Age Inappropriate

“If you don't mind,” Quatre said, “if he gets tired or if he drinks, just let him stay at yours? He's quiet enough."

That gave him pause, in the middle of putting on his coat. Then somehow his hand got stuck in the sleeve, and he had to start over. “Uh, sure. Luce won't mind her little baby boy staying in some crummy hotel with me?"

"Of course she will, but it's still better than having him try to sneak in at three in the morning."

"I'll take care of him." Promises. He'd forgotten that-- Quatre had a way of sucking you into that world, where every word was loaded with actual meaning. He'd have to get back into the habit of watching himself.

Instead of watching Kaelin, maybe, even if Kaelin was making a point of watching back.

I feel distinctly fucked, Trowa thought, and struggled to keep his smile in place. "Am I going to need earplugs?"

Quatre laughed. "It's the most atonal noise you've ever heard, but I actually sort of like it. Pretentious as all hell, though."

"Compared to what? Opera, perhaps?" Quatre moved his foot from the door, and it swung closed, leaving them alone in a hall with just the twelve-foot ceilings for company. "Nice looking kid. He takes after you."

"Everyone says so. He's a good boy. He's talking about a year of travel instead of university. I haven't figured out yet if I'm supposed to agree or try to coax him along to school."

"Let him have his year. You'd've killed for a little freedom at that age."

There was a lot they'd killed for, at that age. It was there, just a ghost of it, in Quatre's upturned smile. Another thing he'd forgotten, almost. Nearly.

Quatre said, "You know, he doesn't rebel. Not much. He tries so hard. I almost wish, for his sake, that he would."

"He will. Then you'll eat those words."

White teeth showed in a grin. "You're probably right."

"Yep.” It was a night for memories; so it took a certain amount of effort not to lean in and kiss, the way his body wanted to. That part of them had been over for a very long time. But he could touch, a little at least, without too much danger, so he let his thumb go venturing from Quat's shoulder to his neck over the collar of his shirt. Quat breathed in deep, once, and let it out through his nose. Trowa put his hands in his pockets after that.

"I should get going before the boss comes home.”

“Thanks, about the concert. Sorry to put you on the spot. I was just thinking how much he always loved going out with you, when he was little. You really were the 'cool' uncle."

He shrugged that away. "He's a good kid. I'll enjoy it."




Kaelin lied about the smoking. He was one foot off the tram before he had the pack in hand, carelessly blocking other passengers as he bent over a silver lighter.

“I thought that was Jamie's vice,” Trowa said.

“It's spreading.” Kaelin offered the pack. Trowa shook his head. “Are you going to be a stick in the mud?”

“I'm not your dad.” He stuck his hands into his coat pockets. Their destination was as simple as following the packs of wild teenagers roaming up the street in artistically torn denims and hundred-dollar haircuts. The colonies had changed. Even the last time he'd been here there'd still been cops on every corner, bars over windows. Even downtown there wasn't any of that anymore.

“Like my dad cares. You heard him.” Kaelin handed him a ticket. “Do you like music?”

"Yeah. I do."

"Mom says you play the flute."

"Used to. I haven't in a long time."

"I play flute."

"Yeah?" That surprised him, somehow. It surprised him too that Noin would even be talking about him to the kid. It wasn't like they got along. "Why the flute?" he asked.

Kaelin smirked at him without so much as changing expression. "Why do you think?"

He settled for a little deliberate stupidity. "Couldn't say, Kaelin."

The boy rolled his eyes. "Do you dance?"

The constant stream of dialogue was going to wear him down eventually. He wasn't entirely sure what Kaelin thought he was getting out of it, but he couldn't politely ignore everything. "Occasionally,” he admitted. The 'concert' was obviously not orchestral. Their street was turning into a long line of bars and clubs, most of them seedy, and all of them full of loitering teenagers in fashionable shab. He wondered if Quatre had sent him along as a chaperon, after all.

He stopped Kaelin from lighting a new cigarette with the butt of the old one by plucking both out of his hand. "This is a shitty habit. Tastes bad." He fended off a weak grab and put the stick to his lips. Menthol. It figured. He took one shallow puff and crushed the cigarette under his heel. “I told you I'm not your father.”

Kaelin looked irritated, but he didn't protest. He swiped his thumb over his lips, and took the lead.

The silence between them held all the way to their destination. They waited, close enough to be together and far enough to be apart, through the queue, presented their IDs. The bouncer rubbed two thick marker Xs on Kaelin's hands. The black ink stood out like a tattoo on his pale skin.

The music was everything Quatre had said-- loud, without much else to recommend it. And it was fairly pretentious, the bits he could catch through the screech of electric guitar and synthesiser, sung by raspy voices at least as old as Trowa's, although the band on the stage were dressed like their audience. The bass was throbbing and uncreative, but it was danceable, and that seemed to be the only real requirement. The milling crowd wasn't paying much attention to the band. A few girls in breastbands and blacklight paint danced on little platforms with glowsticks and hand torches, but even they looked like their minds were elsewhere. About what he'd expected. Not much possibility for conversation, which could be good. And bad.  Good because he wasn't sure yet what he was willing to share with Kaelin, or what would be safe to; and bad for the same reason.

