By silent mutual agreement, neither man suggested returning 'home' until it was almost dark. It was cold by now, quite cold, and Duke slouched down in the cracked vinyl seat, tugging his jacket tightly around his chest. Tristan flipped the turn signal as he braked to ease into a gas station, and darted a glance at the other man before he turned the truck. The thinness of the ribcage between the arms wrapped around Duke's body reminded him of that shocked first moment of seeing him again in the shower. And for once, his own body didn't nudge him in reply.
Duke was just so small. He'd lost so much weight this year, and it bothered Tristan. He knew his best friend inside out – the separation between last winter and this was a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of time they'd spent together, and he knew with surety that the other man was too concerned about his own good looks to just 'forget' about taking care of himself unless something was very, very wrong.
He pulled up in front of the nearest empty pump and turned the engine off. Duke stirred from his meditation on the dashboard, looking up as Tristan stepped out and slammed the truck door closed behind him.
It was bitterly cold, with a breeze stirring the loose tendrils of Tristan's hair and the tails of his coat every few seconds until his cheeks and the knuckles of his hands ached with cold. The pale halogen wash of the lights overhead seemed to make the place colder, and isolated the gas station from the rest of the chilly night as the sky deepened into ruby on the blackened western skyline.
With the barrier of metal and glass separating him from Duke, Tristan felt like he could really think. He pried open the gas cap and set it on the sidewall of the truck bed, and reached for the nozzle of unleaded.
What had happened that threw Duke for such a loop? It couldn't have been Tristan's departure. It was conceited to think that any of his problems were Tristan's fault – the man was an adult, stubborn and independent, and entirely capable of caring for himself. So it couldn't have been Kaiba's fault, either. Could it?
He hadn't heard of Pegasus dying recently, Tristan thought with an inward smirk. But that still left a lot of ground to cover, and the rising sound bubbling within the gas tank signaled that it was nearly full. Irritated that the puzzle continued to elude him, he didn't notice when his cab light flicked on, or the body shifting across the cracked vinyl bench seat. Only the regular thud of someone handling the window crank broke him from his study of the nozzle feeding into his truck, and he looked up to see Duke folding his elbows on the edge of his open window, leaning out to smile at him.
"How's it going?"
"Almost done. Hey, it's cold and you've just got a jacket on, get back in there before you freeze to death."
"I couldn't sit there and watch you scowl any longer."
"Eh?" Tristan hadn't realized until just then how deeply he was frowning, feeling the muscles ease when his face relaxed. "I was just thinking."
"I guessed. What about?"
"Why did you decide to come here? Leave Japan, I mean," Tristan clarified when Duke offered him a 'well, duh' expression. At the question, Duke's eyebrows lowered to normal heights, face gone impassive as he thought about the answer. That alone surprised Tristan. It seemed that this day in one another's company crystallized something lost a year ago. Whatever had been holding Duke at bay yesterday was gone. Making love on the bathroom floor helped? The little voice supplied. As Duke was still thinking, Tristan allowed and thoroughly enjoyed the little spike of arousal at that memory. He still felt more than a little chagrined over the way it had happened, but - hell, life wasn't all Bon Jovi ballads.
"I don't know," Duke replied, at last, and folded his hands before him, studying them instead of Tristan's upturned, listening face. "Part of it was to see you again, and part of it was to get away from Kaiba, but that wasn't all of it, I guess. When my father died, I didn't know what to do with myself, and nobody seemed to know what to do with me, either."
Tristan, still too stunned by the sudden revelation of his friend's father's death to speak, simply nodded. The handle of the gas nozzle snapped. He ignored it. Duke hadn't looked up, and so simply took his silence for disinterest.
"I know, I'm such a bottle of angst, aren't I?" His tone grew sarcastic. "Sorry, I shouldn't dump all of that stuff on you, but hey, you asked."
"I was listening, Dev."
"Oh."
Silence hung awkwardly for a moment or two, before Tristan leaned over to pull the nozzle out of the gas tank and put it back in its holster. Duke was still watching him. He turned the cap on the tank until it snapped, and looked up. "Dig fifty cents out of the ashtray for me, would you?"
"The ashtray?"
