Hey, I'm back with another chapter, yessuh! It would've been out sooner, but I had a busy week with play production and all, and I had to do some research on Trowa's meal plan. Thank you, Frugal Gourmet! It's a long chapter, so savor the flavor, and please review. If not for my sake, then for Mr. Rogers'.

Last Time: Lia and Quatre had a whirlwind mall excursion. Money was spent like water, and people are starting to wonder: does Quatre have mono? Hmmm…

++

            If being a Winner wasn't a big enough parody of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, it was about to go full scale. Rupert went off to church, under the obligation of having to usher, while the "sorority of psychos" as Duo had once dubbed them, chose to stay home and primp Quatre for his "date." It was like watching Rocky and one of those Learning Channel makeover shows with picture-in-picture; one minute Quatre was being forced to take a 10K jog with Iria, the next, Amyra was soaking his nails and poking him with a cuticle stick. They at least let him change in private, but then gave him a full and thorough inspection upon leaving his room, criticizing the color of his belt, the comfortable leather shoes he'd planned on wearing, right down to his underwear, as if the tartan pattern of his boxer shorts would make or break the date.

            "It's casual lunch, not my wedding, you lunatics!" he wailed as Clio rifled through his half of the medicine cabinet, trying to find an appropriate cologne. She pouted, uncorking various bottles and giving them a judgmental sniff.

            "Ew, Quatre, all of your cologne smells like old men at a bingo parlor! God, no wonder you can't get a date, your stink drives them off," she declared, misting him with Bath & Body Works spray that apparently smelled like twilight. Quatre just thought it smelled like the thirty other scents in the store and there was no real differentiation. Kali even went as far as to put makeup on him, which he vehemently protested.

            "Quatre, honey, quit squirming. It's just a little eyeliner to make those baby blues of yours really stand out. If you don't quit moving, I'm going to stab your eyeball and then you'll have to go to lunch wearing an eye patch. Clio, what do you think about his lips? Ice Princess or Sun Goddess?"

            "Mm, go with Coral Kiss. You know what they say, coral goes with everyone."

Okay, forget the makeover show, Quatre mused, this was straight out of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and he was the "Sweet Transvestite."

Madiha ambled over with a jar of hair sculpting…goop…at that point the blonde boy tied down to the computer chair wouldn't have cared if it was strawberry jam, and proceeded to tousle his hair, rubbing the sculpting medium into the strands for that adorable "just rolled out of bed" look. The stuff felt like Crisco and smelled like Noxzema, which incidentally has this odd hickory-smoked bacon stench, and probably wasn't doing anything but giving him a hideous cowlick.

            "Girls, I think we've done it," Iria declared, scrutinizing her baby brother.

Amyra grinned wickedly. "From frog…to princess!"

Quatre would've folded his arms across his chest and glared, had his arms not been tied down with a length of leftover clothesline cord and his eyes glued open with…

            "Hey, did you put mascara on me?!"

Kali shrugged. "Maybe just a little. But it was the clear kind, promise. Take a look, Quatre, what do you think?"

Clio untied the thick knot, the rope falling to the fuzzy bathroom rug. Quatre didn't even bother with the mirror on the medicine cabinet, he needed the real deal. He marched straight into his father's room, flipping on the bright overhead lights and standing directly in front of the large vanity mirror hanging over the bureau.

            "Oh. My. God," he said, complete and utter shock punctuating each word. "That's not me, is it?"

Madiha cringed. "Quatre, we can fix it if you really hate it that much. I mean, it washes off…"

"No! I don't mean that in a bad way…more like…" He examined himself from every angle, making flirty poses as if he were strutting down a catwalk in the New York fashion district. "Well, as Hilde would say, hot damn!"

