Quatre POV
Trowa only managed to try to "earn his keep" one more time again during that trip. With our newly acquired bond I could tell when he was planning to try and sneak away and would stop him, even going as far as to drug him. That first night he snuck away, he was lucky Doc wasn't working late in his lab, because he would have certainly asked what I wanted the chloroform for and found out what Trowa was doing. He probably would have ordered Trowa tied down until his fever broke completely, and I didn't think that would be a good idea. After being tied in the sun like that I doubted that Trowa would be tied down willingly and forcibly restraining him would frighten him.
Over the course of the next few days Trowa continually tried to get out from under my gaze and do something that would be deemed helpful. He would do things like sneak away and fix things, everything from machinery to kitchen appliances. He would clean my room or any other room we were in while I was away. It got to the point where I had to tell him I would be extremely angry if I found him cleaning when I left the room. I had to tell him that every time I left the room, be it for thirty seconds or thirty minutes. The strain of constantly having to watch him was taking its toll on me, but I didn't really mind. I understood where Trowa had come from and knew that he wouldn't be able to adjust easily. Besides, he still slept most of the day, so it wasn't as hard as it could have been.
I also found him stashing away food. Mainly he would take buns or bread and other items that would last a while and hide them under the bed or in a drawer. I confronted him about it, gently, and told him there was no need to hide food on the ship. If he was hungry I could get him something to eat or one of the maganacs would get it for him. He couldn't give me an answer to why he was hiding the food, so I took it away. I was afraid he was going to try and run away. I felt bad about taking away something that was probably just there to make him feel better, but I couldn't take the chance that he'd disappear. I was worried that he might get off the ship, once he was outside of our link there would be no way for me to find him.
As we neared the end of the trip, Trowa became more and more determined to show us that we should keep him. I can't tell you how many time I tried to explain to him that he was not property and we weren't going to "keep" him. He could stay if he wanted or leave if he wanted, but we weren't going to force him either way.
I did manage to keep his mind off of his trouble some of the time, though. I found that Trowa had a love of music and would often take him to listen to my violin. It was also found that Trowa could play the flute, though I was a little wary of the memories it would bring. Trowa told me that the mercs had taught him to play the flute so that he would dance for them. I wasn't sure Trowa would want to play the flute after what the mercs had done to him, but he seemed to enjoy it so we played duets as often as we could. Which wasn't all that often, since Trowa was still ill and the trip from our room to the music room exhausted him. He would often doze off in the armchair and we would eat lunch in that room before attempting to make it back to our own room.
He also liked the birds Doc kept in the medical room. They were small and red, yellow, green, and blue colored. Trowa bonded with them at once and would take them out and have them sit on his finger, which was odd, because they usually didn't like people.
There was only one time on that trip that Trowa really made me mad. It was five or six days into the trip and Trowa was constantly trying to do something helpful. He finally wore himself out and fell asleep, to my delight. Keeping him from doing anything and having to physically restrain him a few times was wearing on me and I was asleep beside him in a few minutes.
I will admit, ashamed as I was about it at the time, that I had a growing attraction for Trowa. I felt bad for thinking about a person so sick in my fantasies and tried to stop myself, but, even with the burns, Trowa was so beautiful. His body was underfed, yes, but my mind put a bit more meat on his bones and removed all the redness from his skin, making him as white as those few patches of skin that hadn't been burnt. But what really haunted my dreams was his eyes. I would see them, hovering over me when I looked up, or below me when I looked down, filled with passion, all the fear that had been there washed away.
I was having what Duo would call a wet dream that night. It had been building for some time and I had done nothing about it. By the time I came awake I was half way through the orgasm and there was nothing I could do about it. I fisted my hands in the sheets and tried to stay quiet, praying that I hadn't woken Trowa.
It was the strongest orgasm I had ever felt. Wave after wave of pleasure rolled over me and I moaned as quietly as I could. When I came the pleasure seared me and I threw my head back but managed not to scream. I would have liked to lay there for a few minutes and rest, but I was so horrified by what I had done right next to Trowa that I forced myself to get up, intent on cleaning the bed and removing the evidence before Trowa could wake.
