WARNINGS: language, innuendo, YAOI (which means male/male sexytiems and Round Two of 2x3x2 CONTINUES - you have been WARNED)

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the boys, the Gundams, the copyrights, or the patents. But the snappy one-liners are mine, all mine.

NOTES: The chapter titles and subheadings are all taken from the album "Infinity on High" by Fall Out Boy, which is awesome theme music for this fic, imho.

OK, so this is THE LONGEST CHAPTER in TooT. It's, like, 12,000 words which is something like 20+ pages of A4/letter-sized paper. So, I've broken it up into a Part 1 and Part 2. So you can, I dunno, savor and digest more easily.

AND: YAOI. OK? Lotsa yaoi. The first love scene in Part 1 has been edited since it didn't NEED to be terribly explicit to get the point across. If you want to read the unabridged version, you can do so on my livejournal. The last love scene in Part 2, however, is more explicit than the previous love scenes in this fic and posted here as-is. Skip it if boy love is not your thing. K'thanks.

Chapter 18: Better off as Lovers

It's me and my plus one at the afterlife…

PART 1

Well, OK. Not quite "end of story." There was other stuff to figure out. Like who was gonna get the top drawer in the bureau and who got dibs on the single-car garage. That sort of stuff.

It turned out that we'd both come here with our belongings in tow, both hoping to stay but kinda doubting we would. I shared a wry smile with Trowa when we went out to our respective rental vehicles to fetch our things. I couldn't say we were eternal optimists. Maybe more like fellow lovesick chumps. Or inveterate gamblers. I was sure neither of us had arrived here certain that there'd be a reconciliation, but neither of us had been able to let that fear win out. We'd come denying our hopes, but we'd hoped nonetheless. Our pair of duffel bags apiece proved it.

Although we'd allowed enough hope to justify dragging our meager piles of shit here with us, neither of us had been presumptuous enough to procure provisions. So off we went on our first shopping trip as married persons. Trowa wrinkled his nose when I tossed a bag of ginger snaps into the cart and I rolled my eyes at the cans of ready-to-heat-and-eat stew he wordlessly added.

"Do we even have a can opener?" I challenged and that prompted him to chuck one of those onto our growing mound of food.

"We do now."

After I'd hunted up all the stuff I wanted, I asked, "Hey, can I trust you not to throw in dehydrated soup or canned sardines while my back is turned?"

"Why is your back going to be turned?"

"I'm heading next door to the drug store. We need toilet paper… and stuff."

"Ah," he agreed.

I boogied my ass to the next place over and willed myself not to blush. I was totally old enough to be buying shit like lube and condoms. Totally, definitely old enough. And married enough. I repeated this mantra as I purposefully avoided eye contact with the cashier.

Since I finished my errand first, I stowed the toilet paper, wet wipes, facial tissues, laundry soap, and other assorted gems of the modern health-and-beauty age in the car then went looking for Trowa. I caught him at the check-out, arriving just in time to pay for my half of the groceries. Clifden was a tourist town, but the sheer number of shopping bags we loaded into the car seemed to pique the interest of the locals. We didn't have our first run-in with them, however, until we'd gotten back home and I was trying to convince Trowa that the milk really ought to go in the fridge door and not on shelf above the veggie bin (whatever the hell that was supposed to do).

A knock on the front door made us pause in the middle of our staring contest and I sighed. Taking a step back, I warned him, "You put it there and I'm just gonna keep moving it."

"Fine," he agreed. As I left the kitchen I kept an eye on him and… yup. He put it above the veggie bin. I made it a point to finish rolling my eyes before I answered the door.

On the stoop stood a middle-aged blonde woman holding something vaguely brick-shaped wrapped in tin foil. My first instinct was to hit the floor and yell, "Fire in the hole!"

Shit, that's messed up.

"Grand day," she said, distracting me from the little moment I was having. Her voice was lilting and light and had a soothing, musical quality that I wanted to impersonate immediately but knew I'd fail horribly at. "Hello. My name's Lorna O'Michael. My husband and I live just up the road. Are you here on your holidays?"

"Uh… in a manner of speaking. This is our place," I confirmed. "Joe Cross. JC." I stuck out my hand. "Nice to meet you. Yeah, we're the new owners." I hoped she wasn't about to tell us that the septic system was primed to explode under our asses. The ink had been dry on the deed for weeks, so it was way too late to pass the buck now. Although, hell, what a way to write off a money pit, huh? If that was Une's plan all along, she was gonna bear some watching in the future. That kind of crazy-like-a-fox cunning was admirable, but damn annoying if you found yourself on the wrong end of it.

