A/N: So, I blame this entirely on Free! but also on the fact that Penumbra is just a pile of horribly depressing nonsense right now and I can't fix it yet.

A/N #2: So… this is kind of an experiment, I guess. It's really two stories, told at the same time, ten years apart.

A/N #3: Not a cross-country expert. Just researching what I can. If any of you ARE runners and want to share precious intel I'm happy to hear it!

Warnings: Angst, language, sex, angst

Pairings: 1X2X3 and others

Before Now

Chapter Two

Before

Maybe he should be embarrassed about the fact that his sister packed his lunches every day and left a note in his lunchbox for him, but it had never really bothered Trowa.

On one hand, he was fully capable of making his own lunches, but on the other, Cathy knew him well enough to know that, if she didn't take the time to make sure he ate, he was just as likely not to.

Since he was used to eating alone - always had, until Michael Corner, and again after Michael Corner - Trowa had never worried about people making fun of Cathy's notes, of her little doodles of dinosaurs fighting or her Star Wars quotes.

But that had changed on Monday when he found his solitary lunch interrupted by Duo Maxwell, who unceremoniously sat down beside Trowa on the ground outside of the history building and grinned at him.

"Great day for lunch, yeah?" Duo asked.

Trowa just looked at him.

He hadn't been able to figure him out, after a week of cross-country practices. They didn't have any classes together, and while Trowa had seen Duo in the halls, had seen him going into the caf for lunch every day last week, Duo seemed to more or less keep to himself until cross-country practice, where he seemed to have made it his personal mission to get Trowa and Heero to talk to him.

But Trowa couldn't decide yet whether Duo was just like everyone else, whether he was just messing with Trowa because he was bored or cruel, and he didn't trust himself enough to start trusting Duo.

Duo didn't seem to mind Trowa's lack of enthusiasm for his presence, he started to eat the sandwich he had purchased from the caf and looked around the quad, at the patches of students eating outside while the weather was still nice.

"Weird place," Duo said around a mouthful. "Everyone seems decent, but they also kind of seem like assholes. Is that just a me thing or is that the way things are?"

Duo looked over at him when Trowa didn't answer.

Trowa sighed and shrugged. Maybe that was the way things were. He hadn't had all that much experience with people being decent, but he'd had a fair number of experiences with them being assholes.

"You and Heero seem okay. Actually - the other guys on the team seem cool, too." Duo continued to talk, as though he didn't actually need Trowa to contribute to the conversation, and maybe he didn't.

"Which reminds me, you ready for the meet this weekend? I'm pretty freaking excited about it, but kind of nervous too," Duo smirked at him, "I mean, what if I trip and look like a complete moron again?"

He'd done that, this past weekend at practice. Duo had tried to turn around and run backwards for a moment, so that he could keep talking at Heero and Trowa, and he'd tripped and fallen into a mud puddle and Heero had laughed and even Trowa had been startled into a soft chucle as Duo grimaced and wiped mud off of his face. But then Heero had helped him back to his feet, and they had started to run again, had almost made up the ground they had lost when Duo fell, before Trowa realized that he had stopped to wait for Duo and Heero, realized that he could have just kept running and let Duo sort himself out with Heero's assistance.

"Then don't try to run backwards again," Trowa said, speaking up and startling both of them.

Duo scratched the back of his neck and blushed slightly.

"Yeah. That was kind of stupid." He sighed and leaned back on his elbows. "But at least I got you and Heero to laugh."

"I'm not sure making us laugh is worth risking a broken ankle," Trowa had to point out.

Duo smirked again.

"I dunno. It was kind of nice seeing you laugh - you and Heero. The two of you never even smile, most of the time."

Trowa knew that was true, and while he had no idea why Heero didn't find much pleasure and amusement in the world, he knew that for himself, at least, there wasn't all that much he felt like smiling about.

"Anyway - hey, what's that?" Duo reached for the unfolded scrap of paper in Trowa's open lunchbox, Cathy's note from that morning.

Duo grabbed it before Trowa could stop him, and Duo laughed, his eyes bright and his lips curved upwards. He looked over at Trowa.

"Did you draw that?"

Trowa shook his head.

"My sister."

"It's awesome."

It was a sketch of a tyrannosaurus rex trying to catch a beach ball, and it had been funny, had made Trowa smile a little when he had first seen it.

Duo handed it back to him, still smiling.

"She seems cool."

Trowa arched an eyebrow at that.

"One dinosaur sketch and you think you know her?"

Duo shrugged.

