Title: Never Turn Your Back on the Sea (7?)
Section Title: Waking and Falling
Author: Alleyprowler
Pairings: 3x4, 2xH and 1xR
Ratings/Warnings: M for language, references to violence
Quatre was falling.
He could feel the queasy weightlessness of freefall in his arms and legs and head. A bitter wind roared in his ears and stole his breath away. He had the dizzying impression that he was lying stationary in the air while the ground was rushing up at him, although he knew it was really the other way around. The images around him were blurry and indistinct; mere watercolor streaks and splashes in different shades of grey. He tried to tuck himself into a ball to minimize impact and protect his head, but he didn't seem to have any control over his body at all. He couldn't even close his eyes. And all this time the ground was rushing, rushing, rushing up at him, looming larger and larger...
He woke with a jerk and a panicked, breathless cry. His eyes flew open. He tried to complete his dream-motion of bringing his body into a tuck-and-roll, but he found that his left arm would not move. He looked down at his side and saw that his wrist was restrained with a leather cuff lined in fake fleece and there was an IV needle buried in the back of his hand, held in place with a white x of adhesive tape. It felt strange and cold under his skin.
With his free right hand, he patted the surface beneath him to reassure himself of its solidity while he caught his breath. He was reclining on something white and there was a soft pillow beneath his head and a pale yellow blanket was pulled up to his waist. He was in a bed, but it wasn't his own. The room wasn't quite dark; it was subtly lit by the low-intensity halogens that provided the night lighting on a residential colony.
"Easy there, Quat. It was just a bad dream," said a voice somewhere to his left. He turned his head in that direction and winced at the sensation of long shards of glass being pushed slowly through the delicate tissues of his brain.
"Duo?" His own voice sounded foreign to his ears. It was distant and muffled and rough, not like his usual voice at all.
"Yeah, it's me." Duo leaned into Quatre's field of vision, smiling. The sight of a familiar, friendly face and the feel of a reassuring hand on his arm calmed Quatre considerably. He wanted to smile back, but there was something wrong with his face...
"Don't mess with that, babe," Duo said softly, restraining Quatre's roaming hand. "It's just an oxygen mask, leave it alone."
Oxygen mask? That explained why his voice sounded so odd. This unfamiliar white room must be in a hospital ward. "Why?" he asked.
"Why the oxygen?" Duo repeated. His voice seemed to be fading in and out like the signal of a poorly-tuned radio. "Don't you remember?"
Quatre thought back. The last thing he remembered clearly was standing in front of the main office of Green Earth Reclaim with Wufei and Duo. The young fellow known as Blue, cuffed at the wrists, and the owner of GER were with them. The youth was crying and struggling in Duo's arms while the older man was yelling something about suing someone or some such nonsense, and then... bad things happened...
"Yates and Blue," Quatre murmured, racking his uncooperative brain. "Did they hurt me? Are you okay?"
Duo smiled gently. "Wufei and I are fine, Q. Wufei'd be here too, but the poor guy has a pretty sore jaw, not to mention tons of paperwork to fill out. Yates and Blue are locked up nice and safe, too, if you're worried about them." The smile faded and his tone became slightly reproachful. "I wish you'd said something earlier, Q, you scared the shit out of me."
"Something about what?" Quatre asked.
The look on Duo's face was not very reassuring. Even though his features seemed to be oddly blurred, Quatre could tell he was looking confused and concerned. "They said your memory might be a little spotty from oxygen deprivation. I guess they were right."
That statement did not set Quatre at ease. He tried to sit up, but the room spun sickeningly around him and his head gave a tremendous thump as if warning him that sitting up was a very bad idea. Duo's hand on his shoulder was warm and solid, though, and he tried to move closer to it. Duo seemed to understand; his arm slid under Quatre's neck and Quatre felt himself embraced in a half-hug. The gesture seemed to make his surroundings a little steadier.
"Do you remember shooting Yates?" Duo asked in his ear.
Quatre's heart gave a startled lurch in his chest, and he tried to blink away the mistiness that was growing around his peripheral vision. "Did I really shoot him? I thought I dreamed that."
Duo's voice took on an odd tone. "Yeah, you really shot him. I saw that gun, Quatre. There was no magazine in it. Wufei told me that you took it out, so how the fuck did you put a bullet through his leg?"
Quatre remembered that part, at least. "One round in the firing chamber. Just in case." It was difficult to speak clearly, and Quatre wondered if he'd been drugged.
Duo chuckled deeply and ruffled Quatre's bangs. "You sneaky little devil. You always have a contingency plan, don't you?"
Quatre merely shrugged. He had definitely been drugged, judging by the lack of sensation in his body and the flatness of his emotions. "Thirsty," he said vaguely, thinking that a drink of water might wake him up a little.
He had to moan a little when Duo slid an arm under his shoulders to help him sit up straight; the pain in his head came back abruptly, accompanied by a greasy wave of nausea. He clutched his stomach. "It's the anesthetic, Q," Duo explained. "They had to knock you out to suction some fluid from your lungs and take a bone fragment out of your knee. You must really be hurting. Here, let these melt in your mouth."
Quatre felt the edge of the oxygen mask lift and then something cold touched his lips. He parted them to let Duo push some ice chips into his mouth. The coolness of the melting ice felt like a preview of heaven.