He'd worried that he would end up looking like the effeminate star of some gay porn movie, the willowy lover some bronzed beefcake lusted after. In truth, he looked like one of the cardboard props set up in the window of the American Eagle…only gayer. Maybe more the look of the sweet to the eye but definitely naughty yaoi manga character. He would have used Tohma from Gravitation as his example, but his sisters were totally clueless about such things. He was even considering to go with a "fuckable" on the Duo Maxwell scale.

"It's a little after twelve…" Iria stated, checking her watch. "I think we should hop on the Internet and get directions to this house of his, and then pick up flowers or something…you know what Dad says…"

"Never go empty-handed!" the other four girls chimed in chorus.

Quatre just sighed, flexing his fingers nervously. Casual or not, he was still nervous as all hell. He'd woken up several times during the night worrying about lunch and Trowa…especially Trowa. He'd had nightmares of trying to get close to the Italian boy and being not only reviled, but getting the shit beaten out of him. And he could remember, even now, hours after those dreams had faded with the bright dawn, seeing Trowa's brilliant green eyes full of hatred and disgust. He kept telling himself it would be all right, clinging to some random stuffed animal he found wedged between the radiator and the bed frame. But there was still a nagging voice that kept reminding him that this wasn't some shounen-ai fanfic posted on the Internet, where if he just waited a few chapters and strained his eyes a little longer, there would be a happy ending and the two boys would have hot, steamy fanfic sex and whisper sweet nothings in Japanese, even though neither of them were Japanese. This was real, this was happening now, and he was worrying himself into nausea.

            "Quatre, stop looking like you're going to puke, it's gonna be fine!" Clio chided.

He nodded dumbly, following the parade of girls to the computer to print out directions from some online map site, and then to their car, six blondes marching in a line down the stairs. Had he not been so nervous, Quatre might have made a comment about either the Von Trapps or Make Way for Ducklings.

++

            Each sister gave Quatre a loving kiss and a felicitation as he hopped out of the car, bouquet in hand. He was a little nervous about the flowers, considering one doesn't usually give another boy flowers, but there really wasn't anything else he could think of and besides, his nagging siblings prodded him until he went ahead and bought them. They watched him like spectators at some sporting event as he slowly made his way up the front walk, trying not to bite his lip and feeling like a complete idiot. The door opened before he even got to the stoop, Trowa standing there with a warm smile and a brief wave to the meddling sisters still sitting in the driveway.

            He was wearing a pair of stonewashed jeans, no shoes, and what looked like a motorcross jersey but was actually the replica of the flight suits worn in Gundam Wing. Not only did Trowa look absolutely hot, but he was racking up Brownie Points as well.

            "Hello, Katore," he said, extending a hand. Quatre had to do some quick maneuvering of his flowers to free his own hand, but managed to accomplish this without looking stupid. He greeted his host and offered the bouquet, a blush creeping into his cheeks.

            "Um, these are for you. Kind of stupid, I know, but my sisters kept telling me not to come empty-handed so…yeah," he stated. Trowa smiled, genuinely smiled, and thanked him kindly. Quatre was just glad he didn't give him any odd looks or start hitting him about the head and face with the calla lilies, orchids, and birds-of-paradise.

            "Come on in, put your shoes somewhere, make yourself comfortable," Trowa instructed, waving his arm as he headed towards the kitchen with his flowers. Quatre followed, pausing only long enough to toe his shoes off and nudge them up against the wall. He glanced up at Trowa's back, grinning when he read the 03:Triton Bloom printed on his jersey, as Bloom was his favorite pilot of all times. When he got in the kitchen, Trowa was filling a wide glass vase and arranging the flowers as best as he could.

            "Lunch might take a little longer than I expected, Katore," he remarked sheepishly, carefully setting the vase down on the kitchen table. "My family said they had pasta, so I look, and I find this."

The green-eyed young man held up a box of Barilla spaghetti, glaring at it with disgust.

