Warning/Pairing: Language, 3x4, 1x2, friendship

December 21st

Memories in the Snow

The road was covered in snow and it was so cold his scarf was developing ice crystals from where he breathed on it. Trowa hunched his shoulders and swore under his breath.

Two o' clock in the morning found him on an unplowed deserted road on Christmas Eve. And he was walking. Because the car he'd been driving, fortunately issued by Preventers and not his own, was a crumpled non-functioning wreck about two miles back.

That's what happens when you hit a deer, spin out of control and crash into a tree. He thought there might have been a fence as well but he wasn't sure.

He wasn't that injured. He'd taken worse hits from inside his cockpit, but he had a cut on his forehead that had bled for a while before all the blood froze.

And the car was totaled. Commander Une was going to have a fit.

Actually Quatre was probably having a fit right this moment. When Trowa had called all he'd managed was, "I had an accident, the car is trashed . . . " and then the battery in the phone died.

It was freezing. He had a scarf and gloves but only his Preventer jacket to wear, which wasn't exactly a winter parka. For a while he tried singing Christmas carols as he walked. But he only knew the words to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Jingle Bells. Both which got old very quickly. And it hurt to breathe in the cold air too much so he stopped.

Heero would be worried as well. Somehow when the Mariemeia uprising had ended and everything had settled down; Trowa had found himself working for Preventers. And somehow he'd ended up being partners with Heero.

Yuy wasn't a difficult guy to partner as long as you were competent and could keep up. Which meant that the only options for him were the other pilots. Duo couldn't partner Heero because they lived together. Or as Duo so colorfully put it, "Heero and I can't be partners, Une's afraid we'll spend all our time shagging in the closet or something."

So Trowa was Heero's partner and Duo worked with Wufei. The arrangement had worked out quite well.

Heero wasn't here because he'd been sent off to run last-minute security checks for a Christmas function. Trowa had been sent to scout the route for potential danger spots along the way. Unfortunately a twenty-mile section of it ran through a totally barren area of land that wasn't trafficked by anything.

Except deer.

Fuck it was freezing. He'd heard that positive thinking helped and so he tried to imagine as many warm things as he could. Hot chocolate, large fires, thick down parkas, Quatre naked in bed. He liked that one and stayed with it until he felt himself growing hard. Under his scarf his mouth quirked into a grin. Well good to know the blood was still flowing in some places.

His ears hurt. He held his gloved hands over them and continued walking, stomping his feet every so often to try and keep the snow off his pants as much as possible.

The last vacation he took. He'd gone to Tahiti with Quatre last winter. He remembered the sand burning under his feet and the way Quatre turned a rich caramel in the sun, his hair bleaching an even lighter color.

He remembered the tan line when he pulled Quatre's swim trunks down. Golden brown and then milky white. And the smoothness of his butt in Trowa's hand.

The wind was picking up and he dropped his hands to shove them in his pockets giving his wrists a chance to warm up a little. He wondered how many miles he'd have to walk before he found a house and glanced around. Nothing but snow, fields and sparse groves of trees.

Hot tubs were warm. Patches of sunlight on the bed. Duo's famous five alarm chili. Last summer they'd all gathered at Wufei's house and had a barbecue. Duo and Heero got into a water fight with the garden hose. The kitchen window had been open though and they'd accidently soaked Quatre. Trowa grinned and pulled his scarf higher. Quatre'd been so mad he'd chased them all the way around the house until Heero fell in the pool and had to be fished out.

He wondered if he should be worried that he couldn't feel his feet anymore. First his toes had gone numb and then his feet. His ears weren't bothering him anymore either. In fact they felt quite warm.

He didn't want to die out here in the middle of nowhere.

He wanted to see Quatre again. He wanted to run his hands over Quatre's body, especially the hip bones because that was Trowa's favorite spot.

He couldn't die. He was supposed to help Wufei build a deck this summer. And he hadn't mailed Catherine her Christmas present yet.

He was incredibly tired though. It was late, and he'd been driving all day trying to get home at a reasonable hour. It'd be nice to just sit down for a moment and rest. The snow looked very soft and it was piled in big drifts next to the road.

He could be like the Eskimos; they lived in snow houses.

He was admiring the lights in the windows when he realized, he was actually looking at the stars and that he was lying on his back. He continued to lay there, enjoying the feeling of not moving and stared at the sky. Just a few minutes. He'd just stay here a few minutes.

It wasn't as warm as he'd hoped but he couldn't feel most of his body anymore so that was ok.

The stars eventually blurred and then there was a bright light coming toward him and he wondered if it was the tunnel of light people talked about. He hoped not, how cliched would that be?

"Trowa Barton! You scared the shit out of me!" He blinked and tried to focus. Oddly enough that sounded like Heero.

Hands grabbed him and hauled him up, roughly dusting snow off him and shoving him into a car. It was warm and his ears felt like they were on fire. He winced and touched them gingerly with his fingers.

"We've been worried sick. You could have died out there, asshole." That was Duo. His eyes were wide and Trowa realized he'd never seen Duo look so frightened before.

"Trowa? You need to take off your jacket. It's too wet to keep on." Wufei was talking to him now.

Trowa idly wondered how they all fit in a car. Hands reached out again and started to strip him and he watched with mild interest. One of the hands was wearing a ring that looked an awful lot like the ring Quatre wore. Following the direction of the hand to the arm he looked up and found Quatre glaring at him, mouth drawn into a thin line.

He was in trouble.

"You are a complete idiot. What were you thinking trying to walk in this weather?"

Trowa's fingers hurt. A lot. He held them up to show Quatre. He tried to apologize but his teeth were chattering so badly the words weren't very coherent.

Quatre continued to glare but handed him a sweatshirt to put on.

Eventually he became more aware of his surroundings. He was in the back seat of Heero's SUV, sandwiched between Quatre and Wufei. Duo was up front in the passenger seat and Heero was driving.

Trowa looked over at Quatre and tried again. "I'm sorry. Knew you'd be worried."

Quatre shook his head in disgust but then sighed. "Idiot."

On his other side, Wufei snorted and handed him a pair of socks to put on. "Good thing we knew what direction you'd gone in."

From up front Heero turned his head quickly to survey Trowa and then smirked. "By the way, Une says the damages are coming out of your Christmas bonus."

Trowa sat surrounded by his friends and thought about his list of warm things. He'd forgotten a few. Heero's smile, Wufei's rough affection, Duo's concern and Quatre's love. In a way they were better than all the hot tubs in the world.

Though he still liked Quatre's hip bones best.

Suddenly he started to laugh and pulled Quatre down to kiss him. Then he looked up at his friends and smiled. "Thank you. For coming."