Duo laid him back down against the raised head of the bed and tucked the blanket around him. "We were worried about you, babe. Your temperature kept spiking up and you got a little weird on us a few times, but I think it's down now." Duo's broad, work-callused hand was surprisingly gentle as it brushed aside Quatre's bangs and rested briefly on his forehead. "The docs figured you must have inhaled some seawater when you had your close encounter with the Pacific. You have aspiration pneumonia in your right lung and it's spreading to the left, and it could've been really bad news if it had gone untreated any longer." Duo's voice broke and he paused to clear his throat and wipe his eyes. "But you'll be okay. They promised."
Quatre swallowed his mouthful of melted ice and put a hand on Duo's arm. He was horribly confused and more than a little woozy, but he felt Duo needed comfort more than he did. "'Course I'm okay," he whispered, slurring his words a little. His lips were numb from the ice and the effects of the anesthetic.
"Yeah, I know," Duo said. "The docs said you must have the constitution of an ox to stay on your feet as long as you did."
Quatre smiled at the compliment, but he hardly felt like an ox at the moment. His eyelids felt heavy and his chest was beginning to ache fiercely. He wanted to go to sleep, to escape the pain for a little while. "Trowa?" he inquired drowsily.
Duo snickered. "I called him. He's on his way. I don't think he appreciated being kept out of the loop, babe; that guy has a vocabulary that makes me blush."
While that was quite possibly true, Quatre didn't care. Trowa could rant and swear and curse all he wanted, as long as he did it by his side. "'M sleepy, Duo," he said, settling his head deeper into the pillow. He felt the blanket being pulled higher around his body, another brush of cool fingertips against his brow, and then he didn't feel anything at all.
Wufei set his bag down on the worn carpet and eased himself down onto the rock-hard hotel room bed. His jaw ached, his head was thumping, and his muscles were so tense they could have doubled as piano strings. After the incident with Yates and Blue and the chaos of the hospital, he wanted nothing more than a hot shower, a meal, and a decent night of sleep, but he had a feeling it just wasn't to be.
He sat up and took his laptop out of the case where it had been burring for the last hour and set it up on top of the wood veneer desk by the dirty window. The Starview Hotel, being the cheapest in the Colony aside from the motels that rented rooms by the hour, did not have a complimentary satellite linkup. Wufei could have checked into any number of higher-ranking accommodations, but he preferred not to incur any unnecessary expenses when they were on the Preventer's tab, and this place was just as good as any. All he really needed was there in the tatty but efficient space: bed, chair, table, and a bathroom off to one side.
He connected to the satellite uplink built into his laptop. "Chang here," he said. He slipped the elastic from his ponytail and let his hair flow loose around his shoulders. He hadn't engaged the video since that would be an extra charge to the Preventer's account and he was took pride in his cost-effective methods.
"Wufei? This is Milo."
Milo Morrison was the coordinator for Wufei's department and nominally Wufei's superior, but he knew full well to whom Wufei actually reported.
"Yes, Milo. Do you need my serial number or do you have my voiceprint?"
"I know who you are, Chang, no need to get all sarcastic on me," Milo said. There was a significant pause and Wufei heard the shuffling of paper in the background. "I've got your preliminary report here, and it doesn't look good."
"Oh? How so?" Wufei said. He'd used ice from the machine in the hotel's lobby and a hand towel from the bathroom to make himself an impromptu ice pack, which he held to the bruise on his jaw. Although he had quite an impressive lump there that was turning an ugly shade of purple, he'd been informed that nothing was broken and that the loose teeth were only temporary. That didn't make it ache any less. "The suspects are in custody, no civilians were wounded, case closed. What's not good about it?"
"Wufei, this whole thing is pretty wonky." Milo Morrison, who was famous for keeping a cool head in any crisis, sounded upset. "It says here you deputized a scrapyard owner and an electrical engineer to assist you in your investigations...what's up with that? Why didn't you call in another agent if you needed backup? Who are these people? One was hospitalized. Why didn't you give their names?"
Wufei blew a strand of hair out of his face. "Milo, I know you hate being kept in the dark, but that's eyes-only. My report to Director Une will explain everything."
"It had better, because from what I can tell, this case wasn't even under Preventer jurisdiction!"
"Trust me, Milo, I had good reason to believe it was an act of terrorism."
"I do trust you, that's what worries me. I've got four pages of pretty damn vague info here--that's not like you, Chang. What are you hiding?"
Not what, but who, thought Wufei. "I don't feel comfortable discussing this over the phone, Milo. Why don't you just go to Une and ask her?"
"Because she's on vacation in the Caribbean for the next two weeks and she's gone completely incommunicado."
"Crap."
"Crap is right, my friend," Milo said, sounding actually testy for the first time in the five years Wufei had known him. Milo was usually so laid back he was on the verge of being comatose. "Look, you might be Une's golden boy, but she's not here, I have no way of contacting her, and this whole thing stinks like week-old fish. I hate to pull rank on you, but once you get back, you're on desk duty till the Lady returns and figures out what to do with you."
Wufei's eyes flew wide open. "You can't do that!"
"I just did. Morrison out."
Duo wondered why hospitals always had the best aquariums. The one he was standing in front of must have easily held two hundred and fifty liters of water and was teeming with bright tropical fish. The substrate was of black sand planted with delicate, graceful aquatic flora for the fish to hide in, and decorative rocks in various shades of red provided further shelter. Not being an aquarist, he couldn't name any of the species of fish, but he decided that he liked the tiny blue and red ones that schooled in a neon-colored cloud best, followed closely by the funny black ones with the chubby bodies and bulgy eyes.
It looked so contrived, like an image in a television screen, but somehow Duo knew it was all real and alive even down to the sand, imported from exotic and sunny locations on Earth and shipped up to the L2 cluster to brighten the reception lounge of a smallish district hospital.