I sat up and immediately knew there was something wrong, but my foggy mind couldn't pinpoint what. Blearily I looked down to find a tousled head of brown hair hovering over my groin. My shorts were gone, and later I would find them on the floor and wonder if I put them there or he put them there, but I never asked. Trowa looked up, my softening cock slipping form his mouth, and fixed his gaze on me.
The first thing that hit me was astonishment. A sort of, "He didn't!" feeling. The next was anger. How could he think I would want him to do something like that? How could he think that I would want to use him that way? He had forced me to use him, to lower him to the level of whore.
Trowa must have sensed my anger through our link, because he whimpered and lowered his head. For some reason, that made me even madder, that he thought that I would hurt him. Even after all the time I spent with him he still didn't trust me.
I am well aware that my next actions sprang from anger and that they could have turned out very, very badly. When I think about it now I have this horrified feeling in the pit of my stomach, even though I know that I didn't hurt Trowa. I realize that, given the situation, my next actions could have done more harm than good.
I pushed Trowa back against the bed, pinning him down and crawling on top of him. I was so very luck that I had just lathered him with the numbing cream before we went to sleep, or Trowa would have been in agony. As it was, I didn't even remember that Trowa was burnt, I was so filled with anger. Trowa went limp at my hands and I could feel a deep fear and even deeper sadness coming from him.
Trowa had stopped sleeping in shorts soon after he began to recover. The shorts rubbed against his burns and caused some of the skin to come off. It didn't help me any that I was sleeping next to the naked object of my affections, but I had always managed to control myself. Looking back on this incident, I kind of wish Trowa had been wearing shorts. Maybe the extra moment would have let me calm enough to think rationally. Then again, had I not done what I did, things might have turned out even worse later, so I won't presume to mess with fate.
I held Trowa down and pried his thighs apart, not a difficult job since he would do nothing to stop me. Trowa's body tensed as I leaned down and he gasped when I took his member into my mouth. His hands came up and hovered over my head, but eventually settled for fisting themselves in the sheets. I hoped that the mercs had never done this for him, but I doubted they had. They had never seemed to care about Trowa much.
Trowa writhed beneath me, even though I know I was less than adept at what I was doing. Never in my life had I sucked anyone off and I found my first time to be a learning experience. I found that if I relaxed my throat I could take more of him, though I gagged several times in attempting it. I also found that Trowa enjoyed having his balls rubbed while I was sucking him.
It took a few minutes of suckling away on Trowa's member before he orgasmed in my mouth. I coughed and almost choked on it, but managed to swallow a bit, though I did have to catch some with my hand.
Trowa lay breathing hard on the bed. His eyes were hazed with post-orgasmic pleasure and I didn't want to bring him out of that just yet. I didn't want to face what I had done. Instead, I slipped off the bed and into the bathroom, returning with a wet rag to clean him, having already cleaned myself. Once I finished, I returned the rag to the bathroom and sat down on the side of the bed. Most of my anger had faded and, though a bit still remained, I felt bad about what I had done to Trowa. Trowa had began coming back from his haze and I wasn't sure how to deal with him. Luckily, he was the first to speak.
"W-why did you do that?" he asked, his eyes finding my face though I couldn't meet his gaze.
"I... I won't use you like that. You're not a whore, Trowa, not here and not around me. I won't take something that you're only giving out of this screwed up sense of payment. I won't take something you don't want to give. If you want to do that with me you have to want it. It has to be for both of us. If...if I have a relationship with you, it has to be about love, not lust."
We were both quiet for a moment, the silence ate away at me. Then Trowa took my hand and I looked into his eyes.
"Thank you," he told me, then leaned back and closed his eyes, asleep. I wasn't certain what to do, so I simply picked him up and put him back on his side of the bed, then curled up beside him and went to sleep.
The next day, neither of us mentioned what had happened. In a way I was a little disappointed. I wanted Trowa to be angry at me for what I had done, but he wasn't. I suppose it was a good thing I reacted the way I did and that he decided to offer himself to me first. Had he given himself to one of the maganacs like that... they're good people, but one can only take so much. I'm fairly sure that a few of them would have taken him up on his offer, not thinking that he really didn't want to have sex with them. They wouldn't have forced him, but they might not have hesitated to take what was freely given.
