodded absently, thinking about the way Duo had doubled over in pain, his fingers scrabbling against Trowa's as he took the vid projector from him.
Duo moved towards the bar, as far from where Avery and Ines were as possible, and gestured for the bartender.
A moment later, he made his way back to Trowa, two nearly overflowing pilsner glasses in hand.
"Hope you like pale ale," was all Duo said as he passed a glass to Trowa.
Trowa shrugged one shoulder and accepted the glass.
Duo raised his own in a mock salute.
"Here's to The Last Great War."
Trowa didn't know if Duo was referencing the play or the actual event. It didn't really matter.
He took a sip from his glass. It was palatable.
"So these are your friends."
Duo snorted, but then he looked around the room.
"Yeah. Most of them. Some of them."
Trowa wondered how many of them were like Avery. Most of the people in the room were obviously Terran - taller, tanner, broader than Duo and, unless Trowa was mistaken, the two other colonials present. He wondered what it was like for Duo, who had spent his entire life in the colonies before Operation Meteor, to be grounded with the same people he had grown up seeing as the enemy.
"Most of them are okay," Duo mumbled into his drink before taking another sip.
Trowa drank his own beer and continued to look around the room. He was sure that it was partly because of the bar's location - midtown as opposed to uptown where he lived and worked - but the crowd was… entirely different than the sort who hung out at the bars near his apartment. The conversation, too, was nothing like what he overheard in the dingy bars where people muttered darkly about politics and colonial delusions of equality. There was none of the simmering rage or danger in this bar.
A mild, drunken argument about the symbolism of blue and Relena's character as a Madonna figure or that of Pandora was about as heated as these people appeared to get.
"So… build any interesting furniture this week?"
Trowa gave him a look, but Duo was gazing across the bar at Avery, holding court and smirking while he gestured his way through a story that Trowa was confident revolved around Avery himself.
"It's plywood week. I've been teaching the apprentices how to laminate birch."
Duo frowned and turned towards him.
"Plywood week? What - you make plywood?"
Trowa considered it a small, personal victory to pull Duo's attention.
"Of course."
"Of course. Right. Because that's not like… How do you even make plywood?"
Trowa smirked at the genuine bafflement and curiosity in Duo's face and voice.
"The usual way. Wood, heat, glue, weight. Saws."
Duo's eyes narrowed at Trowa's purposefully vague response.
"Right, okay. But how-"
"So, Trowa, what did you think of Avery's little attempt at mediocrity?"
It was Jehan, sidling up to them with a new, full glass in hand and a glazed look in his eyes.
Trowa wished he was already drunk.
Duo sighed and took a too-large sip from his drink. He coughed a little, and Jehan pounded him on the back.
Trowa ignored the glare the two men exchanged.
"I don't think he managed to achieve mediocrity," Trowa replied.
Jehan's face lit up, while Duo rolled his eyes.
"Please, please tell him that when he comes over here to torture Max more."
Trowa frowned and looked down at Duo.
"Why is he going to torture Duo more?"
Jehan gave Trowa a look, as if the answer to that question was obvious, and Duo avoided his eyes.
"Anyway, I'm glad Max's dragging you to these things. It certainly gives some of us something to enjoy."
Jehan's eyes flicked over Trowa's clothes and he smirked.
"I like the tie." He reached out and playfully tugged on the end of it.
He wasn't unattractive, and in other circumstances, Trowa would have let Jehan pursue his flirting to the natural conclusion. But tonight, with Duo at his side so tense and Trowa… so out of his own depth, it was just one more unsettling thing.
"I'm overdressed."
Jehan shrugged and grinned.
"There's an easy remedy for that."
"Okay, Je, for fuck's sake," Duo growled, and batted his hand away from Trowa's chest. "If he's interested, he'll let you know, but you don't have to start sucking him off in public."
Jehan turned to Duo with arched brows.
"You said he wasn't your ex, Max."
"He's not," Duo sighed.
Jehan looked up at Trowa, who was just as baffled by Duo's irritation as Jehan was. He shrugged.
"Ahhh. Well, you just needed to say this was a date, amemao."
Duo glared at Jehan, but he didn't correct him.
Jehan smirked, and then winked up at Trowa.
"Let me know if he doesn't follow through. Again. I always do."
He walked away, leaving Duo and Trowa standing there with nearly empty beer glasses and Trowa realizing he had zero idea of what he had gotten himself into.
"Ugh. Sorry. This whole night is a fucking disaster." Duo reached out and gestured for Trowa's glass. "Let me get you another beer. I swear if we get drunk enough none of this will matter."