Duo looked at the brass plaque at the base of the tank and saw that it was a memorial to someone he'd never heard of, maintained by someone else he'd never heard of. So, someone dies and someone else feeds the fishies in their name, Duo thought, and shook his head. It was a pretty memorial, he supposed, but he was a practical man and thought the money might have been better used to improve the quality of the food in the cafeteria.
"Duo."
Duo gave a start when he heard his name called. It had been so quiet and peaceful in the ward that he had forgotten where he was. He whirled around and dropped into a half-crouch to defend himself, but immediately straightened when he saw who had hailed him. "Trowa!" he exclaimed in surprise. Trowa's rumpled clothing and tangled hair suggested he had left in a hurry and had traveled hard, but if he was tired from the trip, he wasn't showing it. Duo wrapped his arms around Trowa's shoulders to deliver a welcoming squeeze. Trowa made a faint gurgling noise as his ribs were crushed, but he managed to pat Duo's back a few times in greeting.
"Ow, Duo," he rasped out when Duo tightened his hold for a second, and Duo immediately dropped his arms and took a step backwards.
"Damn, it's good to see you, Trowa. You look...great." Duo privately thought Trowa looked awful, but he supposed that the shock of bad news and the stress of a commercial flight from his home colony to L2-2XH06N could take a toll on anyone's personal grooming, especially if Trowa had been in transit for the entire thirty hours since he had first received the call.
"Thank you. You look well. Can you take me to Quatre?" Trowa asked, raking his hand through the tangled mess of his hair. His long bangs lifted for a moment, then flopped back limply against the left side of his face. He obviously hadn't had time to do what he usually did to keep his physics-defying hairstyle in place.
"Sure thing," Duo said. He took Trowa by the wrist and dragged him to the nurses' station, which was staffed at this hour by a lone, small woman with mousy brown hair and thick spectacles. "You have to be careful with her; she's kinda jumpy," Duo whispered into Trowa's ear, and then he cleared his throat politely.
She had impressive reflexes for such a small woman. She nearly hit the ceiling before she recovered herself and was able to address the men standing in front of her. "Yes, can I help you?" she asked breathlessly.
"Hi again, Miss," Duo said, smiling broadly at her. He'd engaged her in polite conversation about the aquarium when she had come on shift earlier in the evening, and he thought he'd made friends with her. "This is another one of Quatre Winner's friends, and we were wondering if--"
Trowa slapped his ID down on the counter in front of the woman. "I'm his partner. What is his condition?" Trowa asked, sounding for all the world as if he was demanding a mission report.
She read the front of the ID card without touching it, then compared it against something in her computer. "Oh, his partner. Well, Mr. Winner was brought in with aspiration pneumonia--"
"I know that," Trowa snapped. "What is his condition?"
"He's as well as can be expected," she replied. "There are still a lot of crackles and rales in his breath sounds, but he is responding well to respiratory therapy and he is staying well-hydrated. Um...he's refusing solid food, but that's not unusual for acute pneumonia patients. His temperature is still spiking up, and--"
"What room is he in?"
She blinked, startled by his rudeness. Duo was a little startled himself. "He's in room 315," she said, pointing to it with her pen.
Trowa took off toward Quatre's room with great, loping strides and Duo gave the nurse an apologetic shrug before jogging after him.
The door to room 315 was just swinging closed, but Duo thought Quatre's privacy had been violated so many times in the last thirty-six hours that one more minor invasion wouldn't be a great sin. He stepped inside and almost ran into Trowa, who had frozen a few steps into the room.
"He sounds so awful," Trowa whispered. Quatre's breathing was rapid and rather noisy. To Duo, it sounded like a bad compressor. He blinked a few times and his night vision became more acute.
"Ah, I see the problem." He nudged Trowa aside and put his hands under Quatre's arms, grunting a bit as he hauled the blond man out of the slouch he had fallen into. Quatre mumbled sleepily but did not wake as Duo lay him straight against the raised head of the bed. He automatically checked the oxygen monitor on the wall and bumped it up a couple of notches, and Quatre began to breathe more easily. "He needs to be kept upright," Duo explained in a whisper. "It helps keep his lungs open."
"Why didn't someone notice before?" Trowa growled out.
Duo pointed to the metallic sheath that fit over Quatre's forefinger. "This is an oxygen monitor. If his blood O2 gets too low, it sets off an alarm and about a dozen highly trained professionals come running to fix him up."
Duo felt Trowa shudder behind him and suddenly wished he hadn't gone into such detail. "And how many times has this happened, exactly?" Trowa asked.
"Uh...twice. Once in the ambulance and once more right before they had to suction fluid out of his lungs. It hasn't happened since."
Trowa uttered a low curse that could have been either 'crap' or 'Christ'. Either way, it wasn't good. "Duo, could you give us some time alone?"
"Sure, man." Duo patted the back of Trowa's leather jacket. "I'll be hanging out at the aquarium if you need me."
"The aquarium?" Trowa asked distractedly. "Oh, yeah. Okay."
Feeling slighted, Duo jammed his hands into his pockets and made his way past the nurses' station and back to the reception lounge, where he threw himself down on a sofa to watch the fish.
He woke up a few hours later with a cramp in his shoulder from lying with his arm stretched over his head. The Colony lighting was still dimmed, but there was a faint pinkish tint to it that let him know dawn wasn't far off. Duo stretched, stood up, and took a few sips of water from a nearby drinking fountain before setting off check on Quatre.