It was soon found that we would be a day late to Haven. In my anxiety over the trip I had completely forgotten that there would be a full moon during our trip. Full moons drove the monsters wild. It caused werewolves to become unstable and shift forms uncontrollably, but it also sent ogres and giants into feeding frenzies and caused all sorts of nocturnal creatures to come out. It wasn't safe to move around during a full moon so the maganacs would put the ship into lock-down. The engines would be shut down, the ship grounded, and all doors locked. The hull of the ship was almost a foot thick, there was no way in from the outside.
We set the ship down at dusk in a forest on the border of Russia. It was a shame that we would have to be late a full day when we were only a day away from Haven, but there was nothing we could do. When the full moon rose until it rose the next night all the creatures were under its control, it just wasn't safe to fly or go outside.
From the time Trowa first attempted to help to when we set down for the full moon on the next night, I stopped Trowa from going out a total of eight times. I had to drug him a few of the times he planned to leave when I was out of the room. One wouldn't think that a boy who could barely walk would cause so much trouble, but I was careful not to let my annoyance show. Trowa was so timid and uncertain about everything, anything I said could cause him to panic. Oddly, though, he seemed a little agitated when we set down for the night, we paced the room and was constantly looking to get away. A few times I had to follow our link and track him down only to find him hidden in a closet or some other small space. It was like he was afraid of something. I tried to make him understand that he was safe, but I don't think I got threw to him.
It also irked me that, though we were now linked in the mind, I could feel that he was still keeping something from me. His emotions would go into turmoil when he thought about it, but he never gave a clue as to what it was. It preyed upon my mind as I wondered what his secret could be.
I think I knew something was going to happen that night, even though I didn't know what. Trowa was in and agitated state, his eyes darting around the room nervously. He had been like that for some time and none of my consoling seemed to help. I was starting to think about giving him a sedative, when a wolf howled in the distance and all hell broke loose. Trowa jumped out of his seat, the chair by the bed, and dashed across the room. I tried to grab him, but he knocked me out of the way and ran out the door. Fear radiated off of him as I chased him down the halls.
Night was falling and, though most of the of the maganacs had settled in for an extra long sleep, some were still about. It was inevitable that Trowa would run into someone, racing around the halls like that. I didn't even get to see the man that Trowa pushed out of his way as we raced down the hall, we were moving so fast. Surely Trowa would tire soon and I would be able to catch him, I was amazed he made it so far in his weakened condition.
"Master Quatre!" the man called as I raced down the halls in hot pursuit of Trowa.
"Go get Rasid and Doc!" I yelled over my shoulder, not daring to stop. I was almost out of breath and Trowa was almost out of the ship. There was no where for him to run to unless...
My fear was confirmed as Trowa twisted the locks and threw open the door and raced outside. The locks were made to keep monsters out, not people in. It was suicide to run outside at night with no protection under a full moon.
I didn't hesitate to follow him. The only logical explanation of Trowa's behavior I could think of was that his fever was back up and affecting his thinking. He was my responsibility, I had to get him back to the ship safely or I'd never forgive myself.
The night was foggy and dim. After chasing him a few yards I lost sight of Trowa in the fog and slowed, having no idea where to go. I couldn't even make my way back to the ship for help because I didn't know where I had come from.
"Trowa!" I yelled, hoping he'd hear and come back. "Trowa!" I called again. There was the snap of a twig to my right and I turned that way, though I couldn't see anything.
"Trowa?" I called quietly. The only reply was a sharp growl and I barely had time to jump and fly into a tree before a large, beast jumped at me. From the tree I could see a vaguely furry, apelike creature on the ground. In a second the beast turned and jumped at me. I leaped at another tree but the beast was faster and sank its teeth into my ankle, dragging me to the ground as I reached for a branch of the tree.