Kaelin grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him through the crowd toward the stage. They stopped several times to greet other students. Introductions were kept informal-- first names only. Trowa was fine with it, mostly, but the fourth time it happened, it seemed to call for a cautioning comment.

He said, "I'm not your boyfriend, Kaelin. And it's not a good idea to tell them that I am."

It was too dark and smoky to see much of Kaelin's face. "Did you hear me tell anyone you are? Don't be a paranoia pill."

"I'm not stupid."

"Then don't ask stupid questions. Do you really dance?"

He cocked his head, but it didn't improve the angle enough. The kid had been pushing since they laid eyes on each other in Quat's study.  It was getting a little damn old. He was getting tired of trying to keep ahead of it. The better part of valour wasn't his usual MO, and pushing back was usually more effective anyway-- not to mention it usually felt a hell of a lot better.

He leaned in to say it, just to be sure Kaelin heard him. His lips brushed Kaelin's ear. He said, "I guess you'll have to dance with me to find out."

He didn't imagine Kaelin's sharp inhale.

He had all of five seconds to enjoy his triumph. Kaelin struck back fast and hard. He rocked back a step, and his hands fell to the hem of his jumper. It traveled a slow path up his long torso, caught at his chin, disarranged his carefully brushed hair. He wore just a sleeveless vest under it, slim warm brown against his lithe arms. The vest left a strip of bright skin bare to the blacklights, like a white beacon straight to his hips.

Oh, two could play that. If Kaelin wanted a contest of one-ups, Trowa could give it. He was even in the act of reaching for his own sweater, when a glimmer of sense reasserted itself. Kaelin could afford to be stupid, at seventeen. Trowa was thirty-four, and plenty old enough to be smarter than to issue that kind of invitation. Of course Kaelin would see it as an invitation. The whole night was an invitation. Fucking Quatre and his great ideas. This was going to be hell.

And that was before he reckoned with the dancing.

Kaelin was bolder with the success of the little jumper stunt. Smug. The crowd was thick near the stage, forcing them to stand close enough to smell each other sweat. There was touching.  The occasional, not-so-accidental graze of hip against groin, hand across ass, and as the music went on the touches became less coy and more deliberate. By the fourth song Kaelin's hand hovered just off Trowa's hip. By the fifth, Trowa had his hands on Kaelin's, his thumbs under the vest on bare skin. It was just dancing.

He wasn't really naïve enough to believe that, or stupid enough to throw caution entirely to the wind-- but.

Kaelin turned his back to Trowa, eyes closed, hair damp with the exercise, reached back to hold his neck with slipping fingers. His shoulders brushed Trowa's chest as he swayed to the beat. Trowa caught himself palming a taut stomach, and the bottom dropped out of his own gut. If they hadn't already passed the point of no return, they were... getting awfully close to it.

He moved a half-step back, just enough to put air between their bodies. He didn't stop dancing, and he was fairly sure he did it smoothly. But Kaelin was stiff after that, as if he'd figured out the rejection anyway. Not much later he disappeared to dance with a friend, and left Trowa alone going deaf from the speakers.

Which was something of a relief. He belonged with those other kids, not Trowa.

Doing the right thing shouldn't have felt so shitty.


**


Half the tram got off at the edge of town. Kaelin left the seat in front of Trowa and took the one next to him, instead. They lost a group of kids from the concert at the edge of Zone 2, and then they were out in the residential part of the colony. No-one new got on, and the few who were left were quiet, reading books or asleep to the world except for an iPod in their ears. Trowa was tired, bodily; in that quiet clear place, mentally, after a big energetic night, enjoying the dim, pleasant even in the minor aches of sore knees and the hard plastic seat cutting off blood to his ass. There were worse ways to end a long night.

“You still smell like cigarettes,” he said, just to watch Kaelin's head come turning toward him. The gentle back-and-forth rock of the tram on the tracks was lulling. “You bring clean clothes for tomorrow?”

“I always do.” His lips weren't-- not stupidly full, not feminine, but unusual enough. Perfect for his face, for the intense eyes that sat over them, the perfectly straight nose. His eyes were pure Quatre, though, pure genetic replica, down to the ring of black at the edge of the blue iris. There was a hint of a dimple in his left cheek, too, just like Quat; but Quat smiled, and he hadn't seen Kaelin do that, not since he was ten. Maybe not even then.

He turned his eyes forward.

“Are you sleepy?” Kaelin said. “We could watch a show or a movie.”

“Probably not.” He wasn't sleepy, actually, but the prospect of snuggling down on the tiny hotel couch with the kid didn't appeal. Or rather, did. He didn't have Quatre's finely tuned sense of morality, but he knew a bad idea when he saw one coming. Snuggling had 'bad idea' written all over it.

“So where am I going to sleep?”

“The thing pulls out.”

“I'll wake up with springs sticking out of my ass.”