Trowa wasn't in Quatre's room. Quatre was alone, sleeping restlessly in a bed that looked like a typhoon had hit it. Duo straightened the blankets and smoothed back Quatre's tousled hair. Perhaps sensing that he wasn't alone anymore, the blond man stilled and sank back into a deeper sleep. Duo leaned in close and whispered into his ear: "I'll be back in a few minutes, Quat."
Quatre sighed in his sleep.
Trowa wasn't hard to find. He should have been, what with his ability to fade into the background and to be so quiet and unobtrusive as to be virtually invisible in a crowd, but the hospital was not a crowded place at this early hour.
Duo stepped up to the nurses' station and cleared his throat. "Excuse me, miss," he said in his politest tone, wearing his most harmless-looking smile. He felt badly about the way Trowa had treated her earlier.
For a moment she merely gave him a blank look, but then she seemed to recognize him and gave him a tentative smile. "Yes, what can I do for you?"
He shoved his hands in his pockets so he wouldn't be tempted to make any grand gestures. "I was wondering, have you seen Mr. Winner's friend lately? The one who's a little taller than me, leather jacket, has brown hair like this?" He had to free one hand from his pocket to demonstrate Trowa's hairstyle with his own bangs, but he did it as slowly and carefully as possible.
"Oh...him. Yes, I think he went to the visitor's lounge, which is just past the elevators." She gestured down the white corridor with her pen.
Duo gave his most oh-so-very-harmless smile. "Thanks, miss." He turned in the direction she had indicated, wondering how such a timid creature had ended in a job that required nerves of steel.
The visitor's lounge was a glass-walled room that looked more like a human aquarium than a place to relax and gather one's thoughts. It was about the size of a two-patient room and was stuffed with silk plants and the kind of furniture that comes in boxes with ASSEMBLY REQUIRED stamped on the top; the kind of furniture that after having completed the required assembly, always leaves you with one leftover bolt, two unused washers, and a vague sense of worry over whether or not you have followed Step 3 on the instruction sheet correctly or not.
The room also contained Trowa. He was partially screened behind a silk philodendron on an end table, but there was no mistaking that profile. Duo let himself in quietly and sat down in one of the sturdier-looking sofas, which immediately tried to swallow him in its thick stuffing.
Trowa didn't acknowledge his presence and, in fact, appeared to be asleep. He sat slumped in his chair with his legs crossed, head bowed, and arms folded over his chest, as quiet and still as a department store mannequin, but Duo could tell by the absence of eye movement under his closed lids and by the way he was breathing that he was awake. It was a ruse he'd seen before on long passenger flights. It was the body-language version of a 'Do Not Disturb' sign.
Duo did not intend to honor it.
"Trowa?" Duo said, struggling to sit up straight against the grasp of the overly-familiar sofa. It was like trying to wrestle out of a pit of quicksand.
"What." The word came out as hard and flat and hurtful as a bullet from behind the shield of Trowa's hair.
Duo gave up his struggle with the furniture for the time being. So this was how it was going to be, was it? He mimicked Trowa's posture. "Why are you hiding in here? There's a guy down the hall who really wants to see you, you know."
"I'm not hiding. I'm resting."
"Bullshit." Duo tried to prove that he could spit verbal bullets as well as Trowa could, but he wasn't sure that he'd succeeded. He belatedly wished that he'd chosen the austere bent-oak and steel framed chair to his left rather than the cushy sofa to sit on so that he could at least have been seated in a more dignified position. "You're hiding, man. I know hiding when I see it."
Trowa sighed with an air of great patience. "I'm not hiding. I'm just tired and I want some quiet." He moved at last, but that was only to pick up a paper cup from the base of the fake philodendron and raise it to his lips.
Duo recognized the cup as one that came from the machines on the floor that sold hot drinks of unknown origin and dubious soup, and he shuddered in sympathy as Trowa took a sip. He knew from hard experience that no matter what button you punched on those machines, you always got a steaming cup of something that tasted like a blend of instant coffee, bitter tea, overly-sweet hot chocolate, and salty chicken broth. It was not a flavor that one tended to forget easily.
Trowa drank, paused, and dumped the rest of the liquid into the philodendron's plastic container. Duo grinned. "If you think that's bad, you should try the food."
"I'll pass, thanks." Trowa did not sound amused. He lapsed back into his former position and silence, tucking his chin even deeper into his chest.
Duo would have sagged in defeat if the sofa had allowed him to sag. Instead, he let out a gusty sigh that sent his bangs soaring temporarily. He had never understood Trowa. Most of the time he was a nice guy; thoughtful, insightful, and even funny in an understated way. But then there were times like this when he withdrew completely and became a Trowa-shaped block of ice. Duo found it quite maddening. He was good with people. He was not good with blocks of ice.
He made another effort at extricating himself from the sofa, having decided that an unconscious Quatre was better company than a sulking Trowa, but he could only get so far without assistance. That stupid sofa had trapped him. "Trowa? A little help, please?" he begged, waving one hand in the air helplessly.
Trowa opened one eye, examined his friend's situation, and smiled. "They should have a hazard sign on that thing," he said in a more normal voice, and rose to grab Duo's hand. Something large and glossy and square slipped from his lap as he stood, but he discreetly kicked it under another piece of furniture while he hauled Duo out of the Sofa of Doom. "There. Better?"
Duo didn't answer. He was too intent on dropping to his knees to retrieve the large, glossy, square thing from under a blond oak end table to reply. "Sure, thanks," he said as he closed his fingers over the object and pulled it out. He read the title and blinked a few times in disbelief. "And here's the, uh...dog book you dropped."
