I Never Told You
by Raletha
I sent Quatre an e-mail from an Internet kiosk in the Mexico City airport. It cost me five dollars in US currency, but I didn't know his address here or his phone number. It was his work e-mail. Heero had given it to me, but I had never used it until now. In the e-mail I told Quatre where I was, gave him the phone number of a nearby payphone, asked him to call. I bought myself a bottle of iced water, and I waited.
Since I'd initially been on my way to the mountains in Colorado to see my sister, I hadn't dressed for the heat of Mexico. I tried to move as little as possible, and I untucked my shirt. When my first flight had been cancelled due to weather, I prepared myself to sleep in the airport in Atlanta. Until I saw the gate next to that of my cancelled flight advertised a flight to Mexico City, leaving in less than an hour. Mexico City was where Quatre lived now.
I don't believe in omens or signs or fate or karma, but I do believe in serendipity. I stood staring at the scrolling red light-letters of the gate's marquee for a good ten minutes, deciding. Then, I changed my ticket, called my sister, and got on the plane for Mexico City. I had no plans beyond arriving and e-mailing Quatre from the airport, but I had my passport and my credit card and my wits. Whatever happened I'd be okay. I wanted to see him again, I realised. It was past time.
Eventually the payphone rang, and I answered. I had to say "hello" twice before, through the static, replied a disbelieving and familiar voice, "Trowa?"
"Yeah, hi," I said. Redundantly I added, "I'm at the airport."
"Hi," Quatre said. "Are you in trouble?"
"No," I said, which was physically true. "But I wanted to see you."
A long pause followed, rustled by soft static. "All right."
"Can I meet you somewhere?"
"I'll pick you up."
I didn't have any bags to collect. From a souvenir store I bought an overpriced t-shirt. It was yellow with a red and green 'Mexico City!' in fat scripted letters across the front. I gave my upper body a sponge bath with paper towels and hand soap and put on the new shirt. The cotton and logo were stiff with dressing, but it was much cooler than the turtleneck I'd been wearing for the past twenty hours. I bought a disposable gas mask from a vending machine. The pollution was so thick the taxis waiting outside were hazy and indistinct.
I waited for over an hour until I saw a smog dusty, white limousine creep along the curb. It was the car Quatre had told me to look for. We didn't talk on the way to his house.
In Quatre's kitchen, its wide windows open to a lush garden, he poured me a glass of iced chocolate scented with cinnamon. I sweated in my jeans and wrapped both hands around the damp, chilled glass.
"Why are you here?" he asked me. Beneath the curiosity, perhaps as a by-product of his directness, remained a trace of hostility.
"I wanted to see you." I sipped my drink and Quatre stared at me, hard--defensive hard. "I wanted," I said more softly," to apologise to you."
Quatre regarded me coolly. He wore loose linen and cotton and did not appear to be perspiring at all. "You apologised to me then," he said.
"You didn't accept it then. It's been four years." I shrugged. "I hoped now maybe you could."
Quatre closed his eyes, and his face creased between his eyebrows.
"I'm sorry, Quatre. I've never regretted anything as much as I regret...that."
"Why? Why did you lie to me? You could have just said, 'Sorry, Quat, I'm not interested,' but instead you lied. You told me you were straight, for God's sake."
"I'm sorry."
"And then I find you with that...that...other guy!" Quatre's eyes were bright with anger and tears.
He hadn't yelled at me then; he hadn't said anything. He just walked away, didn't even take his things, didn't even come all the way inside. Simply looked at me, turned around, and left. I stood on the porch, the bitter taste of that other guy's spunk in my mouth, calling after Quatre to stop, wait, come back, I could explain, I was sorry...
It took me months to find him again, and then he wouldn't return my calls. I saw him in the city once; he refused to even acknowledge I existed.
"I loved you," Quatre said. "Do you understand that?"
"Yes." I refused to wince at the past tense. It didn't feel like the past anymore to me, not standing here with him now, the memories dug up fresh. I felt the same way in this moment as I had then.
"More than that, though, you were my best friend. You betrayed me, not just my love, but our friendship."
"I know I did."
"Why?" Weariness replaced the anger, and Quatre pulled a chair out from the wide wooden table centred in the kitchen. He sat. "I don't understand, Trowa. I never have."
I moved slowly to the adjacent end of the table.
Quatre waved at the chair and frowned while I seated myself. "I thought I was over this," he said. "But here you are."
"I'm not over it," I said. "I've missed you."
"Right."
"Look," I started, trying to find the words I'd rehearsed so many times, my words of explanation and admission. But now that I was here and Quatre was staring at me, with nothing gentle in his eyes, nothing but reproach and hurt, my throat went dry and I forgot all the careful phrases I'd stored for this moment. "Quat," I dared. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
"So it's my fault for coming home early, is it?"
"No."
Quatre leaned back and crossed his arms.
"It's my fault for being too afraid," I said.
"Afraid? Of what?"
"You, me. Us. Being together. I... Quatre, I wasn't sure about myself. I didn't feel like girls did a lot for me, and I thought about you a lot, but I wasn't sure. You were too important to me to mess things up."
Quatre laughed.
I couldn't help the half-smile that twitched my lips. "I know."
"So you're saying you liked me too much to tell me the truth?"
"I guess so."
"Trowa..." Quatre looked sad again. "You could have talked to me, could have told me you weren't sure."
"I know that now, but at the time?" I sighed. "Quat, I was scared, of everything changing and breaking, and things ending up... Ending up pretty much the way they've been between us now. I was stupid. I made a mistake."
"You should have trusted me."
"I should have."
Quatre was smiling now. A small, sad smile, but it was the first smile I'd seen from him in so long, maybe it could erase all the unhappiness in my memory. Because he was smiling, I looked at him, sitting there, smiling, four years later. Maybe he could forgive me.
"That guy," I said. I wouldn't tell Quatre his name, because in truth, he wasn't important enough for me to speak his name. "After you told me you wanted to try... with me, I started thinking about it. I wanted to know if I could enjoy being with a guy, if that would be better than girls, or if maybe," I quirked a quick grin at Quatre, "I just wasn't all that highly sexed.
"But I didn't want to try with you. If I didn't like it with you... I couldn't stand it."
"Trowa..."
"So, I'm sorry," I finished, helpless. I'd said everything I wanted to say. It was up to Quatre now to forgive or not--to tell me to leave, to ask me to stay.
"No," Quatre said, "I'm sorry."
"What?"
"I never gave you the chance to explain. I should have trusted you, too. And now we've lost four years. Four years that could've been something happier."
"I've missed you," I said. "A lot." Tears needled the backs of my eyes. I couldn't remember the last time I'd cried.
"Me too," said Quatre.
We sat in silence for a long time, looking at each other, seeing the shed and unshed tears, the acknowledgement of loss and error, of youthful stupidity.
"Do you..." I started before my throat closed around the next words.
"Do I?"
A deep breath, and I forced the words out, broken though they were, "Do you still love me? At all?"
Quatre laughed; through the tears, he laughed. Open mouth and tear streaked cheeks, Quatre laughed, and I smiled back.
"Always," Quatre said. "Always."
the end