“You could go home. Mattresses made of goose down and rose petals in plenty, there.”

The black guy in front of them reached up for the pull and signaled for the next stop. The tram slowed to the end of the tunnel.

“Did you drink too much?”

“I had two beers,” Trowa retorted. “And they were equal parts water and piss. Assuming there was any alcohol in them at all, I still think I'm safe.”

“So you're not buzzed.”

“No.” Sliding stop. The guy was out the doors before they were all the way open. The platform was empty, the car was empty except them. In movies, this was when the slasher usually struck with the chainsaw.

Or when the good porn started. Kaelin moved his hand from his own lap to the edge of Trowa's seat. Then he put it on Trowa's leg.

They were five fucking minutes from their own stop. Five minutes and they could have been walking, on separate pieces of pavement, entirely safe. Away from the security cameras mounted directly across from them, at the very damn least.

Kaelin was watching him with those pale, knowing eyes, and when Trowa failed to protest his fingers slid gently for Trowa's in-seam.

"You want something to eat?" he asked, last ditch effort to ignore it out of existence, right as Kaelin found his dick under his pants and pressed it into his thigh with his palm.

"Depends on what you're offering."

That should have been laughable. A teenager's attempt at seduction, subtle as a bag of bricks to the skull. But the silence in the tram was charged and buzzing. There was very, very little space between their shoulders, their hips, their knees. Kaelin knew plenty about things he shouldn't have. Trowa kept his eyes open by force of will at the wave of sensation from his crotch.

"I don't think this is what your dad had in mind for tonight," he said evenly. “I think you should go home.”

That, finally, was effective. Kaelin moved his hand away.

“Your dad,” Trowa repeated, because that was the part he thought had probably done for it. “He trusts us both. I'd rather not destroy his world-view--”

"You're hard."

Observant little shit. Trowa fisted his hands in his pockets. "Yeah."

"What exactly is wrong with me then?"

"Aside from the fact that you're my best friend's kid and half my age?"

"You were gone for seven years with only two letters, so how close are you really?"

"Would it shock you to learn there's more history here than the last week, and more people involved in this than you and your cock?” Finally, fucking finally, they hit his stop. He got to his feet just to be standing away from Kaelin, leaned on the handline over the doors. He was, damn it, hard, plenty hard that walking six blocks to his hotel was going to suck big.

"I know.” Kaelin was at his back, too bold, too persistent.

“Then maybe you can pretend to understand why I--”

“I know about you and my dad."

When, and who? The tram stopped moving, and Trowa was out the doors even if he had to squeeze through alone. He clattered up the stairwell out of the tunnel fast enough that his balance was at risk, hands hampered in his jacket, but Kaelin kept even with him, a step behind.

“I don't--”

"And you're going to tell me you don't care,” Trowa overrode him. “This isn't about me and your dad. Or you and your dad. It's about you and me."

Kaelin laughed. Not nicely. It rebounded off the walls around them, bitter echoes. "Do you have any idea what it's like to have a father like Quatre Winner?"

"I can guess."

"I doubt it."

"We're friends. That means I get to see his shitty side as well as his good one.”

“He--”

“Damn it, Kaelin. I don't care.”

Kaelin went quiet and pissed, at that. It made for two entire blocks of him silently trailing Trowa's footsteps, time Trowa took to enjoy a brief version of his youthful existential crises. The source was even the same.

What did he really owe Quatre? His life? His loyalty? The idea bugged the shit out of him. But wasn't it at least a little wrong to even consider fucking your ex's kid? Especially when it was your best friend, who would be well within reason to come after Trowa with a boning knife for so much as imagining the scenario.

Not that he had much imagination. He kept failing to predict Kaelin. The grab to the back of his coat caught him completely unaware. Kaelin wrenched him to a stop and got within centimetres of kissing him.

Trowa held him off with both hands locked on his shoulders. "Not here, kid."

"Here or anywhere?" Kaelin shot back.

"Not. Here."

Kaelin subsided, but he stuck on Trowa like white on rice for the rest of the walk. Now he was giving serious consideration to making a run for it, and hoping he was faster than a teenager who didn't work out regularly. He didn't come up with a coherent plan, though, before they were trudging through the gravel to Trowa's hotel. He swiped the key through the lock with an ironic sense of hovering doom, and opened the door.

“Wow,” Kaelin said. “This place is kind of a dump.”

“Maybe compared to the Winner manse.” He tossed his jacket onto the table by the window. It wasn't particularly bad, for the purpose it was meant to serve-- a little kitchenette, a large king bed, comfortable couches and plenty of chairs. It was a businessman's travel suite, the kind of place he was used to living in. Practical. Impersonal.

The kid was right. He needed to find an apartment.

“Trowa...”

“You want a beer? Sink water is tolerable.”

“I want you.”

Out in the open.

And damn if it didn't make him smile, at that-- the kid didn't lack for guts. Not a little thing, the size of the risk, being that open with yourself, with someone who was bound to put you off. Or tell your parents. He could appreciate it.