The large, glossy, square thing was indeed a book, a coffee-table-sized volume printed on thick paper and bound in heavy cardboard. The cover featured a photograph of a lively-looking brown and white cocker spaniel leaping athletically into a Colony sky, only a second away from capturing a flying disk in its open jaws. The dog appeared to be grinning. The book was entitled, 'Purebreds of the Old Earth: Showdogs of the Year, AC 205-206'. Trowa accepted the book with a nod.
"I, uh, didn't know you liked dogs, Tro," Duo said, feeling even more awkward on his feet than he had while engulfed in the man-eating sofa.
Trowa had immediately sunk back into his seat after pulling Duo upright, and he's lapsed back onto his former posture of arms over chest and head down. "I like dogs, I just prefer cats." His voice seemed a little strained to Duo's ear.
Duo pulled his collar back into place and straightened his belt unnecessarily. "I could find you a cat book if you want. It shouldn't be too much trouble."
"No." Trowa reached up with one hand and began to massage his temples, hiding his face with both his hand and his hair. "I don't have to have a cat. A dog will do fine."
"But if you want a cat..." Duo trailed off when he saw Trowa's shoulders heave in a minor convulsion. He swallowed uncomfortably. "Trowa? Are you all right?"
"No." Trowa's voice was tight and hard, and his entire body was shaking with suppressed emotion. "Please, Duo. Go away."
It would have been easy to go away since the tiny, claustrophobic room had only one door and he was standing right next to it, but Duo had a long history of doing things that weren't easy and he wasn't about to break form now. Besides, he hated to see people upset, particularly people he cared about. He rummaged around in his pocket till he found a clean but crumpled paper napkin. "Here, do you need this?" he asked, offering it tentatively to Trowa.
Unsteady fingers snatched the napkin out of Duo's hand. "Thanks, Duo." He raised his head and met Duo's eyes briefly. "I'm sorry, you shouldn't have to be dealing with me like this," he said.
Duo chuckled. "Tro, you're talking to a man who lives with a soap opera junkie. At least once a week I come home to find Hilde sprawled out on the couch bawling her eyes out over some dumb story she saw on the idiot box. Believe me, I'm used to tears." He patted Trowa's shoulder briskly.
"This isn't a soap opera," Trowa said somewhat sharply. He shot Duo a baleful look with an eye that was bloodshot with fatigue and sorrow, but wild with fear and anger. The green iris held a dangerous, inhuman shine. It was not the look of a sane man. "This is my life."
It was hard, but Duo managed to curb his urge to take a step backward. "I'm sorry, man. I didn't mean that as an insult." He paused to find something soothing to say before Trowa got even more upset. "You know Quatre's going to be okay, don't you?"
"I don't know any such thing."
This time, Duo really did take a step back. Who the hell had Trowa been talking to to make him sound so bleak and hopeless? What thoughts were going through his head? Had he been sitting here all night believing that the man he loved was God-forbid dying not twenty paces away while he sat here in solitude? That was certainly how it sounded to Duo's ears. "Trowa, he is going to be okay. You know Quatre, he's a fighter, and he's not about to cave in to some stupid infection...er, Trowa?"
Trowa seemed to have shrunk. He was bent over with his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands, and he was rocking himself back and forth gently. "I wish he'd just called me," he whispered in a voice that seemed to belong more to a bereaved child than a man of twenty-six. "If he'd called me, I could have helped."
Duo felt a prickling in his eyes and a constriction in his throat to see his friend in such a state. Cool, composed Trowa was crumbling right in front of him, and he didn't know what to do. He took a deep breath and said, "Trowa, please, just come with me and see for yourself. Quatre's going to be fine, but he needs you right now – he needs someone to get better for."
Dead silence filled the little room. Duo forced himself to stay still and let Trowa make the next move. Slow, painful minutes ticked by as the artificial gloom of dawn gave way to the yellowish brightness of full morning, and the sounds of the morning shift change began to penetrate the thick glass. Soon, morning rounds and normal visiting hours would begin and the ward would begin to fill with people and activity. Their short grace period was about to end.
Trowa straightened up in his chair and tossed the rather soggy napkin into a rattan wastebasket. There were no traces of tears on his face at all, and he looked like himself again aside from a certain grim expression around his mouth. He glanced up at Duo with eyes that were only very faintly reddened, but once more calm and rational. "All right, I'm ready," he said.
Quatre was not sure if he was awake or if he was dreaming, or experiencing both states at once. The concept of 'reality' suddenly seemed to have quite a lot of exceptions and codicils attached to it; it wasn't the absolute that he had once thought it to be.
Every time he opened his eyes, there was a new flower arrangement in the room, a new face, a new event. A pot of African violets with fuzzy leaves and frilled blossoms lurked darkly in a corner like a sleeping animal. He could hear it breathing sometimes in low, threatening growls. He wanted to tell someone to take it away, that it was making him nervous, but there never seemed to be anyone who would listen to him. Although there was nearly always someone in the room, no one ever talked to him--never to him! Oh never! No, they just talked at him, even in his dreams...
"You have to keep your strength up, there's a good boy," said a woman from a Rubens painting as she set a bowl of soup down in front of him. Her voluptuous nudity was covered only in the most transparent whisper of gauze that fluttered around her even through there wasn't so much as a draft in the room.
"No, I can't," he said, averting his eyes from her billowy pink curves and mild eyes. She was probably a Fate, and he thought it might be bad luck to look directly at her. Her gauzy wrap floated over him, covering his mouth and making his breath come short. He leaned forward and coughed, trying to bat the filmy stuff away with his hands. It felt like a death shroud.