"A pleasure," Lorna O'Michael said, and then prompted with nosy-neighbor, gossiping-busybody expertise, "We?"

I tried not to smirk at her tone. I'm sure she was trying to sound politely interested. Heh. Yeah. That was a fail. Holding up a finger in a mute request for her to hold on a moment, I leaned back into the house and called, "Tris?" We've got neighbors! I didn't say. He'd probably reply with something about adding bait and traps to the shopping list. I didn't think Lorna O'Michael would appreciate the joke.

"Hey, babe," I continued, turning at the sound of his footsteps. "One of our neighbors is here."

Trowa joined me on the threshold and I looked back at Lorna in time to catch her blink of surprise. I guess same-sex couples weren't a regular thing around here. Or maybe my sweet set of rental wheels screamed Straight Guy.

"Tristan Armstrong," he said. Standing a little behind me, he offered his hand which Lorna shook before going back to clutching the tin foil brick-that-was-probably-not-a-kilo-of-C4. Trowa appeared to come to the same conclusion as me about it; when his gaze darted down, he automatically stiffened, and then forced himself to relax. Yeah, we probably didn't have a suicide bomber on our doorstep.

"Where are you from?" she asked, making conversation.

As I proceeded to basically let Lorna interrogate our prefabricated life stories outta me, I idly wondered why – if Trowa's left arm was behind my back – he wasn't putting his hand on my waist or something equally spouse-y.

"We'd invite you in," I said apologetically as I started my final approach to conversation's end, "but it's a real mess in here still."

"Oh, well. Maybe some other time," she replied agreeably. "If you've no plans for this evening, we'll all be down at the pub to watch the match. If you fancy coming along…"

"Match?" I asked.

"Gaelic!" she supplied in an unexpected rush, clearly a long-time fan of whatever it was. In response to my blank look, she added, "Football. Kick off's at seven o'clock, down at Mally's."

I pumped her for directions and she handed over the tin foil bundle, which she said was something called a Barm Brack. Hm. Sounded fun. Maybe not as much fun as C4, but there ain't much that is.

I promised we'd venture down to Mally's that evening and then she concluded her welcome committee routine. Hell, she was probably making a mental list of all the people she was gonna call as soon as she got home. Twenty bucks said Mally's was gonna be packed tonight.

As soon as she was out of sight around the bend in the drive, I shut the door and Trowa burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?" I asked, grinning. The whole thing had been giggle-worthy, true, but Trowa's eyes were freakin' tearing up.

He cleared his throat and straightened. Only then did he show me the carving knife he was holding in his left hand, the hand he'd been hiding behind me the whole time. Oh, Christ.

"Seriously?"

"Habit."

"Fucking hell," I remarked between snickers. "You're a headcase." Hell, we both were.

He smiled. "But you like me that way."

When he leaned in for a kiss, I gave it to him and, on a sigh, agreed, "Yeah. I totally do."

So, Lorna never knew how she'd come yea close to meeting Trowa's inner merc. I guess that was just as well, all things considered. Especially if I was gonna end up asking her to keep an eye on the place while Tro and I were working for Une. It'd take a real bulldog to run off the sheep, rowdy teenagers, and bored tourists. I was all for nominating Lorna for the honor.

It was a day of firsts: first joint shopping-for-daily-necessities trip, first lube and condom purchase, first official date. (Wait. Does that progression of events sound backwards to anybody else? Maybe it's just me.)

We un-dust-covered our furniture, vacuumed, did laundry, washed up all the dishes and utensils... Hell, Trowa freakin' cleaned the cupboards. I just let him do whatever. I was busy looking good in a chef's apron with soap bubbles up to my elbows. It was kinda too bad we didn't have a stereo. It was totally a day for tunes. I made a mental note to add it to the shopping list… right under the traps and bait for pesky neighbors. Heh.

That evening, Trowa and I descended on the town again – walking the kilometer and a bit from our place along the country road this time – for a couple pints of Guinness and a communal viewing of Gaelic football.

Lorna and her husband, Brian, were already there and, given how fast they came over to greet us, they'd clearly been on sentry duty. We were quickly introduced to the regulars and, after a fast and dirty round of "hey-howya-doin'?", Trowa and I were seated at a small, round table between Lorna and Brian on our 3 o'clock and couple of old geezers on our 9. I cheered and whooped when they cheered and whooped. I booed and bitched when they booed and bitched.

