A/N: There are discussions in this chapter which may be triggering for some. 13xOMC, with shades of NC.
.
.
The knock on Treize's door almost an hour later was soft but not tentative; it wouldn't have woken him from a true sleep but it cut through the daze he'd fallen into just by its sheer presence and left him in no doubt as to who his visitor was.
"It isn't locked," Treize called, letting that be invite or not, as it suited, and not troubling to move himself from his sprawl across the surface of the bed when the door opened, not even enough to move the hand he had resting across his eyes.
"Are you all right?" Zechs asked, closing the door behind himself and taking a pace into the room. "Felix said you ran from him like he'd offered to buy your first born."
"I'm fine," Treize answered quietly.
"Yes, and you look it, too," Zechs snorted. He reached out to one side, flicking the switch that would turn on the lights Treize had neglected, and then crossed the room to sit on the edge of the bed much as he had that morning. "You might at least have taken your boots off," he chided gently.
That prompted a reaction from the younger man as he dropped his hand and lifted his head enough to look down himself at the feet that were – Zechs had been right – still clad in their new boots.
Sighing to himself, Treize sat up heavily and began to swing his feet back to the floor. He was stopped before he could bend to tug the first boot free by a firm grip on his shoulder.
"I wasn't serious," Zechs said quietly. "If it suits you to put your boots on your bed sheets, I really couldn't care less. They'll wash." He ducked his head, trying to see his friend properly, and Treize turned away a little more, refusing to meet the enquiring gaze.
"That doesn't excuse the fact that it's bad mannered of me," he replied, and succeeded in freeing first one foot, and then the other. He shook off the King's grip by standing, boots in one hand, and walking across his room to slide them into the bottom of the wardrobe.
Zechs watched him do it in silence, quirking an eyebrow and standing to follow when his former commander headed into his bathroom instead of coming back to the bed. He leaned lightly against the doorframe, arms folded across his chest and eyes intent, saying nothing as Treize reached up to the cabinet above his sink and began rooting through it.
"What are you trying to find?" he asked, when the younger man's search didn't seem to be bearing fruit.
Treize shrugged. "I was only wondering if you had anything stronger than ordinary aspirin in there. It doesn't matter." He raised a hand to his temples and rubbed wearily, then closed the cabinet door again and turned to walk back into the openness of the bedroom.
Zechs didn't move from his position by the door, seemingly unaware that he was blocking the doorway and keeping Treize trapped in the smaller space of the bathroom. "Headache?" he asked sympathetically.
"Obviously," Treize replied. "Excuse me, please," he added, taking another step forward in clear expectation of the King moving out of his way. He was forced to check the movement when the blond didn't budge an inch and the look he cast the King was not entirely friendly.
Zechs didn't appear to notice. "When did it start?" he queried, a small frown setting two deep lines between his eyebrows.
"This morning, before breakfast," Treize said. "It's nothing really, just annoying," he dismissed. "Excuse me," he tried again.
"You didn't say anything," Zechs said in reply, not letting the subject go. "How long ago did you take the aspirin?" he asked, moving only enough to drop his arms and stand up straight.
Treize sighed under his breath. "This morning, and again an hour ago. Zechs…."
The King interrupted him. "And your head still hurts? Is the aspirin helping at all?"
"Not noticeably, no. Zechs, you're blocking the door. Let me through, please."
"I will, in a minute," Zechs answered absently. "Come here and let me look at you, will you?" he asked, reaching out. "Is it just your head, or is there anything else wrong? You said something about feeling sick earlier."
The younger man shook his head and brushed him off with a firm wave of his hand. "Don't fuss, I'm too tired for it. It's a headache, that's all. I'm sure it'll go away on its own if I leave it be." He lifted his head and met the older man's gaze squarely. "Move," he ordered. "I need to get past you."
The King raised a curious eyebrow at the sudden heat in his friend's voice, but he took a step backwards obediently, lifting his hands in surrender as he did so and the red head brushed past him with quick steps.
Treize crossed the bedroom swiftly, heading straight for the wide windows and sinking down to perch on the ledge as he stared out at the striking sunset. Zechs watched him for a moment, then cleared his throat gently, drawing his friend's attention back into the room, and possibly back into the right decade.
Narrowing his eyes at the fact that Treize's breathing was too fast and too shallow, his fingers white in their grip on the drapes, Zechs shook his head. "Just saying 'I don't like small spaces' would have gotten me to move faster, you know," he commented, keeping his tone as neutral as he could. "As a suggestion for the future, you might try setting aside your pride a little and simply being straight with people. I can't read your mind and I had no reason to think you claustrophobic." He moved across the room and leaned over his friend to work the latch on the top half of the window and push it open, letting the cool evening air into the room. "Where did it come from, anyway?"
"Luxembourg," Treize said eventually, apparently intending it to be an explanation. "I suppose." He shrugged weakly. "The tendency has always been there, but…."
"But three months trapped in the same house would probably a good trigger for anybody," Zechs finished, sighing. "All right. I'm sorry. Would you feel better for a walk outside?"
"I'm fine." The younger man took a deep breath and leaned forward to put his forehead against the glass. "It wasn't… one of Dermail's guards liked to play games. He found it funny to trap me into one room, knowing I couldn't risk hurting him to make him move. He was a closet sadist on a power trip, I think, and my bathroom was a favourite target. I had little choice about using that room, even after I learned to avoid all the others with only one door."
The general's voice was expressionless, his face a blank. Zechs found himself cringing a little, and more so when his mind began supplying him with all sorts of possible additions to the scenario the other man had described.