"You can. You will," she repeated in Trowa's voice.
Quatre tried. The soup tasted like seawater. He spat it out and looked into the bowl. Beneath the whitecapped surface he could see bones, shipwrecks, and the flotsam of the dead. "This stuff almost killed me once."
The respiratory therapist had no face, just highly reflective oversized spectacles over a white cloth mask. He (she?) had him inhale some noxious medicine that made him cough and cough and cough until tears of pain and effort flowed down his cheeks and he felt the muscles in his chest and diaphragm grow weak with overuse. "It hurts!" he cried out.
The therapist shrugged and moved on to torture another poor soul.
On the windowsill, a vase of slender, elegant irises in royal purple and pale yellow sat next to a cheery knot of pink and white carnations. Quatre watched through a lens of tears as the elite irises drew themselves up and away from the common carnations. The carnations didn't take offense; instead they started up a lively country dance and spun around and around until Quatre became dizzy and had to close his eyes for a moment.
"Can you run? Quatre? Can you run?" The blond woman at the foot of the bed was radiant as an angel, but Quatre could see the shape of her skull behind her face and knew she was a mortal woman long dead. "Can you run? Can you run?"
He sat up and slid out of his bed, made panicky by the feelings of doom that sat on his chest like a great lead weight. He stood up. The floor tilted. He fell. Trowa led him back into bed while he asked him what the hell he'd been thinking. "I can't think. That's the problem," Quatre told him, his words slurred with sleep, drugs and fever.
"I can have you restrained, you know," Trowa said, and that was the end of that.
A three-legged fox limped by, showing off his sharp, bloodstained teeth in a lunatic grin. "If you get caught in a trap, you can always gnaw your own leg off."
"I don't think I can. I don't have your teeth," he pointed out.
The fox limped under the bed and Quatre rolled over to see where it was going, but Wufei pulled him back. "You shouldn't talk to your hallucinations," he said in a matter-of-fact tone as he straightened the blankets. "They won't give you good advice."
Quatre felt beyond tired. The flowers kept multiplying, growing, looming. The pain...the pain was doing the same. "Can I sleep, Wufei?"
"You can sleep as long as you like. I will look after your dreams."
"Mercy," Quatre said, and closed his eyes.
If it was another dream that Quatre segued into, then it was a good dream, and a lucid one. He was still tied to the hospital bed with an intravenous line in his arm, but the bulky oxygen mask had been replaced by less obtrusive tubing that hooked over his ears and ran under his nose. He felt too warm and relaxed to care about anything much. There was another body lying next to his, and he felt the comforting weight of an arm wrapped around his waist. He cracked one eye open a bit and smiled upon seeing a blur of brown hair. "Missed you. Love you." He brushed his own lips against those of his bedmate lightly, then draped himself around the warm, inviting body as closely as his tether would allow.
"Er, I love you too, Quat, but I don't really swing that way."
At the sound of a recognized yet unexpected voice, Quatre shook himself out of his doze and found himself staring into a pair of round violet eyes rather than a catlike pair of green ones. He was fully awake in an instant. "Duo! I'm so sorry!" he apologized as he shrank against the aluminum safety rail on the side of his bed.
Duo, still half asleep, laughed softly. "No need to apologize, Quat. You're a good kisser and I'll give you ten out of ten points for cuddling." He yawned and stretched his arms over his head. A joint in his shoulder popped loudly.
Quatre smiled uncomfortably. "I didn't mean to leech onto you like that. I thought you were Trowa."
"Yeah, I kinda figured that." Duo scratched his ribcage and sat up. "He was in here for a while this morning, but he went out for a walk about an hour ago. He was feeling tense."
Quatre hoped that his face didn't betray the disappointment that he felt in his heart.
"He'll be back soon, Quat," Duo said in a low, kind voice. "He just needed some space. Do you want me to get you something to eat, or a newspaper, or...well, anything?"
That warm tone dragged Quatre out of the pit of self-pity he had been about to wallow in, and he felt a genuine smile forming on his lips. "No, I'm fine." He squirmed involuntarily as he became aware of a nagging discomfort. "Well, except that my bladder is about to explode."
Duo laughed. "Blame me; I was the one who told them to take the catheter out of your tallywhacker. I'd offer to give you a hand, but you're a big boy and like I said, I don't swing that way."
"Well, then help me get untangled from all this...stuff," Quatre said, indicating the oxygen tubing.
Duo shook his head a little, putting his hand to Quatre's shoulder. "Jeez, Quat, you can just use the bedpan, you don't have to--"
"No."
"But--"
"Not open for discussion."
"Fine, ya stubborn bastard," Duo growled good-naturedly, and began helping Quatre remove the oxygen monitor from his finger and the tubing from his face.
Once freed, he insisted on walking to the toilet by himself, using the IV pole to take the weight off of his injured knee. The site of his surgery had been wrapped snugly in a stretchy, supporting bandage, but he still had to lean quite heavily on the castered pole in order to bear his own weight. One wayward wheel on the bottom didn't want to go in the same direction as the other four. Quatre found himself identifying with it.
Feeling oddly breathless once he had made it to the bathroom and had closed the door, Quatre relieved himself quickly and washed his hands. He thought about washing his face too, and decided he was too tired to care about it. Maybe he could talk Trowa into giving him a sponge bath later on. The thought made him grin.
The grin faded as soon as he stepped out of the bathroom and nearly ran into the object of his thoughts. Trowa was not smiling. He was scowling. "What are you doing out of bed?" he asked in a cold voice.