"I don't smoke – there's change in the – oh, never mind." He pulled open the door and leaned right over Duke's lap, ignoring the other's startled inquiries. He flicked open the ashtray in the dash and retrieved a pair of quarters. A long, slender hand dropped over the back of his neck. The breeze stealing under the collar of his coat had chilled his skin, and Duke's palm felt like fire. "Tell me the rest of it tonight, okay?" He asked, softly. Without waiting for a reply, Tristan drew back and closed the door again, turning toward the station as he drew his wallet out of his back pocket.
He missed the softly stammered "y…yeah…" in the darkened cab of the truck.
The guy at the counter was a friend of his, and grinned at him while he rang up Tristan's change. His hair was shockingly red against his white attendant's shirt. Freckles sanded his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, making the poor man look ridiculously sixteen, although he was Tristan's age. "Hiya, Taylor."
"Hey Rick," Tristan replied, in relatively unaccented English, "what's new?" On impulse, he snatched one of the brightly-colored gum packages from underneath the front of the counter and slid it across the top. Cinnamon. Duke had a thing for cinnamon gum.
"Not much," Rick replied, as he rang up the extra eighty cents and added it to Tristan's tab. He thrust his head sideways toward the pumps outside, and Tristan's truck, where Duke leaned with his chin on his folded arms on the open driver's side window. "Looks like you've got something new going down, though."
"Heh. Sort of, yes."
"New girlfriend?"
The two quarters from the ashtray clattered from Tristan's fist to the counter as his fingers spasmed.
"Not exactly," He replied as evenly as he could manage.
Rick's friendly grin turned into a knowing smirk at the slight jump in his voice. "Oh yeah? Hey, I gotcha. Here's your change." He handed Tristan back the leftover bills and change with a chuckle. "Got anything planned for this weekend?"
"Well…"
"Besides that, ya pervert," The attendant snickered, mistaking Tristan's reticence for an admission about the 'girl' parked in the cab of his truck.
"No…?"
"Good, 'cause there's supposed to be snow in the forecast for Saturday. Me and the guys are all gonna drag out the four-wheelers if it does. You in?"
"I don't know, Rick." I can't take off if Kaiba's going to be showing up any day…but it's the holiday season, he'll have trouble getting here even if he has his own private jet. We'll have a few days, maybe.
"You can bring your girlfriend along if you want." Rick teased.
Tristan carefully avoided the urge to snort. "Could I bring a friend instead?"
"Sure, don't see why not." Rick picked up the package of cinnamon gum and flipped it at Tristan, who caught it neatly. "If there's four inches down by morning, I'll call you."
"Right," Tristan agreed, pocketing the gum and his change, and waved without looking back as he pushed out the door and back into the biting cold. To be honest, it felt like snow. Clouds hung thick and sluggish over Amarillo, burning with a few final shots of red from the setting sun.
"Got any plans this weekend?" He asked Duke when he got back to the truck.
Duke slid back across the seat. "No, why?"
"Fuck, it's cold! Why didn't you turn the truck on? And if it snows, I'll tell you." Tristan grinned a little, pulling the door shut behind him. He bent to roll the window back up, when a warm body slid up against his right side. He turned to look at his friend, and warm lips slanted over his, fingers threading against the nape of his neck to make the most of the element of surprise.
"I'll tell you everything, Tristan," Duke breathed when he drew back, exhaling in soft white puffs that vanished in an instant. "I should have, first. But when I saw you, I just…"
"I understand." Tristan couldn't think of a single clever thing to say.
"No, you don't. You think you do," The dark-haired man's pale face flickered with amusement in the light filtering through the windshield, "you always try so hard."
"It's what I'm good at." Tristan leaned away to turn the ignition over before they both froze.
"I never doubted that for a moment, Tris." Duke refused to relinquish his position at the other man's side, as they pulled away from the station and turned into the street. Blessed warmth from the vents roared over their skins, and they rode the rest of the way home in amiable silence.
It wasn't like it had been when they were teenagers, Tristan mused. Back then, if Tristan could have afforded a truck, Duke probably would have been all over him, distracting him, poking nimble fingers into his fly. The playfulness was still there beneath the surface, but maturity took away the nervous drive to impress each other. It felt good. What were married people bitching about?