            "This is not pasta, this is what you keep in the pantry in case you have no food and no power in the middle of a storm. So, I made my own, because if I didn't, I would have shamed twenty generations of Bartons. My nonna would have wept and then slapped my hands with a wooden spoon, she made her pasta from scratch every day since she could stand up."

Quatre gazed at him admirably. "I just think it's incredible that you know how to make your own pasta. I don't think I could do it."

            "It's really very easy, people just don't take the time to do it. We Italians, we take the time. My mama will spend her whole day cooking, just for one meal."

He gestured to the table, pulling out a chair for Quatre and then sitting himself, leaning on his elbows. "In Italy, we have one very big meal a day, several courses, a lot of food for a lot of people. This is…the slightly cheaper version. You don't mind?"

            "I'm looking forward to it already. You'll have to teach me how to cook like you do, so I can show off to my sisters. They can't even boil water without causing a disaster, which is probably why they're all still living at home," Quatre sighed.

Trowa laughed, brushing the thick fringe of russet hair away from his face.

            "My mama would die! She's always saying, 'Catherine, if you wanna find you a husband, you gonna have to be a good cook!' And so she teaches my sister to cook since she was very small and less annoying. But, ah, what Catherine did, I had to do. If she fed the goats then I would feed the goats. If she learned how to cook, then I did too. Mama would put stools by the counter so we could watch, and so I learned."

If it hadn't been glaringly obvious before, it was now. Quatre was most definitely, undeniably and completely head-over-heels in love.

            The brunette got up for a moment, setting a glass plate on the table and wandering around the kitchen stirring things and sticking his head in the oven before returning. Quatre was eyeing the plate, upon which juicy slices of tomato and what might be cheese were swimming in undoubtedly olive oil and herbs, though they were elegantly swimming and tastefully arranged.

            "What's this, Trowa?" he asked, not daring to touch any of it.

            "A little antipasto. It's supposed to be very big, lots of different food, but it's a lot for two people. This is just some tomato and fresh mozzarella, a little olive oil and vinegar dressing, and some oregano."

It looked incredible and tasted even better, sweet and tart and tangy all at once, and Quatre was determined to either marry this man or at least hire him as a personal chef.

            "Mm, it's wicked good," he said around a mouthful of mozzarella. "Mm, I was kind of surprised at how well you speak English. Have you been taking classes for a long time?"

Trowa nodded, olive oil dripping down his fingers. "We start learning English in kindergarten, so that we are practically fluent in it by the time you get to be my age. I was hoping they'd make a mistake someday and teach something like Japanese instead."

            "I've always wanted to learn Japanese, that way I can understand what Heero is saying when he's mad at people. He'll just start talking like a mile a minute, and then suddenly stop, like he hasn't spoken at all in the past half hour. They don't even let us learn Spanish or French until we're in junior high, but I took Latin instead because my sixth grade teacher said it was a good idea."

            "Spanish and French are overrated. Latin at least is Italian," Trowa replied, winking. Quatre blushed again, unsure if the transfer student was flirting or just being clever. Either way, damn, was it sexy! "So, Katore, what is your family like?"

            "Crazy," he admitted. "At my house, it's just my dad and my sisters and me, but my dad's business partners are sort of family too, so we have a lot of cousins. A lot. And all of their families, so family get-togethers are big, and loud, and wild…you can't turn around without getting hugged by another burly Arabian man or have some woman tell you you're too skinny and shove a stuffed grape leaf in your mouth!"

            "Then you'd fit right in with my family. Only difference is we're big, loud and Italian, even worse!" he glanced out the window over the sink, his expression becoming brooding. "It's going to rain. Ah well, nothing big, not like I was taking you out for a motorcycle ride or anything."

            "Motorcycle?" Quatre chirped.