Quatre took a step away from him. Trowa's hair was mussed and windblown and there was a scruff of beard along his jawline, and frankly, he looked a bit demented. His eyes held a broken-emerald flash that meant that he was truly upset with something "I-I was just--" he motioned toward the bathroom door.
Trowa seized him by the arm and marched him back to the bed, where Duo was sitting with a worried look on his face. "Get in, and put the oxygen back on. The alarm went off on your monitor and scared the nurses. Not to mention me."
Oops. Quatre hadn't really considered that. "I'm sorry."
He let Duo help him replace the tubing and the monitor while Trowa paced the room like a caged animal. "What the hell were you thinking? Were you thinking? Do you ever?"
That wasn't fair. "Trowa, it was just a trip to the bathroom! It took two minutes!"
"That's the least of it, and you know it," Trowa hissed. "You forget the innocent act doesn't work on me. Dammit, Quatre, you could have got yourself killed! You're not a terrorist anymore, and you don't have Sandrock and forty trained soldiers watching your back, and even at the top of your training, you could hardly hit what you aimed at. Wufei must have been fucking insane to drag you out there--there are Preventer desk jockeys who could have done the job better than you. You're an engineer, for fuck's sake! You always said you wanted to help rebuild what you destroyed during the wars, so what the hell happened to your pacifist ideals? Is this how you honor your father's memory?"
He suddenly rounded on Duo, who was sitting on the foot of the bed with his mouth hanging open in shock. "And you! You just sit back and let him do whatever he wants, don't you? Trowa's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Best friend, is it? All over him all the time. Don't look at me like that; I've seen you touching him. I know how it is."
Duo looked as infuriated as Quatre felt. "I don't know why you want to drag me into this, Barton, but in case you haven't noticed, I don't bat for your team. I'm Quatre's friend, not his goddamn lover, and I'm definitely not his fucking babysitter."
"Well, maybe he needs one," Trowa said, glaring back at Quatre. "He's obviously lacking the common sense needed to take care of himself. He's always needed someone to take care of him. I've been doing it for the last ten years, I should know."
Quatre was utterly speechless. He had never felt so furious and humiliated before in his life. He could feel the hot blood rising in his cheeks, and before he knew it, his right hand had wrapped itself around the handle of his water pitcher.
Right before Quatre could fling the makeshift missile at his lover's head, they heard a soft "ahem" from the direction of the door.
Three pairs of eyes turned in that direction to see a very confused-looking Heero Yuy standing there with a box of chocolates in his hand. "Did I come at a bad time?"
"Boy, am I glad to see you," Duo said, wrapping his arms gratefully around Heero's shoulders. Startled by the greeting, it was a moment before Heero hugged back. He didn't understand why Trowa had gone off on that completely unfair rant or why he had stormed off afterward, and he'd felt very relieved when Duo had taken the chocolates out of his hands and led him off to a quiet corner of the ward.
"What's going on?" he asked. "You told me things were going well, and Quatre seems to be recovering."
Duo heaved a sigh and let his friend go. "He is, but he's certainly not out of the woods, and Trowa's a fucking wreck."
"Oh." Heero blinked a few times. "He seemed upset. He doesn't usually speak that rashly."
Duo shook his head and made a disgusted noise. "Yeah, that was totally out of line, but he's so scared and worried that he's about to snap. Not like he'd ever think to actually talk about it or anything. I'm getting pretty worn out looking after both of them."
Heero took the hint. "Would you like me to go talk to Trowa?"
Duo nodded wearily. "I'd consider it a personal favor, man. I can't get through to him. Even Quatre makes more sense than he does, and he's been delirious half the time."
"All right. I'll see what I can do."
Duo walked back to Quatre's room while Heero went off in the direction of the visitor's lounge.
Trowa's appearance shocked him. Normally Trowa presented a neatly dressed and groomed image when he went out in public, not this rumpled, and unshaven scarecrow of a man standing stiffly in front of the window. One green eye peered balefully at Heero while the other was covered by limp and rather greasy hair. "Heero. I figured you'd show up around now." He sat down in one of the cheap chairs with his arms crossed over his chest.
Heero chose a seat that was close enough for private conversation, but not so close that he'd threaten Trowa's personal space. "I came as soon as I could. Duo had a hard time getting the news to me since I was in transit with Relena, then I had to find a replacement for myself. You look like shit."
"I imagine I do," Trowa said indifferently.
"When's the last time you slept?"
"I had a nap this morning."
"When's the last time you ate?"
"I got something out of the vending machine an hour ago."
"If your plan is to make yourself sick enough to end up in the bed next to Quatre's, I'd say it's going to start working soon."
Trowa shot him a glare that would have wilted a lesser man. "Was that supposed to be funny?"
"No, just honest."
The two of them stared at each other for a long minute, eyes slightly narrowed and muscles tense, as is the case when two young males are circling one another, deciding whether or not to fight. Heero recognized the behavior, and came to the decision that a long, pitched battle between the two of them would not help resolve anything in this situation. He forced himself to sit back and break eye contact. "You need a wash and a shave. Do you have a change of clothes?"
Trowa paused before answering, regarding Heero suspiciously. "Yes. Why?"
"Because I'd rather not be seen with you in public as you are. You look like a bum."
Trowa blew air out of his nose in a not-quite snort. "Honesty is a fine trait, Heero, but there's also this thing called tact. You should try it some time."
A corner of Heero's mouth turned up. This was more like the Trowa he knew. "That's Relena's department. Go get cleaned up and I'll buy you some lunch."