Trowa held onto his glass.
"Is this a date?"
"What?" Duo looked up at him, eyebrows drawn together in a frown, cheeks flushed. "No, I mean- No. Of course it's not a date. I just… What am I going to tell Jehan? Go away, please, I'm trying to reconnect with my buddy from my days of youthful terrorism and you're fucking it up?"
Trowa shrugged.
"He seems like a direct kind of guy. That might have worked."
Duo rolled his eyes.
"Sure, except then he's gonna know you were- Look, I'm sorry. I knew this was going to be weird, but this is a lot more weird than I counted on."
Trowa drained his glass, but instead of giving it to Duo, he reached out and took Duo's from him.
"Let me pick the beer this time."
Duo surrendered the glass, and Trowa took them to the bar.
It took longer for him to get the attention of the bartender, and as he waited, he looked over to see people slowly gravitate towards Duo - the man and woman Trowa had pegged as colonials, a few of the Terrans who had been listening to Avery eagerly, Ines again.
By the time Trowa finally made his way back to Duo's side, amber ales in hand, he had to shoulder his way through the crowd.
Duo accepted the beer with a grateful smile.
"...then you have to consider the origin of the L2 colonization scheme," the colonial man was saying.
Duo nodded in agreement, as did the colonial woman, but one of the Terrans shook her head.
"I hear what you're saying, but in reality, the colonial diaspora narratives are no different than the narratives of any diaspora. Look at the Irish and the canon of-"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," the colonial woman held up a hand. "You can't possibly compare the pre-colonial Irish immigration patterns and the resulting literature to L2."
"Why not? They share the same foundational culture."
Duo snorted.
"Sure. But the L2 cluster was built with penal labor and settlement was forced relocation." His voice was casual, but Trowa had heard Duo's voice casual before.
"As if the Irish had a lot of choice when they were starving by the millions."
"They had a choice of where to go. Political prisoners shipped from one gulag to the next and then plopped down on a poorly-shielded hunk of metal in space is a hell of a lot different than a family stepping off a boat in old America."
There was a tense moment, as the Terrans and colonials glared at each other.
"Hey, have any of you been following the protest poetry scene out of L3 these days?" It was Ines, and Trowa had the feeling she played the role of peacekeeper frequently.
"No," Duo said with an obvious effort to relax. He sipped from his beer and then looked up at Trowa. "Have you?"
He didn't know if Duo was making a dig or not.
"My sister saw some of Valkyries performances a few months ago."
"What did she think?" Ines asked.
Trowa found himself the unexpected center of attention, and he tried to recount Cathy's opinions on the Valkyries. She had enjoyed the performances of the five female poets, who wove different poems together as joint performances, incorporating media presentations that, in Cathy's words, were devastatingly haunting.
He was able to answer most of their questions - about the performances, about the riots after, about the trials. In addition to Cathy's accounts, he had followed the news himself, unable to keep from looking into the state of affairs in the L3 cluster. The entire region had been simmering with proto-rebellious groups since the fall of the Barton Foundation and the resultant power vacuum. He had been stationed there, doing undercover work for Une, when he was still with the Preventers. It was hard to walk away entirely, and impossible to pretend that the region wasn't ripe for conflict.
It turned from Trowa reporting events to the group having a discussion, debating the merits of the Valkyries style and the reaction of the colonial government. Trowa was surprised to find himself interjecting a few thoughts, was even more surprised when Duo agreed with him more often than not.
Two beers later, and the group had thinned out to just Duo, Ines, the colonial woman - Alice, two Terran men - Dominic and Sven, and Trowa. They had commandeered a table and were in the middle of discussing some L1 novelist who Trowa had, by strange coincidence and too much time spent at the library, read, when Avery approached their table.
He had a chair in one hand and a drink in the other. Without asking or hesitating, he shoved the chair between Duo and Trowa and sat down.
No one at the table looked particularly happy with his presence.
"So, who's your new friend?" Avery asked Duo, glancing at Trowa, assessing him.
Trowa couldn't help but snort in amusement at Avery's attempt to intimidate him. He took another sip of his beer.
Duo's lips twitched at Trowa's reaction.
"He's an old friend," Duo corrected, but didn't elaborate.
Avery looked him over again, but then apparently dismissed him and turned his full attention to Duo.
"Well, aren't you going to congratulate me on the show?"
Duo rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, sorry. Congrats." Duo tipped his glass in Ines's direction. "You were lucky to have Ines direct it, too. She did what she could with it."