He just didn't want to be so tempted by it.

“Couch is there,” he said. “There's blankets in the closet there.”

They were getting back to that point of no return again. Running for it full speed.

Did it matter so much that this was the crown prince of the Winner kingdom? Or that Kaelin was half his age and not getting any older just because that would make it suck less. They'd spent the entire evening on the foreplay, and the prospect of a long night with a sullen would-be lover and a case of blue balls was more than he could take.

More than he could take, and if Quatre couldn't accept that excuse, fuck him anyway.

Fuck it, anyway. He turned-- Kaelin was right behind, close enough that he had to rear back or get hit-- until Trowa pulled him in close again. His neck was warm under Trowa's hand, his pulse hammering hard and fast. Trowa opened his mouth to speak, and didn't get out a word before Kaelin was there, too. Their mouths mashed together, hard enough for teeth to click, to sting. Luscious lips, exactly like they looked. Trowa sucked at them, bit them, forced them wider with his tongue. Kaelin's hips were enticingly small under his hands, but firm, as if the fragility were just imaginary. Hard to know, exactly, what was imaginary at all-- there was plenty of practise in the way Kaelin kissed, plenty of experience, but there was still an-- endearing sort of-- excited tentativeness. He didn't bend until Trowa forced him to, and when he did his fists went tight in Trowa's shirt in fear.

The drywall shuddered when he pushed Kaelin into it. Kaelin shuddered. Trowa ripped at his belt until it opened, shoved at his trousers until the zip cracked open. He pulled Kaelin's head down by the hair to lick at his neck, long swipes before he closed his teeth on tender skin. “Like this?” he murmured. “You can expect more of it, if we do this.”

“It's great. It's hot.” The kid made an effort to touch him back. Trowa grabbed his wrist and pinned it to the wall, knocking one of the cheap paintings askew.

"Do you have any idea what you want, Kaelin?"

The other hand went around to his ass. No-- into his back pocket. Kaelin took his wallet, fumbled through it crushed against Trowa's hip. It dropped to the floor with a leathery fwap. Kaelin brought his fingers up between their faces, and brushed Trowa's lips with the serrated edge of a condom wrapper.

Any thoughts he'd had about controlling where this went vanished to the thinnest vain thread. “Kaelin.”

“How long have you been carrying this, waiting for the opportunity to use it?”

"I am not a romantic, Kaelin." He moved the condom away from his mouth. “Do you understand me?”

"Was I under the impression that you were?" They breathed on the same beat, for a moment. Then Kaelin broke open the wrapper with his teeth, and unzipped him to roll it on.

It might have been just bravado, but it dealt a handy death blow to the last of Trowa's resistance.

The bed was only steps away. They walked in step, Trowa backing him toward it, manoeuvring him blind. Kaelin's hands were all over him, stroking him, and he was so hard it hurt to walk. Kaelin's little vest disappeared without conscious thought, and he didn't even notice when his own went missing. Kaelin was leaning into him, kissing, licking his throat. He was more than ready for Trowa to open his fly, to curl around him, to tighten. He made great gasping breaths through clenched jaws, a guttural outcry when Trowa bit his earlobe, his throat, his nipple. He wrenched Kaelin's waistband down to expose the upper curves of his ass, splayed his fingers wide around to squeeze him. Then he was propped on his knees and hands between Kaelin's legs, saying, “How careful am I going to have to be?”

Pale thighs. Pale everything, except his hair, and his tongue when he wet his lips, and the flushed marks of bites down his chest and stomach that only Trowa's teeth remembered putting there.

"Do you ask everyone that?"

"No,” Trowa answered. He'd lad lube with him from the flight into Space. It had gone onto the bedside table with everything other miscellaneous possession, deodorant, cologne, clippers, a pocket knife. He opened the flip cap with his thumb and squirted a cold handful into his palm. “Usually, I just take what I want." He pushed until Kaelin's shoulders met the mattress, pushed until his knees were pressed to his chest, and followed the swipe of his wet hand inside of the warm waiting body.

Maybe it was a measure of where his humanity was at that it took half a minute after that for it to even sink in what exactly he was doing. Maybe he'd just been too horny, and if that was true, the kid wasn't blameless.

Kid.

Eyes squeezed shut like he was afraid it would hurt. Maybe it did. Probably a fucking virgin. Probably just a kid who hadn't really known what it would be like, and had thought he could trust--

He lowered his forehead to Kaelin's bony collar. "Breathe," he murmured.

Hands fluttered, clenched into fists in the sheet. "I'm fine."

He waited. Until Kaelin obeyed, and the ribcage under his cheek expanded, twice, again. He trailed his fingers down Kaelin's sternum, down through the black curls to the head of his cock. He curved his hand under Kaelin's thigh, and petted him slowly.

