A/N: Wishing Kangofu-CB the happiest day of birth. I hope you enjoy this and thank you for letting me write you a thing!

A/N2: Title inspired by the HAIM song by the same name.

A/N3: Always, always thanks to Ro for beta reading and supporting me. You are, quite literally, the best. I also want to thank ChronicWhimsy, who graciously gave me another set of eyes and editing on this.

Warnings: angst, language, sex

Pairings: 2x3

Ready for You

Chapter 4

"You're like the pied fucking piper with that thing."

Trowa looked up from Alsafar Najima, the posthumously published anthology of poetry by Yasmine Fares that he had started reading yesterday, and followed Duo's gaze.

A few feet from them, as far as the leash would allow, Diana was rolling around in the grass, kicking her feet in the air and yapping happily. A small crowd of children were gathered around.

While Trowa watched, one was brave enough to venture closer, and when Diana struggled back to her feet and dove at the child, attacking with her tongue, the other children all moved in closer.

Trowa glanced over at Duo, stretched out on the grass on his side, head propped up on one hand and notebooks open in front of him.

Duo was looking at Diana and her audience with a look on his face that was part amused and part baffled.

Trowa allowed himself a moment to admire the way that Duo's shirt had partially ridden up, revealing a sliver of pale skin above the waist of his dark jeans.

"Eyes are up here, Barton."

Duo was smirking at him, despite the stern words.

Trowa shrugged one shoulder.

"It's a free country." He'd never cared for the saying, and Duo's derisive snort indicated he felt similarly.

"Can you imagine…" Duo's voice was lower, "having so little fear that you just walked up to some strangers so you could pet their dog?"

Trowa looked back at the cluster of children.

It really did baffle him. He could see a few men and women, yards away, looking over at them, keeping an eye on their kids but not intervening.

"Maybe this is normal," he offered. It wasn't like he and Duo had any point for comparison.

"What, like… it's always been like this, or normal now that an army isn't going to storm through?"

"An army was never going to storm through here. No tactical significance. Bombing, maybe. But it's not the best location to sink resources into occupying."

Duo rolled his eyes.

"Christ, Trowa, are you really about to go into an analysis on the tactical value of New York City as an occupied city?"

"I already said I think it would have been a better choice to bomb it."

Duo sighed and closed his notebook.

"Okay. But all that proves is that you're willing to wreck stuff and have no concern for human life. Occupying it proves that you've got the ability to control one of the Earth's major banking centers and the most important city in North America."

"Banking can happen anywhere. And the days when controlling North America were strategically important was more than a century ago. Better to use it as an example to keep the old Eastern territories in line."

Duo considered the point.

"Okay, but you're forgetting that the fourth-largest spaceport and customs intake routes directly through the city."

"Then I'd better have control of one of the other three."

Duo laughed.

"I think you're full of shit."

"Then I suppose it's a good thing we were never really on opposite sides of things."

"Hm." Duo's gaze turned considering. "I guess."

It was that vast, dangerous valley between them. The war. The roles they had played. Trowa figured that, at some point, they would talk about things. Or maybe they wouldn't. All they had done so far, however, was to vaguely hint at things and then let the conversation change or die before they struck too deeply.

The children had decided that chasing Diana back and forth between them was a good idea. The dog was stumbling back and forth as fast as she could, barking anxiously.

Trowa sighed and rose to his feet.

He whistled, and Diana's ears perked up. She looked his way and immediately raced over to him.

The kids gave him sour looks.

"I think I should take her on a walk."

"I'll go with you." Duo packed up his notebooks and threw them into his bag while Trowa packed away his own book and the bowl of water he had set out for Diana.

The kids continued to stare them down as they walked past, and it wasn't until they were away from the open field of the park and on the tree-lined path that Duo turned to look over his shoulder.

"Entitled little shits, weren't they?"

Trowa nodded in agreement. He didn't mind people interacting with Diana. He could understand the lure of touching something so pure and soft. But, as with most things, people didn't seem to realize when their interest went too far.

He set a slow pace, enjoying the feel of the sun on his skin as it peaked through the foliage and the play of light on Duo's face and hair.

"Thanks for meeting me here."

Duo looked startled.

"Uh. Yeah. It wasn't a problem. It's like… a three-minute walk from my place so…"

"You've been busy."

Duo shrugged.

"Fucking exams. Everyone around me is a basket case." He snorted a laugh and shook his head. "You'd think that writing anything less than the perfect comparative analysis on the patronage system in the post-Terran poetry scene was on par with… I don't know. Blowing up a colony or something."

"Is it?"

Duo's lips tilted downwards.

"Maybe?" He sighed. "It's stupid, right?"

"A few weeks ago, I wasn't paying attention and cut a piece of Bocate short and ruined it."

"Bocate?"

"It's a South American hardwood. Beautiful grain."