"Think it's time for another round," Sven said. He, Dominic and Alice retreated with no effort to be discreet about the fact that they were escaping.
Trowa wished he could join them.
Avery's hand tightened on his glass, but then he forced a laugh and slung his arm around the back of Duo's chair.
"Oh, Duo, you're still upset, aren't you?"
Avery squeezed Duo's shoulder, fingers digging into his t-shirt, and Duo glared down at the table in front of him.
"What's there to be upset about?" Duo asked through gritted teeth.
"Exactly!" Avery nodded enthusiastically. "This story - it's bigger than you. It's bigger than all of us. And it needs to be told."
"Does it?" Duo murmured.
Trowa found himself in the curious position of agreeing with Avery that it was a story that needed to be told, and yet he disliked the man and his play so intensely that he wanted to take Duo's side in this.
"You just don't like the way it was told," Avery argued.
Duo gave the Terran a look, but instead of answering, he took another sip of his beer.
"What's that old saying, eh? You live long enough and you see yourself turn from hero to villain? Well, that'll happen, Duo."
It was such a paltry sentiment, delivered so insincerely, that Trowa had to force himself to keep his mouth shut and his hands to himself.
The play had undoubtedly cast Duo as a villain, had portrayed him as maniacal and without any moral compass. He had been very far from the boy that Trowa had fought alongside. All of the characters in Avery's play had been dramatically, disappointingly different than the real players.
Trowa wondered if Duo's antagonism towards Avery had resulted in such an unflattering characterization of him, or if Avery's opinions of Duo's actions had shaped Duo's reaction to him.
"Artaud said 'Poetry is a dissociating and anarchic force which through analogy, associations and imagery thrives on the destruction of known relationships.' I thought you, of all people, Duo, would appreciate that. We need to look at the underside of this glorious conflict and really explore what it means to survive it."
Avery still had his hand on Duo's shoulder, was rubbing circles into his arm while Duo just sat there. Across the table, Ines looked helpless, and Trowa had the feeling that this was a scene that had played out more than once.
"I think there's a different Artaud quote that might be more appropriate," Trowa heard himself say.
Avery looked over at him skeptically, while Duo continued to glare at the table in front of him.
"Oh?" Ines asked.
"'All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try and put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs."
Ines choked on a laugh, and Avery's gaze turned narrow and furious.
Trowa tossed back the last of his beer.
"I have to be at work early in the morning," he said to Duo. "Do you want to get out of here?"
There was a moment where it looked like Duo was going to have to physically push Avery away from him, but then Avery dropped his arm and Duo stood up.
Trowa followed suit and nodded at Ines.
"It was good to meet you."
"Likewise. I hope we see you around, Trowa."
"Enjoy the rest of your date," Avery muttered.
Duo didn't offer up a correction or any farewells, and Trowa followed him from the bar and onto the street.
It was cool, the wind ruffling Duo's hair as he walked ahead of Trowa, his pace furious.
Trowa followed him, his long legs meaning he could almost keep even with Duo without too much effort.
They had walked several blocks before Duo stopped and turned.
"I have no fucking idea where I'm even going," he muttered.
Trowa arched an eyebrow.
"I live in Harlem. I have no fucking clue where anything is in Greenwich Village."
"How did you get here?"
"Split a cab with Jehan. We were over at his place in Turtle Bay."
Trowa nodded. He was surprised to learn that Duo lived so close to him. Trowa, in Morningside Heights, likely only lived a few minutes south of him.
"We can take the A train; there's an entrance on Fourth Street."
Duo sighed and nodded. He looked around, orientated himself, and started walking in the right direction.
He wasn't walking as fast now, and Trowa cautiously matched his pace.
"Sorry. Just- I'm fucking sorry about tonight. That was such a… such a colossally bad idea."
Trowa couldn't offer up much consolation. The play had been atrocious, and while he had found it surprisingly easy to fall into discussion with the small group of Duo's friends, Avery's presence and Duo's tension had made the night anything but relaxing.
"Why did you invite me?" Trowa had to ask. Of all the things they could have done, this wasn't what Trowa had imagined.
Duo let out a long sigh.
"I guess… I guess I wanted backup. I knew tonight was going to suck. I… I meant to get in touch with you sooner - I thought about doing it the night after we met. But I was just too chickenshit, and then this… I had this whole elaborate plan to get out of going tonight, but Je was right- if I didn't show, it would basically be giving Avery license to make my life a living hell. I just figured… I dunno… You knew what really happened. Or at least, what happened to you, what you did. I didn't want to sit there and feel like I was going crazy."