When he began to move again, Kaelin was relaxed enough to move with him. Which was lucky, because all he had in mind now was finishing this fast and hoping Kaelin was so-- whatever emotion that he'd walk out, hurt, humiliated, whatever it took to keep him away once he was out the door. He thought of all the sexiest things he'd ever seen or heard or read-- wank videos, erotic comics, the smell of rain on sunburnt skin, the noises Quatre had made the first time they'd made love-- when they'd slept side by side that night, the sound of his breathing--

He came. He lay still, until the weakness passed, until he could hear something besides his own heart. Kaelin was still, too.

Close enough to feel him swallow.

He trailed his fingertip from Kaelin's shoulder to his wrist. The little hairs on his arm stood up with gooseflesh. He laced their fingers. Their hands were so different. Almost the same size, which argued Kaelin wasn't done growing. But his were brown, and had their old scars, their calluses. Kaelin's were still so perfect; handsome hands.

He sat up, finally, to deal with the condom. He got a towel from the bath for them both, wet from the sink, and tossed his back into the pile for the laundry pickup. “You okay?” he asked briefly.

"Yeah. Fine." Kaelin wiped off, gingerly. When he sat up, he faced opposite Trowa, to the wall.

He reached to touch again. Thought better of it. "It gets better."

"It was great." With not much passing as enthusiasm, in that statement, Trowa believed it about as much as Kaelin did.

He sat and pulled the kid by the arm until he turned. "Look,” he said. “I should've been nicer about it."

"Oh, God. The only thing that's going to make this suck worse is if you keep talking like that. Just shut up already!"

He caught Kaelin's wrist and pulled back down before he got more than halfway to his feet. And then, since he had momentum, he yanked Kaelin onto his back and spooned him, wrapping his arms around in spite of the mild struggling Kaelin put up. "Easy," he said, and held on anyway until Kaelin gave in. “You don't have to go running off into the night.”

"Not what I thought it would be like," Kaelin ventured, a moody eternity later.

"What did you think?"

"I don't know."

"This is what it's like. Sometimes not even as good as this."

"Are you trying to tell me to be straight?"

He nuzzled Kaelin's neck. "I'm telling you to be more careful who you go home with."

“So what? That's it?" Kaelin wrestled free and made a grab for his pants, hanging off the end of the bed. Trowa propped himself on his elbows to watch as he fumbled his feet into them.

"It should be,” he started, because, after all, this had been the goal. It might have been better if he'd managed to get to it without the sex, but maybe he hadn't caused irreparable mental damage. Emotional damage. He'd pushed back hard, but Kaelin had been putting up a good show of his own, and you didn't come up with that kind of an act if you didn't have some sizable balls behind it. Quat had been the same way.

But he'd been telling himself that Kaelin wasn't Quatre. Kaelin wasn't. Maybe they were both strong, but Quatre had known the world, and Kaelin didn't. Like that stupid concert. That was the product of luxury, that was the product of parents who knew what there was that a child needed sheltering from; smoking because that was biggest rebellion he could think of, dancing with an older man because he thought that was what danger was, mouthing bad lyrics sung by washed-up bands whose entire image was too lazy to shower. Strength had a lot to do with what you lived through, and Quat--

Had lived through Trowa Barton, too. Lived and left.

He was dry-mouthed. He said, “But you're here for tonight. So... come back to bed."

"For what?” the kid retorted, snide in his hurt. “Another stellar performance?"

"Want me to take you home?"

"I'll sleep on your couch."

"Like hell. Look-- come back to bed."

Kaelin whirled suddenly and knocked him back against the pillows. Trowa dragged him after, and rolled to pin him again. "Just exactly what did you think was going to happen?"

"Fuck me like you can remember my name."

“I know your name, Kaelin.” He wrapped one of Kaelin's curls around his finger. “I'm sorry I was so shitty."

"Why were you? You were looking at me from the first minute I walked into the room. Why blame me for it?"

"It wasn't about blame." He kissed Kaelin, half to see if he could, and kept it gentle. "I warned you I wasn't a romantic. Did you think I was lying?"

"Yes. I guess." Kaelin's eyelids lowered. Trowa rubbed the very tip of his long lashes, so lightly they didn't even flutter. "Sorry, too."

"Don't be." He let out a big cleansing breath. "Maybe in the morning, if you're not sore, we'll... try that again."

He almost missed it, blinking. But it was definitely triumph on Kaelin's face.

Oh, Barton, he thought. You don't know a damn thing what you're doing.


**


Trowa wasn't sure at what age it became cool to profess undying love after your first sexual experience, but Kaelin seemed to feel it was an important rite of passage. For Trowa, it had a fear factor somewhere between having your Gundam explode around you and your 'chute refusing to open.

They marathoned through the wee hours of the night. He called it quits at four, mostly because he could barely keep his eyes open, even if it was for sex, and because by then he was sure Kaelin was going to be all kinds of sore in the AM. It wasn't the worst way to go to sleep, all told, and he didn't even mind the wet spots.

He did mind being waked by peals of thunder. He fumbled for the alarm, before it registered that nothing man-made could produce that sound. He rubbed sand from his eyes, and turned over to see Kaelin staring back at him.

"Was that your stomach?"

"Sorry," Kaelin said.