By halftime, the local favorite team had pulled ahead and everyone in the damn place had decided to share their pearls of wisdom with the new guys in town. By the time we made our escape, I knew more about where the local sheep liked to hide before jumping out in front of passing motorists than I knew about Gaelic football. It was still fun as hell to watch. I'd have to look up the rules for next time.

We got back to the house near midnight. As we climbed the front steps, Trowa dug into his pocket for his key. I put a hand on his arm to stop him. "Hey, don't I get a good-night kiss?" I teased.

"On the front porch?" he queried.

"It's the end of our date!" I argued persuasively and with a charming grin.

He leaned forward and pressed a quick, chaste kiss to my lips. "It's just the beginning," he corrected me, smiling.

With a line like that, you're probably thinking we beat a path to the bedroom and made hasty use of those supplies I'd acquired earlier, eh? Well, you'd be wrong. We crashed and twined on the sofa watching the world weather report, comparing notes on the different places we'd been.

"Load up on desiccant if you ever wanna go to Asia, babe," I said at one point, "because Japan takes humidity to a whole new level in summer."

"Estonia was nice," Trowa remarked idly when the satellite image of Northern Europe came up on the screen. "Despite the aggressive population of mosquitoes."

We dozed off listening to the weather dude give us the Tropical Storm 101 lecture as clouds swirled over the Caribbean Islands on his right. When I opened my eyes, it was middle-of-the-night dark and the TV station was cycling through the forecast listing for major cities in Africa and Trowa's hair was tickling my chin. I had an arm around his shoulders and his head was tucked down against my chest. At some point, I'd slumped deep into the corner of the sofa, and he was stretched out along the length of it (insofar as he could with those long legs of his). Oh man. I knew we were young and nubile, but this was so not gonna be comfortable to wake up to in the morning.

I nudged and nuzzled. I slid my hand under his shirt to pet and massage his taut belly until he stirred. "Hm?"

"Let's go to bed," I suggested, my voice a little scratchy. To match the itch developing in my shorts, maybe. But no. No, it was the middle of the night. It'd take a serious influx of either caffeine or adrenaline to inspire an actual follow-through in me at this point.

"Hm," he said again and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing at Trowa the Drowsy Zombie. Damn. You have no idea how badly I wanted a plushie version of him lookin' like that. No idea.

I got him up and moving. After he set a course for the hallway, I turned off the TV and plunged the room into darkness. I shuffled, drowsy and defenseless, after him into the hall. That was when he struck.

I yelped as his hand clamped around my wrist and I found myself pulled back against his chest. "Just how sleepy do you think I am?" he growled, pressing his hips against my ass. The hard length straining against his fly was very persuasive in coaxing a similar reaction from me.

"Dude, do not play with me," I retorted. "You were 100% zombie-fied."

"I was," he admitted on a purr, "until I noticed this…"

I leaned back against him as his palm slid over my hip and down to the front of my jeans.

"Uh… whoops?" I breathed, rubbing myself against his hand. "Can't keep any secrets from you, can I?"

"Not big ones," he answered and I could hear the smirk in every syllable of his corny comeback.

I snickered. "Giving blatant flattery a try now, are we?"

"Whatever it takes."

"Mercenary."

"Thief."

That I was. "Unless you want me to steal your virtue here," I replied, ignoring the fact that he was the one holding onto me, "you'd better get your ass down to the bedroom."

He bit my earlobe. It hurt a little and I jerked even as a zing of something hot and fizzing shot down my spine. "Make me," he dared.

Ooooh, baby. Here we go.

What was that I'd said about having diminished capacity at this time of night? … yeah, I can't remember, either.

I twisted out of his grasp. From there, I could have tripped him, taken advantage of a pressure point, fisted a hand in his hair, or all of the above. It didn't matter that it was nearly pitch black. I could have owned him and some dark part of me was very tempted by that. But no, I was not gonna go the underhanded route when it came to sex. It was head on or not at all.

So I went for the jugular. Pushing aside his shirt collar and the necklace I'd given him, I sealed my lips over the tender skin of his neck. Yeah-hah! I had a love mark to repay, didn't I?

His hands clenched into fists in my shirt. I rubbed against him, rolling my hips in a suggestive rhythm meant to put him in mind of one thing and one thing only until he groaned. Groaned but didn't beat a path for our room. Hmm…

I lifted my head, my lips and breath brushing over the damp spot on his throat, and complained, "What does a guy have to do to get his husband into bed, huh?"

Trowa chuckled. "I'm sure you'll think of something."

I grinned. If he wanted to play, I'd play.