Trowa could understand that, and in a strange way, he thought it was a compliment. At the very least, it was some kind of offering from Duo, and Trowa, after tonight, found himself hesitant to refuse it.
"Are you and Avery…?"
Duo laughed.
"Fuck no. Not since I was a freshman - six years ago," he added with a shake of his head. "I was so fucking stupid and, you know, he was the first guy I'd ever… He was the first, and I was just… I wanted to believe I could be somebody different, you know? I wanted to be Max or whoever, and I went and fucking fell in love with him and told him… I told him so much shit." Duo offered Trowa a wry grin. "If Une knew how much I told him, I'm pretty sure both our asses would be in a detention center."
Trowa, who knew far better than Duo what lengths Une was willing to go to in order to preserve peace, hoped that, for Duo's sake, she never found out he was telling civilians his Deep Dark War Secrets.
Trowa was so lost in his imaginings of what Une would do that it took him a moment to realize.
"He betrayed you."
Duo shrugged.
"I mean… 's my fault. I slept with a writer and told him a lot of fucked-up shit - what did I think was going to happen?"
Duo led them down the subway entrance on fourth street.
They swiped their metro passes at the turnstile, and Trowa checked the time.
The next train would be there in just over ten minutes.
This time of night, the platform was relatively crowded, and Duo and Trowa were jostled by passengers milling about.
"So, about that plywood," Duo said.
He was standing shoulder to shoulder with Trowa, and when Trowa looked down at him, he noticed that there was a faint scar near the right corner of Duo's mouth.
"What about it?"
Trowa forced himself not to think about how Duo had gotten that scar - he had lived on the streets for years before the war. He had always known how to pick fights.
"Why don't you just buy it?"
"Too many preservative chemicals are toxic in commercial plywood, and we usually make it for specific projects, so we try to match the wood when we can."
"What, so like… oak plywood?"
Trowa had to smirk. He had had to make plywood out of oak as an apprentice, and he had hated every minute of it.
"Yes. Oak, birch, maple, spruce… You can make it out of any hard or soft wood."
Duo shook his head.
"It's still so weird to think of you as a carpenter."
"Why?"
Duo shrugged, his shoulder brushing against Trowa's jacket.
"I just figured you were going to be a- Work for her for forever."
Trowa had thought the same, so he couldn't fault Duo for making that assumption.
"Heero talked me out of it."
Duo grinned.
"Good. He was always good at talking sense into you."
That was… surprisingly accurate. He hadn't realized Duo knew that much about him.
Their train arrived, and Duo and Trowa navigated their way onto one of the cars.
They managed to grab a pair of seats on one of the benches that ran on either side of the car, and Trowa found himself squeezed between Duo and a man dressed in business attire and reeking of whiskey.
"So… what's your favorite wood to work with? You like 'em hard or soft?"
It was the kind of joke that Trowa would have expected of Duo at sixteen, and the way his lips curved and his eyes glowed made it clear that Duo was aware of just how immature the innuendo was.
"Elm," Trowa answered. In truth, he liked nearly every wood he worked with in the shop, and each had its own merits. Elm, however, had been his favorite ever since he had first worked with it as an apprentice.
"Elm?" Duo echoed.
The train came to a stop, and Trowa found himself leaning into Duo for a moment.
"Mother Earth," Duo said.
"What?"
"That's what elm represents - Mother Earth, the Earth Goddesses." Duo shrugged. "I read this transplanted mythology cycle a few years ago - crazy stuff, but kind of interesting. Anyway, elm is all about strength."
Trowa nodded. It was, after all, a hard wood.
"It bends, too," he pointed out.
Duo smirked.
"So it's you, in wood form? Bending so you don't break?"
Trowa had never thought about it in those terms.
"Maybe," he allowed.
Duo continued to smirk.
"So like… did you go to school or apprentice or… How did you become a carpenter?"
"I spent four years as an apprentice, sweeping the floor, making plywood, sanding until I thought my arms would fall off."
"And now?"
Trowa shrugged one shoulder.
"Now I'm a journeyman and I still make plywood, but the apprentices have to sweep, and I make them apply the glue for the plywood so I don't smell like a dead animal."
Duo chuckled, and Trowa found his own lips lifting at the sound.
"You like it?" Duo asked him.
Trowa nodded, perhaps too emphatically if the gleam in Duo's eyes was any indication.
"Good," was all that Duo said.
"And you? Do you like… post-Terran Lit?"
Duo shrugged.
"Some days. Not so much tonight."