We both hit the ground and the beast attacked me with startling force. It tried to bite at my neck, I managed to kick it and it only tore my shoulder. I hit it with my fist as hard as I could but the beast ignored it, like nothing happened. I tried to scratch its eyes with my nails, but only managed to make it mad. It pinned my hands above my head and went to bite my throat out. There was nothing I could do to stop it from killing me.
There was a flash of grey to my left and the beast was suddenly gone from on top of me. I scrambled to my feet and backed away from the fighting pair. My rescuer was a huge grey wolf, as I watched him terrorize the beast his deep green eyes met mine and I could sense something familiar about it.
The wolf made swift work of the beast, tearing its throat out in a gruesome manner, the same manner it had attempted to tear out mine. Not to say that the beast didn't get any hits in. By the end of the fight the wolf was bleeding from a large bite in its back leg and had a large tear above its shoulder. It began to limp away, but was too injured and fell down. Despite my fear, I rushed over and knelt beside it. Quickly assessing its injuries, I tore up my shirt to staunch the bleeding from the wounds. Before I could think of a way to get us both back to safety, while finding Trowa and convincing the maganacs to allow a huge wolf into their ship, the wolf changed.
Its skin shimmered and became liquid-like. Its body shifted, convulsed, and stretched, slipping into a different shape and solidified. On the ground, naked and bleeding, was Trowa. He looked at me, raising his head from where he lie on his stomach, his deep green eyes boring into me but showing only hopeless despair. I could feel nothing but pain coming from him and it overwhelmed me for a moment so that I could only stand there and stare at him. When I finally managed to regain my senses, Trowa had looked away, returning his head to the ground. He lay there without a care for his own welfare. It was heartbreaking; he really thought, after everything we had been through, that I would leave him.
I approached him quietly and knelt beside him then quickly redid the bandages that had fallen off as he had shifted shape. Trowa's eyes looked at me with disbelief, but inside him I could feel the slightest glimmer of hope come through the pain. I gently helped Trowa sit up, then to stand, though he had to lean on me heavily.
"Trowa," I said softly, "Do you know the way back to the ship?"
There was a slight hesitation, then he pointed and we began to walk toward the ship. The whole night seemed unreal to me at the time, like a bad dream. In some part of my mind I was elated that I had finally found Trowa's secret, but another realized the implications of the fact that Trowa was a werewolf, beasts that were known for temporary insanity and instability. Still, somehow I couldn't bring myself to fear Trowa.
By the time we reached the ship, Trowa had changed to a wolf an back again twice. He had become so weak that I had to carry him and he was losing blood rapidly. As I walked I could see the ship come into view. Apparently, so could Trowa, because he started squirming in my arms and I had to put him down.
"What's wrong?" I asked him.
"I can't go with you."
"Why not?" I asked, but Trowa merely looked away, unable to meet my eyes. I could feel the fear inside him and tried to quiet it some, as I had done on other occasions, but it was too strong for me to stop without announcing my presence. I decided that now was not the time to alert Trowa to my presence in his mind. Of course, it was easy to tell what Trowa was afraid of, so I tried to allay his fears verbally.
"Trowa, you know the maganacs won't hurt you. I-I'm not sure how they'll react, but they aren't going to hurt you and you can't stay here anyway. You'll be killed, you couldn't fight those beasts in this condition. I won't leave you."
"Quatre," Trowa whispered, leaning his head on my shoulder as I knelt beside him, "I'm hungry."
It took me a moment to realize what he had said, but when I did it froze me on the spot. Hungry werewolves would eat anything and everything near them, from livestock to humans. Though they would eat plants, they craved flesh. It was not unheard of for a werewolf to consume his entire village during the full moon.
With these pictures flashing in my head, it was almost comical that Trowa would simply sit there and nuzzle my should placidly. But I knew I had to get Trowa back to the ship. A werewolf starved through the full moon, though only one day of fasting would actually occur, could become weak and die.
"There's food back at the ship," I told him softly. It took a minute, but there was a small nod against my shoulder, Trowa's permission to take him back. Feeling greatly relieved, I lifted him and started toward the ship. I had only taken a few steps when I heard a commotion and found the maganacs preparing to come after me. One of them called my name and I answered back.