And play we did. With every step he took in the right direction, the more daring I became (and the more skin I convinced him to reveal) until it wasn't a game so much as a test, a test of my limits. The thought of touching any other man the way I touched him viscerally repulsed me, but in Trowa's case, I was never gonna get enough. I wanted to sample every inch of him and then go back to the beginning for second helpings of everything.

He was nearly silent, but he didn't hold back. I heard his sparse groans, his breathed encouragements. I heard the way he said my name, like it was part of a prayer. I felt the butterfly-soft touches of his fingertips sifting through my hair as his thighs tensed and trembled beneath my hands. It was probably killing him to keep himself still, to keep his hands from fisting and his hips from searching out a rhythm. It was lucky for him, then, that I wasn't interested in tormenting him, in testing his controls, in finding out how long he could hold out.

Honestly, I was kind of curious as to how far I could go. I leaned back and took a deep breath. No time like the present to find out.

We made it to the bed and, shucking off my clothes, I crawled toward him, finding him in the dark by touch alone and settling myself between his strong thighs. With a hand on his jaw for navigation, I lined up our lips and kissed him deeply, wondering if I really could go through with the idea that had popped into my head.

Well, of course I could. The question was whether or not I wanted to. I took a moment and deliberately imagined it... and I shuddered so hard the desire almost broke me. Did I want to? The answer to that was most definitely hell yes.

I still took my time winding him up. The fact that he was letting me told me he was maybe a little uncertain, too. Uncertain of what I was gonna do, of what he'd gotten himself in for. He trusted me, though, and I was not – under any circumstances – gonna betray that.

When I next brushed my lips over his length, I took him into my mouth deeply for the first time and, before I'd finished the first stroke, I groaned. God, he felt so incredible. I hadn't expected it to be like this. This wasn't about power and submission at all. It was about connection, about the physical manifestation of what was already true: Trowa was deep inside me just like I was deep inside him.

We ended up kneeling together on the mattress, spooning each other when I pulled him back onto my thighs, skin pressing and sliding against skin. From his soft gasps and the restless motions of his hips, I could tell he was remembering, relishing my uninhibited exploration of him. As he wiggled and shifted against me, I pressed my forehead between his shoulder blades and let myself remember it, too.

In the darkness, I banded my arm across his waist and followed his lead, letting him lean back against me, letting him feel-have-ride against me however he wanted, letting his body move against mine in a constant rub that was pure torment and pure heaven all at once. I could not even begin to imagine what it would be like to be inside him. Just feeling him moving against me, with me, was enough. I held on and panted against his skin.

Oh-sweet-fucking-Goddamn-yes-more!

We fell into a rhythm, Trowa's hands grasping my arm across his waist, moving-rocking-groaning-rasping-pleading-praising together until the tingles in the base of my spine collected like the gathering charge of a Buster Rifle. The end was roaring toward us – it was gonna be huge – and oh God it was gonna kill us both but what a way to die…!

In that moment before completion blasted me apart, my mind cleared of everything. The roaring of my own blood, the pounding of my heart, the sounds of my groans and Trowa's voice, hoarse and intermittently rambling – demanding and then exalting – all of it just faded away, like the absence of tide on a beach just before the tsunami hits.

And boy did it hit. It caught Trowa first. He screamed, jerking in my grasp and coming, coming, coming, coming—!

And then it hit me and I drowned in it, rolling beneath the waves in darkness.

When I realized I was still breathing, I noticed that I was draped over Trowa, pressed against his back as he lay sprawled on the bed. With an investigative wiggle, I determined I was soft and there was a sticky mess beneath the both of us.

"Baby?" I checked, my voice hoarse as I tried to lever my shaking self off of him. "You OK?"

He shuddered. "No. I'm never going to be 'OK' again," he deadpanned. "You killed me."

I bit back a slightly-hysterical laugh. "You're not allowed to die."

"Too late."

"You can be a zombie, though," I bargained generously. The hand towel seemed ridiculously tiny in my grasp compared to the spillage I was feeling on my thighs, on Trowa's thighs, on the blanket… "Or a vampire. But cover your eyes, Count, I gotta turn on a light."

"Murf," he replied and there was a puff of air and a plopping sound that let me know he'd located a pillow and thrown it over his head.

I leaned over and clicked on the lamp.

Oh, man. First of all, we'd made one helluva mess. But, second of all, Trowa was still lying beneath me with legs splayed in a boneless, post-orgasmic, I-don't-give-a-fuck sprawl and I could see… Oh, Christ, he was beautiful. Someday, if he still wanted me, y'know, that way – inside him – I might really have to insist on lights-out because I was not gonna be able to hold out long enough to make it good for him if I got to watch him while I—

"Duo?"