"Nah. I mean - that just shows she's got a dorky sense of humor, which is cool. But I saw her in the store a few days ago. Father Maxwell took me shopping for some church clothes," Duo made a distasteful face, "and she was shopping, too. Came over and said hello to him and the Father got all red faced and stuttering - it was hilarious."

Trowa could imagine.

Father Maxwell had very definite views on many things, and his views on Cathy's line of work had been made very clear years ago, when Cathy had taken Trowa trick or treating for the last time and Father Maxwell had made a disdainful face when he opened the door to find them on his doorstep, muttered something about decency, responsibility and morality as he looked over Cathy's witch costume and Cathy had dragged Trowa away without even waiting for candy.

"Careful you don't get too close to him."

Trowa and Duo looked up to see a handful of football players walking past, junior varsity players who seemed to think they were the newly minted gods of the high school, guys that Trowa had known for years and guys that he remembered, from that night, last year.

Duo frowned.

"Careful?"

Tom Berls stepped up, sneered at Trowa.

"You're new, so maybe you don't know about him - but he's gay, and bad shit happens when you spend too much time with people like him."

Trowa was used to this, had dealt with it ever since Michael and he'd learned to stop listening, to just look past them and ignore all of it, and maybe it didn't really work, maybe he still heard them, still thought about them and what had happened, but he'd be damned if he let them know what they said mattered to him.

Duo, on the other hand, was clearly not used to it.

"Bad shit?" He echoed. "Ohhhh. Oh - crap, do you mean I could catch the gay?" Duo turned to Trowa with wide eyes. "Tro - did you give me the gay? Did you get gay on me?" He stood up and looked over himself, held his arms and legs out and looked over himself with worry. "Oh, man - is there gay all over me? Ew, get it off, please!" Duo walked towards Tom, holding his hands up as if begging for his help, but Tom and the others stepped back.

"Fucking weirdo," Tom muttered.

Duo dropped the act and glared at him.

"I appreciate the warning," he said, his voice surprisingly cold, "but I'd be careful if I were you, going around giving people warnings about who to hang out with. It makes you look like a moron."

Tom's eyes narrowed and he stepped up to Duo.

"Did you just call me a moron?"

Duo rolled his eyes.

"No. I said you look like a moron."

Tom frowned, tried to work through that, but the bell rang, signalling an end to lunch, and Tom let his friends pull him away.

Duo glared after him for a minute before turning back and packing up his half-eaten lunch.

"Don't," Trowa said.

Duo frowned at him.

"Don't what?"

"Don't be an idiot and think I'm worth it."

Duo stared at him for a long, tense moment.

"Jesus. What the hell is it with this town and morons?" He shook his head. "I'm not an idiot - and I've got the test scores to prove it. And I think you're worth it, so just deal with it."

Duo held out his hand and Trowa stared up at him, but Duo didn't move, didn't look away, and Trowa reached out and let Duo pull him up to his feet.

-o-

Now

Death had a thing for socks.

Or at least, for Trowa's socks.

The damn dog had gone through three pairs of them already in the last four days, had attacked Trowa's laundry hamper when he had been gone each day and found them and proceeded to chew the toes out to his dark little heart's content.

The first day that Trowa had come home from the park and seen the black ball of fluff laying on his bed, wagging his tail, strings of cotton from Trowa's socks all over his face and mouth, Trowa had been actually laughed.

And of course Death had thought that was a good thing, had bounded off the bed, tripping a little over all of the thread, and jumped up against Trowa's legs until he had picked him up.

Still, on Thursday morning, Trowa was not in the mood to indulge Death, and he sternly told him to let go of his single pair of black dress socks and held open his jaw as he pulled them free from his mouth.

As Trowa pulled them on he looked at himself in the bedroom mirror, at the black suit he had only ever worn two other times, at the gray tie and white dress shirt and he tugged at the tie, tried to loosen it just a little.

He'd worn the suit for Helen's funeral, three years ago, and again for Cathy's wedding last year, and even though he had a tie as part of his Park Ranger uniform, he still couldn't feel comfortable in the suit, or the tie, and he thought he looked ridiculous and he felt ridiculous.

But it wasn't as though he could show up to the funeral in his uniform, or in jeans and a sweater. Even he, with as little as he cared for the opinions of others, wasn't going to do that.

Especially not if there was the chance that Duo might be there.

Trowa hadn't spoken to Heero again since Sunday afternoon, when he'd come over and they'd fucked and Heero had told him the news about Father Maxwell's death, and while Trowa had spoken to Wufei twice since then, the cop hadn't known if Duo was going to come or not, hadn't done more than shrug when Trowa had asked him.

So, when Trowa showed up at the church, took a seat on one of the back pews by himself, he tried not to get his hopes up as he scanned the crowd, tried not to look for a brown braid.