"Guess I'd better feed you." He was groggy. He coughed to clear his throat, and managed to sit up without dying.

"I'm a vegan," Kaelin said.

"You're not serious."

"Why wouldn't I be serious?"

"Because it's ridiculous. And you're not."

The kid grinned at him. It was the first time he'd done that. It made it damn hard to be grumpy, except about being, apparently, a softy.

He had half of last night's pizza still in the box in the fridge. He tossed it onto the bed, and followed it, nose-diving for his pillow. "Breakfast is served."

Kaelin, in the boundless energy of youth, was upright and ripping into the kill. He had half a piece down before Trowa even made it onto his back. Kaelin threw a leg over his, just for the touch of bare skin. Trowa let his hand fall to Kaelin's thigh, just because it was there.

"Aren't you hungry?" the kid asked.

"Too early in the morning for me. Enjoy."

"It's--" He checked. "Ten."

"Yeah.” Kaelin had a second piece down to the crust and picked up a third. Trowa made an effort not to watch the carnage. "What time do you need to be home?"

"Dad said I could skip school. He didn't expect me back until regular."

"Okay."

“I can spend all day with you."

"Sure. What'd you have in mind." As if he couldn't figure it out. Kaelin slung his other leg over Trowa's lap, anyway, and lay there with smirking eyes licking marinara off his fingers. All in all, it was pretty clearly stated.

"So,” Trowa said. “I'll drop you off with a hitch in your stride and an aversion to chairs?"

“It's not like they'll notice."

"Is that what this is all about? Pushing the envelope until they notice and freak out?"

"Like hell I want them to notice." Kaelin stretched, and pushed the box until it fell off the bed. Splayed out wide and pale across the dark hotel sheets, he made an enticing picture. And knew it. He added, with relish, "I'd rather stay here and fuck all day."

"You don't have to push so hard. Okay? You're here."

"So make use of me."

"You're not a receptacle."

"Can I say anything right the first time for you?"

"What's that mean? You're here.” Trowa squeezed his thigh. “I don't spend the night having sex with people I don't like at least a little."

The kid caught the word he wanted to hear, predictably. "So you like me."

Perforce requiring Trowa to answer in kind, or be a bigger jerk-off than Treize Khushrenada on a particularly jerk-offy day. "Yeah, Kaelin,” he admitted, resigned. “I like you."

"So like me." A slender finger emerged from the bedsheets to trail a path down Trowa's pec. It circled his nipple and tugged.

Trowa attempted a gentle tone. "I think we should give it a rest."

"Why?"

"Why do you want this so much?"

The hand on his chest dropped to his lap, but stayed still, this time. Kaelin said, "I waited seven years for you to come back."

Whoa. Well, shit. That had some staggering implications.

Kaelin sat up on his elbows. "I knew what I was since I was three years old. I never felt right in my own body. I couldn't tell Mum or Dad, because they'd just tell me I was fine the way I was and I'd settle one day, but you said-- do you remember what you said?"

Yeah. He did. Remembered the solemn little-boy face looking gravely up at him, the pressure he'd felt to come up with something good, wise-- or something stupid and cynical enough to be passed off and forgotten. Slowly, he answered, "I said it was okay to be confused. Everyone is. All the time. You get used to it. And then by the time you do, you realise that whatever you want... whoever you want... is allowed."

"That meant everything to me. It changed my life."

He scratched his face. "If it made things easier, I'm glad." Hard to grasp, that idea. That he'd affected the kid, a kid, that way. This kid. And practically gave him advance permission to fuck him.

Well, really. Didn't that just change things.

"It's been you since I was eight years old, Trowa."

He scratched again, hard enough to sting a little, and occupied himself looking at the wall. "I don't deserve that."

"So?"

"So maybe you should save those kinds of feelings for someone who does."

"They're my feelings."

“I believe you."

"I love you."

Fuckfuck. It was as well he wasn't looking. A battalion of Leos couldn't have made him turn his head for that one. It was a miracle just keeping his voice from sounding as bombed as he felt. “I'm not ready to tell you I feel the same way,” he said. “I'm still trying to-- to fucking justify the eight-year-old Kaelin with the guy I just spent the night with."

He was incredibly aware of the hand in his lap. The hand now stroking, slowly, caressing. "Maybe you'd better grasp the distinction if you got a grasp on something else."

"You're in a big fucking hurry, kid, and I just don't operate that way. Fuck, I've been trying to slow it down since I saw you in your dad's study."

"Do you have any idea how hard it was to wait this long?"

“No. I don't. I-- had no idea."

"Make it up to me." Kaelin sat up to him. He cupped Trowa's cheek, trailed warm lips down his neck.

Trowa said, "Maybe I should take you home."

"God, fuck off!"

"I'm not in position to offer you anything. And I'm certainly not ready to be your boyfriend."

"Yeah, well don't inconvenience yourself. You might sprain something." Kaelin stayed on the bed, though, as if he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. Trowa let the silence grow, let the silence deliver the news. Listened to the shallowing of angry breaths, until it was almost impossible to hear.