            "My father's a mechanic, he restored an old Gestapo bike for my birthday. She's a little heavy and clunky, but Heavyarms, she's all right." The oven timer started pinging, and Trowa once again headed for the oven. The kitchen was redolent with garlic and the smell of melted butter. Quatre watched with amusement as the tall young man clattered around the fairly small kitchen space, dropping lids and occasionally burning fingers, which came with a string of colorful foreign cursing. In fact, after he'd successfully burnt all of his fingers pulling together lunch, Trowa had sworn in at least half of all languages spoken in Europe and got a few Russian and Slovak ones in as well.

            Quatre picked up his glass from the table and helped himself to the water dispenser thing on the refrigerator door, sitting again just as a very burnt and flustered Trowa slid a pair of dishes down.

            "Pasta primavera, Barton family recipe," he said breathlessly. "Now I know how those Japanese men feel, only without the squid brains, eh?"

Quatre giggled absurdly behind his hand. "Oh, it has such a delicate flavor, I just love the way it has been subtly brought out by the squid ink sauce," he mimicked in a high voice, imitating the perky little Japanese actresses so badly dubbed on the Iron Chef. But in all seriousness, the pasta was incredible, as was the authentic garlic bread, as opposed to the cheap variety one gets from the Stop & Shop baked goods aisle. The company was just as wonderful; the entire meal spent relating stories of childhood and laughing over some of the ridiculous anecdotes that were batted around.

            "Oh God, I'm stuffed! I think if I eat any more, I'll explode!" Quatre gasped, his fork clattering to the table after the pasta was just a fond memory. "That was…amazing."

Trowa smiled. "Wait until you try the gelato later. I have a couple of movies, if you're interested. Nothing really great, the Blockbuster was picked clean by the time my American parents took me, but it's more than we have back home. We have the smallest movie store in our town, there are maybe twelve movies in the whole store."

            The blonde laughed, setting his dishes in the sink and following the other young man into the living room, flopping down onto the couch and taking up a melodramatic and very languid position as Trowa sifted through the three or four DVD boxes.

            "Ah, these are Sylvia's movies…I go to get movies for us, and Sylvia, she picks out for her! She isn't even home this weekend; she's visiting her grandmother! And where are…aha! Well, Katore, we have Sylvia's boring movies, and we have the one movie I found…have you seen it yet?" he asked, tossing the plastic case at the reclining teen. Quatre stared at the box with wide aqua eyes.

            "Holy…Trowa! You got a copy of Gundam Wing: Perfect Blue Edition?! Do you know how long I've been trying to find this movie? Perfect Blue is the only one I haven't seen and I've been dying to find it!" he yelped, tossing the case as if it were suddenly white-hot. The brunette chuckled, picking it up off the coffee table and placing the disc in the DVD player.

            "Then we'll watch. I have not seen it yet, it should be good, I think. This is the one they promised romance in, yes?" he asked, settling down on the couch next to Quatre and flipping on the surround-sound speakers. They attempted to divulge the pairings in the series by skipping to the directors' comments first, but the team of Japanese animators refused to reveal any information, laughing at the foolish kids who had skipped right to the directors' commentaries to see which pairings were included.

            "Stupid Japanese. Why do they have to be so clever?" Quatre grumbled through the theme song and opening montage, glad that the animators had included a decent opening shot of Triton for once. He always seemed to be making some odd pose.

            "As long as it is Triton and Raberba together," Trowa added.

            "Really? You're a Triton-Raberba fan?" he replied, slightly taken aback. Trowa did not seem like the shounen-ai fanboy type at all. "Wow, I totally didn't see you as a shounen-ai kind of person."

Green eyes glanced over at him briefly, an unreadable expression in them, the brilliant jade suddenly smoky. "And you, Katore?"

            "Oh yeah, I definitely agree! I mean, not even Lena Peacecraft has as much devotion as Raberba has for Triton. How many episodes was he searching after the ZERO incident?" he answered immediately, blushing. Was this an undeclared statement of homosexuality, or just casual conversation? What the hell was going on? Did Trowa like him that way, were they just friends? And why was Meiran Long hovering around Odin Lowe and Solo? There were just more questions than there were answers, and Quatre was starting to feel rather frustrated. He knew not to push the issue, but he was dying to know what to do, other than sit back and enjoy Gundam Wing in all its subtitled glory, sprawled on a couch with a hot Italian, stuffed to explosion with the best food he'd ever eaten. Life was starting to suck again.