Once again, Trowa hesitated as he studied Heero's face carefully. He sighed, sounding tired, and then leaned over to retrieve his travel case from under the couch. "Thanks," he said, and wandered away toward the restrooms.
Heero went back to Quatre's room to let Duo know what was going on, but he was a bit surprised to find that Duo, fully dressed except for his shoes, had stretched out on the bed and was holding a sleeping Quatre. "Duo, what are you doing?" he asked quietly.
The ceiling-mounted television set flickered as Duo used the remote control to flip through the channels with his left hand. His right arm was wrapped around Quatre. "Watching TV, what does it look like I'm doing?" Duo replied, equally quietly.
"I think the beds are for patients."
"Yeah, but Quat sleeps easier when someone's holding him. Besides, watching TV from that chair gives me a crick in the neck."
Heero decided it was none of his business. Any problem that the hospital had with it could be dealt with by hospital staff. He said, "Trowa and I are going out to lunch. Want us to bring you anything?"
Duo stopped channel surfing for a moment. "Nah. I need to get going soon. Hunter and Murphy have been alone for three days now, and Hilde's due back from her scouting mission tonight. She'll tan my hide if I'm not there to greet her."
"I see. Is that fish place down the street any good?"
Duo shrugged. "Their roaches look fat and healthy, so they must have good food. Speaking of which, next Thursday is pizza and poker night. You're gonna be there, right?"
"Yeah, sure. I still need to win my money back from Mimi." Heero closed the door on Duo's quiet snickering as he let himself out.
Heero watched in horror as Trowa drenched his basket of fried clams with vinegar, cocktail sauce, and ketchup, then proceeded to munch away at it with apparent enjoyment. In fact, he was almost wolfing his food, something that he'd never seen Trowa do before.
"You must be hungry," Heero remarked.
"Starved for real protein," Trowa explained through a half-chewed mouthful. "Forgive my manners."
Heero attended to his own meal, eating much more slowly than his dining companion. "What are your plans?" he asked when the edge had been taken off his appetite.
Trowa dragged a French fry through a small puddle of ketchup. "Quatre can be released in a day or two. I'm going to take him home, lock him in his room, and never let him out of my sight again. He'll never pull a stunt like that again." He chuckled darkly.
Heero failed to find the humor in that statement. "I don't think Quatre would appreciate that. He enjoys his freedom."
"Maybe a little too much."
"You're not his keeper."
"I'm entitled. I'm the guy who loves him."
Heero took a sip of his water. "You've taken an academic leave of absence," he said, which caused Trowa to look at him sharply at the change of subject.
"How did you--" he started, then cut himself off with a shake of his head. "Never mind. Heero Yuy knows all, right? Yes, I'm taking leave. I've done it before, and it's never been a problem."
"Are you sure that's for the best?"
"It's the best for Quatre. That's all that matters."
Heero felt a twinge of concern over Trowa's mental state. He was acting far too single-minded, and didn't seem entirely rational, especially on the subject of Quatre. His withdrawal from his studies was worrying as well since Trowa had previously seemed eager, almost impatient, to begin an internship or maybe open up his own small practice. His joke--if that's what it was--about keeping Quatre prisoner was not funny, either. It was gruesome.
Whether he knew it or not, the man needed help. Heero took a business card out of his wallet and wrote a number on the back of it. "This is my private phone. You can call me any time you want. Only you and Relena have that number, and I always answer it. Take it."
Trowa took it. He casually tucked it into the breast pocket of his jacket without looking at it and resumed his attack on his food.
Heero sipped his water again. "You will call me it you have any trouble?"
"Of course."
The promise did not sound sincere.
Wufei lay stretched out on the sublimely comfortable temperfoam mattress and studied the hotel room's wallpaper. It was a subdued floral pattern done in cream and blue and yellow that reached from the waist-high wainscoting to the white-painted crown molding near the ceiling. It had been hung immaculately and looked quite expensive. Wufei loved it. He also loved the white wainscoting, the coordinated blue carpet, and the king-sized bed, which was covered in a spread that matched the designer wallpaper.
He also loved the white French doors that separated the bedroom from the sitting room, as well as the two velvet-upholstered wingback chairs by the window, the Queen Anne table between them, and the brass standard lamp on the floor.
He'd cleaned himself up in the bathroom earlier, where he'd loved the immaculately clean shower with the brass fixtures and the herb-scented bathstuffs, the thick, fluffy towels, the huge vanity mirror surrounded by flattering warm-toned lights, and the commode with its paper band around the lid proclaiming it had been sanitized for his protection. He'd even been kindly disposed toward the bidet.
When he'd become hungry, he had ordered room service, and enjoyed an appetizer of barbecued tiger prawns with avocado and cilantro dressing, devoured the Danforth Greek salad with pita crisps, feta cheese and lemon oregano vinaigrette, reveled in an entrée of cassoulet of truffled honey squab breast, foie gras and duckfat confit, and had even managed a few nibbles at a divine flourless chocolate macadamia nut torte with blood orange mousse. The 184 Château Lafite Impérial had gone down like ambrosia.
Now, lying robed and sated on the huge bed, he belched mightily and opened up yet another of the single serving bottles of vodka he'd grabbed from the honor bar in the sitting room. He used his Preventer's credit chip to order a couple of premium first-run movies for the evening's entertainment, hesitated, and then added a couple of the better-known adult films starring Minke Fapworth to his rapidly growing tab. He would never watch them, of course, but he wanted to see the look on Morrison's face when he saw them on his expense account.
Wufei slugged back his vodka and sighed contentedly. Living well really was the best revenge.
TBC