That was fair. There were, after all, days when Trowa did not enjoy being a carpenter.
They spent the rest of the ride in comfortable silence, sliding into each other whenever the train stopped at a station, until they got off at Duo's stop.
"Do you, uh, live around here?" Duo asked as Trowa walked up to the street level with him.
They were just off 135th street and Lenox. Trowa lived a few blocks west and south.
"I live near Morningside Park."
"Oh. Shit. I didn't realize we were neighbors."
Duo hesitated, and Trowa wondered if Duo was trying to give him the brush-off.
"I, uh, I'm a little farther north, off 137th." He made a vague gesture.
Trowa nodded.
"Mind if I walk in the same direction?"
Duo shrugged again.
"If it's not out of your way."
They walked north, the breeze refreshing after the nearly thirty-minute ride on the stuffy subway.
"The play was garbage," Trowa felt the need to say.
Duo glanced up at him.
"It was, wasn't it? I mean - all else aside, the death scene for Treize took forever."
"I felt like we could have fought an entire new war in the time it took for him to finally stop singing," Trowa agreed.
Duo laughed.
"Seriously, though - he just kept going on and on and on! At least the actual Treize knew when it was his cue to exit the freaking stage." Duo laughed again, and shook his head. "He wasn't fair to Relena, though. Avery's a fucking misogynist, and doesn't understand anything that isn't spelled out for him in big letters."
"He wasn't fair to anyone," Trowa murmured.
"A-fucking-men to that. Jesus, I'm going to have sit in class with him next week while everyone gushes over how brave and real it was."
"I suppose it was brave, in a way. I would never be bold enough to put that much garbage on display for people and ask them to pay to see it."
Duo laughed again, and Trowa found that he liked the sound, liked the way Duo's face relaxed and his hair curled over his neck when he threw his head back.
A few minutes later, Duo came to a stop in front of an ancient, crumbling brownstone that might have been standing since before humans had perfected space flight.
"This is me," Duo said, and jerked a thumb towards the building.
Trowa nodded.
"I, uh, well, it was a shitty nightmare but there were some good parts," Duo continued. "Thanks for coming. It was good to have you there."
"The next time you invite me on a date, can it be to something less terrible?"
"It wasn't a date," Duo muttered, but his cheeks were flushed again.
Trowa arched an eyebrow.
"It wasn't!" Duo sounded defensive now, and Trowa had to smirk. "If it was a date, I would have done the whole nudging you for a kiss thing."
"Nudging me for a kiss?" He tried to picture it. Tried to picture Duo Maxwell, remorseless assassin, nudging someone for a kiss.
Duo rolled his eyes.
"You know…" He stepped closer to Trowa, pressed his chest to Trowa's and leaned his right shoulder into Trowa's left, the move bringing Duo's lips tauntingly close to Trowa's own.
"Oh." He imagined he could see the puff of air hit Duo's cheeks. Imagined he could see the flutter of interest in Duo's eyes.
"Yeah." Duo didn't step away.
Trowa tilted his head down, brushed his lips over Duo's lightly.
He started to straighten up and Duo followed him, lips chasing his own.
Trowa allowed Duo to catch him, pressed back when Duo's mouth turned insistent.
When they finally parted, Trowa was shocked to find his hand in Duo's hair. Even more shocked to feel the pounding of his own heart, the frisson of desire as he rubbed his thumb against the nape of Duo's neck and the other man shivered.
"You nudged me for a kiss."
It was, perhaps, the most ridiculous thing he could have said. Trowa wasn't able to even think of anything else to say, however.
"Yeah, I did," Duo agreed.
He was smiling, an expression Trowa had never seen before. There was no mockery, no insecurity, no dark humor or self-deprecation.
Duo looked happy and a little flustered.
It was, Trowa decided, a good look for him.
"Goodnight," Trowa said, and let his hand fall away from Duo's neck.
"Night."
Duo walked up the steps to his apartment, pausing before he opened the door to turn around and look back at Trowa.
"Hey."
"Hey," Trowa responded.
"You should pick the next date."
Trowa smirked.
"How do you feel about jazz?"
-o-
Notes:
Amemao: a Dominican insult, basically calling someone a doormat.
On Manhattan neighborhoods: I imagine there is EVERY chance that in the AC world the neighborhoods have different names. But at the same time, I think there is EVERY chance they still have the same names. Assuming some of them aren't underwater.
On the subway: I mean, we ALL hope and pray that NYC Transit just… gets blown up and magically reimagined. But for the sake of this fic, I'm just using the existing trains and stations.