++

            Trowa and Quatre stared open-mouthed at the television screen as the credits rolled, Lena Peacecraft dancing behind the white lines of Japanese text. Not a single sound passed between the two of them, the only noise in the room the song that was blasting from the speakers. It took Quatre maybe three minutes before he realized that yes, he had a tongue and yes, it could function because, no, it was not in Trowa's mouth at that point in time, nor had it been at any point in time other than a few illicit dreams.

            "I can't believe they ended it like that. It was incredible. I mean, well…wow!"

Trowa nodded, cracking his knuckles idly. "Triton and Raberba got more film time than I thought. I figured it would be mostly Odin Lowe."

            "Me too. I'm still surprised that they didn't pair Lena off with Odin; I thought they would, you know, the stoic pilot and the princess scenario. But Meiran and Milliardo? Didn't see that one coming by a long shot. I was expecting her to end up with Doctor Lien."

Just then Fur Elise began a tinny rendition in Quatre's pocket, and he dejectedly whipped out his cell phone, engaged in a terse conversation, and shut it off. He glanced at it broodingly, then down at his socked feet, and back up at Trowa.

            "Looks like I'll have to take a raincheck on that gelato. That was my sisters; they're coming to pick me up in five minutes. We're going into Boston to have dinner with my uncle and some of the members of the Winner Enterprises board. Sorry," he said gloomily.

            "It's all right, don't worry about it. We'll just plan another time, do just dessert. I make a pretty mean cannoli," Trowa responded, walking him to the door. Quatre tossed on his shoes quickly, wondering just how long five minutes would be. Apparently, in the Winner International Time Zone, five minutes actually meant about thirty seconds. A bevy of blondes, and the one brunette man, pulled up in a gigantic blue Chevy Tahoe, Rupert leaning his elbow out the open window.

            "There they are. Well, I'll see you in school tomorrow, I guess," Quatre sighed. "Thanks for having me, Trowa. I had a great time."

            "Arrivederci, Katore," he murmured, kissing him lightly on the cheek before opening the door.

Quatre practically floated down the walkway, not even remembering how he managed to get back up into the car. All five sisters leaned over their seats expectantly, smirking with lips dyed with five different shades of lipstick, waiting to hear the full and detailed report of the afternoon's events.

"Well? How did it go?" Rupert asked, glancing back as he backed out of the driveway, nearly clipping a mailbox on the left. Quatre just sat there, smiling stupidly, his fingertips poised on his flushed cheek. It probably meant nothing, the kiss. Trowa was Italian, and wasn't it common for Europeans to kiss their friends? But, at that moment, common logic wasn't worth a flying fig for him, as he continued to grin like an idiot.

"Fine, it was fine. Just…just great."

++

   

Aw, Quatre's in love. Isn't it just so cute? Oh, and hey, thanks to all those people who filled me in on Inu-Yasha, I appreciate it. Giant Robot Week, that was coolies. Speaking of giant robots, thought I'd point out that the Gundam Wing everybody watches in this story is the same thing we all watch in the here and now, just with slightly tweaked characters…since they can't well watch themselves! So, rather than Heero, Duo and the like, we have Odin Lowe and Solo. Nothing has changed to the plot, other than the pilot 05 is a WOMAN! And there is no such thing as Perfect Blue series, it was a cleverly constructed plot device.

Next Time: The Little Theatre gang gets the dirt on the date, and continuity gets thrown right out the window 'cause we're all gonna go see Darkness Falls. Will Quatre survive, and what's more, will he get some full frontal theater snogging? Find out next time, Allegro fans!