Despite the fact that the service was during the week, the church was full. Father Maxwell had retired after Helen had died, three years ago, but he had still been active in the community, still important to a lot of people, and Trowa wasn't really surprised to see how many had turned out for his funeral.

He spotted Heero and Relena near the front of the church, Heero looking immaculate in a charcoal gray suit that Trowa was positive Relena had bought for him. And Relena herself looked beautiful, as always, in a demure black dress and a single strand of pearls. She looked just as perfect as Heero, and Trowa fought down his anger and jealousy at that, at the knowledge that they were perfect together, and he only had those two or three nights with Heero every month, just a few hours to remember the ways things had been, to think about the way they could be.

And that wasn't perfect - it never had been, never could have been - but it was still more than Trowa had ever really hoped for.

Trowa tried, for all of five minutes, to pay attention to the service. But every time anyone shifted in their seat he found himself looking up, wondering if it was Duo, and even though it never was, and even though Trowa knew he was being a complete moron for even thinking Duo's appearance was a remote possibility, he found himself hoping.

After the service Trowa joined the processional that walked over to the grave site, to the mound of earth and the open hole that would be the final resting place for Father Maxwell.

The sky was overcast, the light just gray enough that it seemed fitting for a funeral, made everyone seem pale and drawn and Trowa had to wonder at that, had to wonder if anyone, really, was going to miss Father Maxwell.

Probably Father Gibson would, the reverend who had taken over when Maxwell retired. Trowa knew they had lunch together almost every day, knew Gibson liked to run his sermons past Maxwell at those lunches and Trowa had always liked eating lunch at the cafe downtown on Saturdays, and it was unfortunate that he had to listen in on their conversations, unfortunate that they bothered to spare him troubled glances, but he was used to it by now.

At least Saturdays would be easier, now, he reflected as they lowered the coffin into the grave. No need to pretend he didn't understand the pointing references to Sodom and Gomorrah.

It was only as the crowd started to disperse, as people drifted away to go about their days, that Trowa and Heero looked at each other, that their eyes met.

Heero looked just as grim and tense as Trowa felt, and he wondered if he had been fighting against the same irrational hope to see Duo again that Trowa had been. Although, knowing Heero, he would be just as likely to punch Duo in the face as be happy to see him again.

Relena was talking to Father Gibson, so Trowa approached Heero, slowly, meeting him halfway in case Heero didn't actually want to talk to him in public.

But Heero joined him, bumped their shoulders together and the gesture tugged at Trowa's heart.

It was their standard, 'I'm sorry, but I'm not going to say it' gesture. The one that Duo had always made fun of them for, had never really appreciated. But Trowa did.

"How's Death?" Heero asked.

Trowa snorted.

"He's a fucking menace. I have no idea why Father Maxwell kept him around after Duo left."

"I think Helen liked him," Heero mused. "And after she died I think Maxwell just… forgot it was Duo's dog in the first place."

Trowa nodded. He had suspected the same thing. He had even seen Helen walking Death, over the years, knew she had cared for the dog, had cared for Duo.

"Hilde didn't come to the funeral."

Trowa frowned. He hadn't even thought to look for her, which was stupid, in retrospect. If anyone knew whether or not Duo would be here it was her - the only person who had even kept in touch with Duo after he left Granville.

"She did hate him," Trowa pointed out.

Heero nodded and then sighed when Relena looked over at them.

"I should go."

Trowa looked over at him, saw the hesitation and he wondered what Heero would do, what he would say, if Trowa just asked him to stay, or better yet, to come home with him.

Heero looked past him, over Trowa's shoulder, and his expression shifted, the hesitancy gone as his eyes widened and his lips parted slightly in surprise.

Trowa turned, followed his gaze.

A tall, lanky man in a black suit was walking towards them, his hands shoved in his pockets and his face downcast, but even without seeing his face Trowa could recognize him. Could see the long braid of brown hair trailing down his back and swinging slightly with each step he took.

Trowa felt his breath catch, felt his heart skip a beat, when the man looked up, when his blue eyes met Trowa's gaze.

Ten years had changed Duo, had added height and weight and his jaw was more defined, his full cheeks not quite so full anymore. But in so many ways he looked the same, his wide mouth, his eyes, his nose that Trowa had once made the mistake of labelling as cute.

Beside Trowa, Heero tensed, his hands fisting by his sides, and Trowa had to fight against the instinct to touch him, to put a hand on his arm or his shoulder or his back.

"You're late," Heero spoke up, his voice cold and entirely unforgiving.

Duo nodded slowly.

"Yeah. I know."

-o-