"I'll get myself home," Kaelin said, and did.

Needed to be done.

He felt-- relieved. Yes. Relieved to have it over. Mystery fully explored. Kaelin was plenty young enough to bounce back from this romantic mush he'd made out of his big gay exile or whatever, and with some luck or divine intervention, there would be no consequences for anyone, including his incredibly blind and trusting father Quatre Winner. It was good to have it all finished. Kid would find someone else to change his life, someone who wouldn't accidentally-- accidentally-on-purpose take advantage of the things he had to offer. It was better this way. It was good. He was glad it was over.




So of course Kaelin came back the next day.

He'd finally gone through the bother of getting a rental car. He was sure thinking twice about staying, but in the cold light of logic it seemed stupid to let a single night of bad judgment chase him off the colony. Kaelin wasn't going to tell anyone, of course, especially if he hadn't even told his parents he was gay. At least, that was what Trowa assumed, when the only call he got from Quatre was a brightly delivered “Thanks for babysitting”. Off to the false horizon, time to settle down and let bygones be--

Kaelin rapped on his window.

He took the time to breathe. Oxygen. Time to control his expression, to show nothing but the most neutral of hellos. He rolled it down, and said, “Hey.”

"Where you going?" Kaelin asked.

"Apartment hunting.” The kid had his school clothes on. Little navy blazer with a crest on the pocket. Still, not good, managed to look like a walking-- what was the word Quat had used? Immortal. Like nothing could touch him.

Except Trowa.

“Coming?" Trowa heard himself say, and winced.

"Yeah." Kaelin was sliding in the passenger side before he had a chance to take it back. So he didn't. If he acted like nothing had happened, he might even be able to just drop Kaelin off at his house and go on about his day.

Or not. He started the engine, and Kaelin said, "So if you live here, we could date."

"I'd rather be skinned alive."

“Why?"

"Because it's not just about you. And if you expect me to believe what you said was for real--” He caught himself plunging headfirst into that particular ocean, and just managed to pull himself back. “You'll respect what I need."

That earned him exactly nine blocks and two kilometres of highway. He was dreading Kaelin speaking again. When the kid finally did, he at least had vindication.

"Do you have an agent?” Kaelin asked. “If the places are empty we could try out the beds. Or the floors."

"Christ, you're stubborn."

"Very."

"When we get back, okay?"

Damn. Weak, Barton.

Getting weaker. He let Kaelin take hold of the hand he'd left sitting on the shift.

"Can I ask what the fucking hurry is?"

"It's been like twenty-four hours."

"Yeah, twenty-four whole grueling hours."

"Grueling."

"You know, I-- need to know if this is just regular teenage-- horniness, or if you think this is what it takes to hold onto me."

"Uhhhhh." Kaelin let him go. "You didn't listen to a damn word I said yesterday."

"Trust me, I heard you."

"If you don't love me yet, all right. But I really don't think it should stand in the way of us fucking all afternoon."

Intellectually he knew he ought to hone in on that “yet” so casually inserted into conversation. His mind wasn't much in control, especially once Kaelin put a hand in his lap again and demonstrated everything Trowa had taught him.

"This is getting to be a habit," he said, dry-mouthed suddenly.

"There are far, far worse habits you could have."

He would have to spend some time thinking about that one. Later. There was only so much a man could take. He was done fighting.


**


He hadn't asked questions, largely out of a reluctance to actually admit anything was happening that needed questions asked about it. Kaelin appeared at his door every afternoon at four and stayed every night until eight in the morning. Trowa acquired a few hangers of shirts for a smaller body, an toothbrush beside his own, the odd sock that didn't match any of his but nevertheless sat in his drawer. There was milk and chocolate cereal in his refrigerator, and a physics text on his table. For exactly thirteen days.

It started with Kaelin in a mood, though it didn't stop them from falling into bed the second Kaelin crossed the threshold. When they were naked and cooling in the spray of freezing air from the window unit, and he couldn't ignore all the sulky and teenagery sort of faces Kaelin was making, he said, “What?” and that was really the end of it all.

"She's so damn nosy," Kaelin answered, or exploded, rather. He kicked a misplaced pillow to the floor.

"Who?” Trowa asked, although he could guess. “Your mother?"

"And she flogs Dad into it, like he even cares what I do. And then he's all 'If you want to spend your money you can spend YOUR money' and he tells me give back my allowance, as if it's even a real allowance. I get thirty bucks! I have friends who get a thousand a month."

He dragged Kaelin down the mattress and tucked him close to his chest, to kiss his hair and tangle their bare legs. "What'd you do to get her knickers in a twist?"

It was as well they weren't looking at each other, lying like that. Kaelin said, "I told them."

Well, it made sense. Not even Quatre was that permissive. Noin sure as hell wasn't. It was amazing Kaelin had been able to walk his pert little bottom across the colony to-- "Told them what exactly?" he asked, because clarification might be sort of essential in this one.

"All of it. That I'm gay, that I've always been, that you are and you at least understand."