I looked up as the pillow shifted and Trowa caught me kneeling between his thighs, gaping like a brainless moron, fantasies running riot in my brain.

"Let's be dead together," I proposed, blindly placing the towel on his thigh.

"What?" I guess his brain wasn't up to assimilating one of my sudden 180s this soon after melting and dribbling out of his ears.

I explained, "It'll save me the trouble of dying over and over again every time we…" I swallowed.

Trowa blinked and, tucking an arm under him, sat up a bit on his elbow to look at me expectantly. "When we…?" he prompted.

That was the question. What had we just done? What were we gonna call it? Fucking? Having sex? Or… "Make love," I heard myself say although it was almost unintelligible thanks to the clogging, rasping, choking quality of my voice.

Trowa stared at me for a moment, and then – with what I'm sure was a monumental effort – he sat up, sorted himself out so that he was facing me on the soggy blanket, and then reached for me. Before I could remind him where my mouth had been, he was kissing me. And kissing me. And kissing me.

The warmth and gentleness of it made me tingle anew and I moaned into his mouth. He was gonna kill me if he kept this up, but I wasn't about to interrupt him.

When he finally leaned back, our lips clung for a moment and I almost followed him. But then he spoke – too softly for me to hear – and I read in the shape of his mouth three words that I'd never really believed would be directed at me. For a second, I just blinked at him, astounded. It wasn't that I doubted him, it was just that I'd never thought he'd actually say it…

He shifted nervously, bringing me back to the here and now. I reached up to cradle his face in my hands as I mouthed those three words back. Fiercely.

He gasped in silence and I pressed a kiss to his jaw, his cheek, his closed eyes, his forehead as he shuddered, grasping my shoulders again and again as if he just couldn't be sure of his grip on me. Well, I certainly wasn't going anywhere. I wrapped my arms around his waist and guided him to a dry spot on the bed. It was his turn now to hold on and I kept my arms tight around him – so tight my muscles throbbed – until his inner storm subsided.

I guess I wasn't the only one who'd never expected (but perhaps secretly hoped) to be given those three little words.

The blanket was a lost cause so that ended up on the floor. I broke open the pack of wet wipes and we cleaned each other up. My hands were steady. Trowa's were less so, but he insisted. And, in doing so, I felt myself falling in love with him all over again.

I wound myself around him, both to keep him close and to reassure him that he wasn't gonna be getting rid of me anytime soon. I sighed out a breath into his hair and then sleep wadded me up like I was a scrap of paper and pitched me into waste basket of unconsciousness.

An instant later (well, it felt like it anyway), the pattern of Trowa's breathing suddenly changed and he shifted beside me. My eyes snapped open. Dawn was just making an appearance and the room was filled with a ghostly glow. I lifted my head from the pillow and blinked at my husband. We'd rolled apart at some point during the night and now he was holding my palm to his chest, looking back at me in contemplative silence.

"A nightmare?" I asked, doodling patterns against his skin.

He shook his head. "No, a good dream," he murmured, his lips pulling into a smile that took my breath away.

"What about?" I ferreted, wondering what could possibly make my Trowa smile with such innocence and delight and pure masculine beauty.

He closed his eyes and sighed. "You told me you loved me," he answered and I rolled onto my back, pulling him toward me and into my arms.

I kissed his forehead and then stroked his cheek with my thumb until he opened his eyes again. "That wasn't a dream, baby." I loved him. I wanted him. I chose him. I was staying with him until he left me or I died, whichever horrible inevitability came first.

"I know," he replied in a wondering whisper.

"You know a lot, huh?" I teased.

"Yeah," he answered, and even though it was just one syllable on a breath of sound, I knew exactly what he meant.

NOTES:

The part about mouthing those "three little words" to each other was also used by Shoori in her 2x3x2 fic, "When You Say Nothing At All," which can be found on raygunworks' site - "a little piece of gundam wing" - and just happens to be one of my personal favs.

Gaelic football is AWESOME. Seriously, I need this on satellite TV. It is my life's ambition to get our local company to give it a regular slot in their program schedule.

Lorna's dialog was initially kinda of blah so a BIG THANK YOU to waterlilylf for supplying me with much more authentic phrasing for Mrs. O'Michael.

Aaaaand, thanks to waterlilylf, I learned about Barm Brack which "is a kind of fruit loaf made with tea." It sounds lovely! And although I'm told it's traditionally made around Halloween (and it's nowhere near Halloween at this time in my fic, although I never really say what time of year it is), let's just assume that Lorna loves making it. OK. Groovy.