"Wait, wait, you weren't paying attention?"

Trowa scowled. It had been the day Duo texted him, asking him to go see the play, and Trowa had spent the entire day more unfocused than he cared to admit.

"The point is that I felt like a complete failure." He looked over at Duo. "Worse than I felt when a mission went bad and there were additional casualties."

Duo's shoulders tightened, lifting with the tension, and his face looked just as distraught.

Trowa wondered if he had said too much. It wasn't something he would have said to anyone else, not even to Heero. But Duo… seemed to have been hinting at feeling exactly that way.

Duo sighed.

"Fuck, that's fucked up." He groaned. "So fucked up. We care more about - about a fucking essay and a piece of wood than a human life? We're fucking-"

Trowa stopped him, stopped the words flowing out of his mouth, stopped the no-doubt well-earned disgust for the both of them, by kissing Duo.

His entire body stiffened even further, and his hands came up to clench at Trowa's shoulders, ready to push him away.

But then he softened, relaxed into Trowa and kissed him back, lips moving against his. Parting, allowing Trowa's tongue to sweep across his own, allowing Trowa to tease him away from the dark thoughts, from the truth.

Duo eased away, hands lingering on Trowa's shoulders and then sliding down to his wrists before dropping away.

"Sorry." Duo took an unsteady breath in and then released it.

"You don't need to apologize."

"I know we're not talking about any of that shit. I just-"

"Why aren't we?"

Duo scoffed.

"You want to?"

"No."

"Yeah, I didn't think so."

"You do?"

"Hell no."

They stared at each other for a moment.

Trowa arched an eyebrow, and Duo snorted.

"Yeah. Okay, fine. Whatever. Ugh." He scrubbed at his face. "I just need these exams to be over and get a decent night of sleep."

Trowa hesitated, the question that had been on the tip of his tongue all afternoon finally pushing its way out of his mouth.

"Have you been avoiding me because of Heero?"

"What? No. Like I said, I've had all this studying and these papers to write, and the fucking study groups and… I mean. No. I wasn't avoiding you."

It had taken Duo ten days to finally agree to meet up with Trowa, after Heero's little visit to the both of them. Duo hadn't ignored him - had messaged him back with excuses, had called him twice just to talk. But he also hadn't made any reference to wanting to see Trowa.

"What did he say to you?"

"What did he say to you?"

Trowa shrugged.

"That you promised not to shoot me."

Duo snorted a laugh.

They walked in silence for a while, Diana pausing to sniff seemingly every blade of grass and Trowa indulging her.

"Look. It's just not… Heero's full of shit, you know?"

Trowa was pretty sure that Heero Yuy, of all the people he had ever met, was the least full of shit.

He gave Duo a look that must have successfully conveyed his opinion.

"I mean, he just- he just thinks he knows everything.

Trowa wondered how much he could, or should, push Duo to reveal what had happened.

His brain supplied the incredibly unwelcome memory of Duo being interrogated, of him spitting blood onto the crisp white trousers of the man who had been doing the heavy lifting, while another officer asked the questions and Trowa, ostensibly for Une, kept an eye on things. Duo hadn't had much of a reaction to the beatings - too used to them, Trowa was sure. It wasn't until he had been waterboarded, until the utterly alien sensation of drowning reminded him that he was mortal, that Duo had started to talk. He had said all kinds of things, had mumbled and screamed and spoken nonstop while he sucked in deep breaths and coughed up the water in his lungs.

It wasn't until years later, until Trowa was settling into his new life as an apprentice carpenter and making weekly treks to the library, that he realized Duo had been quoting poetry. Some ancient Terran poet that Trowa stumbled onto entirely accidentally, Randall Jarrell.

Duo had been interrogated so thoroughly that even Une looked a little green after watching the surveillance vids, and he had had the piece of mind to recite poetry.

"What does he think he knows?"

Duo shrugged and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, once again displaying that narrow strip of pale flesh to Trowa's gaze.

"Just that I'm fucked up and you're fucked up, and we're going to fuck this up."

Trowa had to raise an eyebrow. He was certain Heero hadn't used those words, but even so, the comment didn't sound much like what Heero had said to Trowa.

"Really?"

Duo shrugged again and wouldn't meet Trowa's gaze.

"How are we going to fuck this up?"

"I don't know. Look. I need to meet up with my study group."

Duo hadn't mentioned anything about it, earlier. Had, in fact, hinted at them going to get dinner later in the evening.

"Okay." Trowa managed to keep his disappointment and confusion from his voice. The perfectly neutral tone, however, made Duo scowl.

"Look. Just- I'll give you a call later?"

Trowa nodded. He wasn't entirely sure what else he could do.

Duo adjusted the straps of his bag on his shoulders, looked over at Trowa and seemed on the verge of saying something, but then he shook his head and cut through the trees, headed back towards the park entrance. Away from Trowa.