Taking a slow breath, not wanting to ask and knowing he had to, Zechs sank into a crouch by his friend's side, making himself less of a threat as he levelled their heights so they were on the same eye line. "Treize, he didn't… hurt you, did he?" he asked as delicately as he could manage. He couldn't imagine it – or perhaps he simply didn't want to – and it was the one trauma, out of the dozens that they'd been expecting, that none of them had any experience with. Unfortunately, it was a perfect explanation for a very great deal of the behaviour Zechs had seen from the younger man so far.
Treize didn't move for a moment and the hesitation was enough to have the King feeling utterly sick, then the general turned his head and smiled sadly. "Not the way you mean," he said quietly, making Zechs release a breath he hadn't known he was holding. "Not more than I knew he would."
"What does that mean?" Zechs pressed carefully.
"Nothing, really," Treize explained wearily. "Epyon," he said, again seeming to expect the one word to explain. "Une. I had very little else in the way of currency," he continued.
For a moment, the King felt confusion reign, then the light dawned and a sudden chill washed through him from the inside out. "Jesus, Treize…." he moaned helplessly as he realised what his friend was saying. " How could you do that?"
The younger man gave a dismissive shrug, his gaze going back to the darkening sky and the grounds of the palace. "It was familiar coin, at least," he offered quietly.
If that was supposed to make the King feel better, it failed miserably. "Jesus!" Zechs said again, and pushed himself to his feet with a snap. He paced across the width of the room swiftly, his footfalls silent on the thick carpet, swamped by the feeling that he absolutely had to move or risk lashing out at exactly the wrong person.
Zechs had never been unobservant, even as a young boy. He'd known from before his tenth birthday that there was something about the workings of the shadowy Romefeller organisation his friend wasn't sharing with him – known, too, that there was some reason Treize had been so adamant in his refusal of membership for Zechs, beyond his insistence that it wasn't safe – but he'd never been able to get the older boy to tell him exactly what. He'd known he was being protected, but what from had been a mystery.
In what he recognised now as a fit of wilful stupidity, he hadn't figured it out even after he and Treize became intimate. He'd thrown fit after fit at the commander over the years, driven to distraction by the fact that, no matter what he said or did, Treize never seemed to consider him worth any degree of faithfulness. Time after time, he'd stood back and watched as his commander flirted with others, drawing them in with his smile and his charm and the promise of his body, watched the older man leave balls and conferences and dinners with his head bent close to another's, his arm around a slender waist or a strong shoulder. He'd become used to letting himself into the older man's rooms of an evening to find him in the shower washing away the marks of another partner; he'd learned to accept Treize coming to bed in the middle of the night, his skin holding the musk of sex and the lingering taint of a woman's perfume or another man's cologne.
And he'd hated it.
He'd lost count of the number of times he'd flown into a rage at his friend, cursing and insulting him, only infuriated more when Treize nodded his agreement placidly and asked him to calm down, his eyes sad and his smile tremulous. So often, he'd left the bed or the room in his anger, tossing furious invective over his shoulder and ignoring Treize's soft pleas for him to stay.
By the time he'd realised the truth of what had been happening, that Treize had traded his body and his bed for influence and power, first on the instructions of his Uncle Dermail, later on his own recognizance, the general had, apparently, been dead for over a year. It had been Dorothy who had told him that such bartering was the stock-in-trade of the Romefeller Foundation, the youth and beauty of the new generation in return for the favour of the old. She'd slapped him soundly for his disgust when he'd learned that Treize had used, not only himself, but both Une and Dorothy as well, mercilessly, and refused to speak to him for several years, leaving Une to make him see that their former commander had been given no other option.
Zechs had come, in the years since, to understand why Treize had done it, but it seemed he'd underestimated how far the other man had taken it, and he'd never known how it had been borne.
A quiet noise behind him made the King turn back to the window.
Treize was looking at him steadily, his eyes shadowed and his smile weak. "You have no idea," he said softly, "how very glad I am that you can still ask me that."
Zechs blinked, caught off-guard. For a moment, the twenty-five years he'd lived without his friend melted away and he found himself feeling young and naïve again in the face of the other man's jaded knowledge.
The sensation faded as Treize winced, closing his eyes as he put a hand to his temples again. "Gods, it's been a long day," he sighed.
"Admittedly," Zechs agreed after a slight pause. He took a step back across the room towards the red head and perched himself on the edge of the bed again. "I have something in my rooms that might clear that headache," he offered. "I'll go and get it in a minute, if you like?"
"Please?" Treize asked. "It's not all that bad but it's driving me to distraction," he confessed.
Zechs gestured his understanding. "The proverbial straw, probably," he suggested. "You have enough to deal with without feeling rough physically. You most likely wouldn't even notice it on any other day. Is that why you came up here?" he asked. "I know you told Felix you weren't feeling well, but he rather thought you were saying it simply as an excuse."
The younger man shrugged emptily. "Partly," he replied, but he didn't elaborate further. "Why did you come up here?" he asked in turn. "Were you just chasing me down?"
The King smiled. "Actually, no," he said. "I came to find out if you were planning to join us for dinner. I meant to tell you about this earlier but the whole family eats dinner together, unless one of us has a prior engagement. Breakfast and lunch are catch as catch can, but we've always made a point of getting together in the evenings." He gestured lightly. "A habit we got into for the sake of the children, mainly, and just never got out of. Seven sharp, every night, and no excuses!" he teased.
"I thought it would be a good chance for you to meet everyone properly," the King explained, when Treize didn't return his smile, "but if you aren't feeling up to it, I can have someone bring a tray up here for you. The family will understand if you're too tired, I promise."
For a few seconds Treize looked at Zechs warily, and the blond was sure he was going to refuse, then the younger man nodded his consent slowly. "No," he said. "I'm all right and I suppose I should at least make an effort to say hello. I'll be fine if you can find me something for my head."
The King smiled warmly. "Done. Come on, then," he instructed and held out his hand as he stood up.