Duke asked him to make love as soon as the engine was turned off and the garage door closed, and they barely made it into bed. The tussle that followed was as much a means to chase off their mutual fears as ward off the cold that seeped into their bones from the trip. Duke was even more tactile than Tristan remembered, fingertips everywhere, as though he were committing Tristan's body to memory, or realigning old memories of his lover with this stranger reclaimed a year later. Tristan tried not to touch the prominent ridges of his ribs.
Dozing under the thick – clean– comforter with Duke sleeping just a comfortable arm's length away was so familiar that for a moment, it felt like the last year hadn't happened. A deep part of Tristan's mind was still awake, however, and fretted silently that it had happened, whether they liked it or not, and in a precious few days, Kaiba would make him painfully aware of that fact.
Coffee brown eyes widened a touch at the thought. What was he going to do? Duke – clever bastard – had managed to get away without telling him a single thing yet. Maybe it was unintentional. More likely, Tristan mused, it was Duke's reflexive evasive maneuvers kicking in. If he was uncomfortable, Duke Devlin found a way out without even thinking about it – he'd admitted as much before. But now they were a few hours closer to meeting Duke's ex, and Tristan hadn't gotten anywhere.
Duke rolled over just then, throwing a sleep-warm arm over Tristan's chest.
No, it wasn't true. He had gotten somewhere. And as much as his sense of propriety screamed at him, bedamned if he was letting it get the better of him the way it had the morning before. His fingers plucked through the full, slick tangle of Duke's hair, smiling when the touch elicited a sleepy murmur. The hand gently curled against his chest flattened, stroking down his stomach. Tristan looked down, and half-lidded, drowsy kitten eyes peeped up at him. He'd forgotten just how shockingly green Duke's eyes were.
"Hey," Duke grunted. Which - Tristan recalled fondly - was about all he could usually expect from the man, post-coitus.
"Hi there. Nice dreams?"
"Mm." Duke stretched until his shoulders popped and shifted under the sheets with a rustle of cotton until he was draped over the other like a living blanket. "Know what?"
"What?"
"I forgot to tell you something I was going to tell you. Before I forgot."
"Dev, you're still asleep," Tristan's voice was gentle with amusement.
"I am not."
"Then who am I?"
"Tristan," and as an afterthought, "Queen of Texas."
"Shut up," Tristan chuckled, circling his waist with his arms and pulling him down flush. He hadn't had anyone to share his bed for a very long time, and the touch of skin was missed.
"…I want to tell you now." Duke murmured into the crook of his shoulder. Tristan was immediately awake. He couldn't mistake the heavy tone; how the room quieted around the words. Tristan heard a soft tick against the glass of his bedroom window, followed by another, and then many at once. The predicted snowfall was coming down outside, filtering the wan light spilling on Duke's profile.
Tristan soothed the nape of his neck with blunt, callused fingertips, stroking the thick tangle of dark hair away from the fragile skin there, and waited.
Duke knew Tristan had always been quite verbal when they were younger, grumbling, groaning, muttering under his breath. He defied the 'strong and silent' personality that his appearance decreed. But Tristan had never quite grasped the finer points of understanding and talking about feeling, never quite figured out how to offer comfort with words. His silences were truly the most telling; the awkward moments when he could find nothing to say, said the most. Tristan waited quietly for the other's next words, and drawing back to look into the attentive dark eyes turned up to him, Duke realized that he'd forgotten how to 'listen' to Tristan.
"My father died six months after you left – you left in March, Serenity said," He began uncertainly, "I didn't know what to do – nobody else was there to help with the funeral, and I didn'twant to deal with it. Seto really came through with that. He took care of everything."
"If you'd called me, I'd have come back to help." Six months after Tristan left, he was working part-time in a Harley-Davidson retail store in a map dot city in Iowa, and nursing a broken heart by himself. He knew exactly what his ex-lover's father had done to him. He remembered cleaning up a bruised and broken teenage Duke when he'd pick fights for the sheer hell of it, just as Tristan and Joey had done before Yugi turned their comfortable little world inside out. If Duke had called him, he would have come home. Duke shook his head a little against the warm breadth of Tristan's chest.
"It wouldn't have mattered. I had Dungeon Dice Monsters. Final production was a nightmare. I had to practically hold the marketing department's fucking for the prerelease, then the graphic designers had the balls to get precious over the box art for my fucking game. Shipping dates pushed back about six times because of the manufacturer - you wouldn't think that twelve injection-molded monsters would be so hard to manage, would you? And meanwhile, I had Kaibacorp stockholders to talk down off the ledge."
"What?"
"…I had to convince them that I wasn't just some silly little whore their CEO was backing for sexual favors."
That stung, even now. Tristan knew that part of the story, but it still hurt to hear it. He lapsed into silence again. Duke went on, unaware of the change.
"After he was in the ground, I started to wonder about things. What if things had been different? What if Mom had still been alive? And the things he did to me. What if I never got past them?"
"Dev, he can't…"
"Why was it so easy for me to leave you?" Duke cut off Tristan's protest, "After nine years together, why did it just take a few words from Seto to make me leave you?"
There was no response, though Tristan's hands went stiff against Duke's shoulders.
"He told me that you were just using me, Tristan."
"And you believed him?" Tristan demanded angrily.
"Well…"
Now the silence surrounding Tristan was leaden. Recoiling, Duke pulled away from him, kneeling within arm's length with a careless disregard for his own nudity. "Did you think I could take the things I did and just trust the first person I fell in love with like that?" Duke snapped his fingers for emphasis.
"You never trusted me?" Anger dissolved in a sharp pang of sullen hurt. For not knowing how to communicate feelings, Tristan surely ran the gamut. He lay half on his side, the wave of his hair matted against his head, one hand stretched open on the sheets, halted halfway in its reach toward the other man in his bed. Cold air seemed to seep into the room from under the sill of the window at Duke's back, stealing the golden warmth and driving the snow-filtered light into shades of blue.
"I trusted you more than you know. But deep down, I've always worried that maybe you were just used to me."
"There's no 'being used to you,' Dev," Tristan protested in an exasperated tone.
"People have screwed me all my life. It gets to be a pattern after a while." Duke's slender silhouette, outlined against the window, took on an uncomfortable resonance. Tristan had been in this same place before. Just like then, Duke led him through a dance he didn't understand.
"Not everybody," he tried to reassure.
"I know," Duke sounded unconvinced, but nevertheless lay down again, missing the skip of relief in Tristan's chest when he allowed the larger man to wrap his arms around him again. The quiet closed over them like the blankets, and the little space of air between their bodies warmed again.
"It got to be a game,"
"Hmm…?" Tristan replied sleepily, having just been on the edge of dozing again when the low husky voice touched his ears.
"Seto and I. It was all right at first. I wanted someone to take care of me." The admission was tinged with guilt there, "and he was there, and offering. But when I came out of it – you know what I'm like – I don't think he knew what to do with me."
"You're not an easy person to live with." Tristan agreed. He rubbed the corners of his eyes. Duke poked him in the ribs under the covers, but relented.
"We argued all the time. I wasn't taking care of myself, and he wanted to know why, and when I told him, he didn't take me seriously."
"Why weren't you?"
"The… therapist said it was because I didn't want to let Dad run my life anymore. I don't know if I believe that, but I just nodded and took the Blue Pill, right? Seto just couldn't seem to get that fathers aren't supposed to do that kind of thing to their kids. But with his dad? I guess I can kind of understand."
"You went to a therapist?"
"Work." It didn't need much more of an explanation, paired with a listless shrug of one shoulder. Duke had a lot of concerns that Tristan would probably never have, considering that the bikes Tristan produced didn't depend so much on marketing and age groups as it did on offering a quality product and building a client base. His advertisement was more by word of mouth than newspaper and radio, and he was just starting to do all right for himself. But in the beginning, being new to the game and a foreigner, it had been hard enough to make him appreciate the one-word explanation. His grip tightened around Duke's waist. He was gratified to feel the line of the other's shoulders softening against his chest. Duke went on.
"I'm better. With Seto it started to feel fake, like we were just playing at being in love, and I could still remember what it was like between you and I. Tris, sometimes I think... you're the only thing that's real."
Tristan didn't know what to say to that, but he didn't really have to. Like it had been on the mesa, and at the window in Domino a year ago, and time and time again before that, Duke leaned back just a little into Tristan's arms. The support had been there all along. But like always, he could never see it.
Tristan breathed in the scent of his hair, and closed his eyes.