No, clarification wasn't helping much. "And that we're fucking?"

Not so hot-headed, now. Kaelin squirmed until Trowa squeezed him. "Yeah," he said, in a small voice.

"Shit.” He let go and sat up, feet to the floor to get a solid grip on the situation. Still a lot of unknowns here, but did they matter much? Either Kaelin had told them last night and somehow slipped out of a double-locked door and the firing squad Noin would be bound to install, or it had just happened this afternoon after school and if it had, it was entirely possible that Kaelin, being the impetuous little braveheart he was, had acted his age and run away. Which meant Noin was on her way over with a shotgun. Trowa said, "I better call them."

"Why? What is there to say? They can't stop us."

"They could.” He grabbed for his jeans, and the phone in the pocket. “You're a minor."

Possibly that hadn't occurred to Kaelin yet. There was a short, uneasy silence behind him, as Trowa pulled his pants on and checked out the window, just in case. "They wouldn't do anything involving the police," Kaelin said uncertainly.

"Your dad wouldn't,” he admitted. “Your mom... can be a little vindictive. I wouldn't have touched you if you weren't the age of consent."

Well-- he would have. After all, he and Quatre had only been fifteen. And virgin or not, Kaelin hadn't arrived at Trowa's doorstep without a more than fundamental knowledge of sex, so he wasn't going where no man had gone before-- not that that was an argument likely to endear Noin.

"Don't stress out.” He buttoned his shirt, taking the time to be sure the right buttons went through the right holes. “I'll talk to them. They'll cool off."

"I'll run away with you first."

"Bullshit you will." He did turn, at that, to see Kaelin staring back at him, pale and flushed all at once, jaw in a stubborn jut. “That won't help anything, you little idiot."

"I would have been out of the house by summer anyway. If they can't deal with this then I don't want to deal with them."

"They've known less than a day. Do you always react perfectly to things that take you off guard? What'd you expect, Kaelin? They know me. I'm too old, and I'm used, and you're not.”

"I made my own decisions."

Ignoring the rest, because what spoilt and well-looked-after teenager wanted to give his parents credit at a time like this? Trowa didn't answer, because there was nothing to say to that that wasn't going to insult the kid's dignity, and he didn't want to go chasing Kaelin down the street if he made good on the running threat.

Kaelin glowered at the sheets. "I wanted to tell them a different way. All of it. I tried, this year. Mum especially, though, she just doesn't stop-- it's always who are you seeing, do you have a girlfriend yet. She just never even thought about the possibility."

“She probably has." He gathered Kaelin's clothes from the carpet. "Maybe she'd rather not, but your mother's not stupid." He held out the pile, until Kaelin took it from him. “Get dressed. Okay?”

No-- he knew that without even being told. Kaelin tugged at him until he sat, until he lay back, and kissed him with a harder edge than normal. He really was worried, and Trowa didn't blame him; there was plenty to worry about. It made Kaelin more dedicated than normal, too, taking a more aggressive lead than even their first night, pushing Trowa's shirt up over his stomach to suck at his belly, and then opening his jeans to suck lower, too. Trowa mostly wanted to be thinking of what to do next, but Kaelin didn't give him time to be tepid. Trowa closed his eyes, and reached out a hand that felt a thousand times too heavy to rub at Kaelin's neck, to fist his hair. Kaelin's head began to bob, and he gave himself up to it for the moment.

It took a while to float down, after. Kaelin stretched up beside him, staring up at the ceiling, not at him. He was a little hard still, and curled toward him when Trowa touched him, but he didn't ask for more, so Trowa let it wait.

"You feel better?" he asked, instead.

"Kind of. Maybe."

"Maybe?"

Kaelin bit his lip, pulling just enough to make it tingle. "Can I stay tonight?"

"Sure. On one condition."

"What?" he asked warily.

"I call them and let them know you're here."

"So they can come storming over here?" Kaelin sprang back up to his feet, full of instantaneous angst, and finally got dressed. "I just want one more night. I just want one more damn night to pretend that maybe they'll be okay with it, and nothing will-- will blow up tomorrow."

"They're going to be more okay with it if we trust them. And if you trust me."

"No. You don't know them like I do, you haven't been around. If you call them, it'll happen tonight, and I'm not fucking ready."

"That's enough, Kaelin." He sat up, too, until that made for something unfortunate with the zip on his jeans, and he was distracted with that long enough for Kaelin to make it into the bath and start running water as loudly as possible. Trowa followed him. "I've known your mom and dad for longer than you've been alive. And I know how they expect to be dealt with."

"Yeah, but they're not your parents.” Kaelin squirted far too much paste onto his brush and attacked his teeth, still talking. “They're mine. And either I matter enough to count or I don't, and if I don't, fuck you anyway."

"You matter." Kaelin was scrubbing his tongue vigorously enough to suggest he didn't like the taste there at the moment, and even though it was silly, Trowa found himself a little miffed at the implication. He turned off the sink faucet. "Everyone matters equally."

"Then give me one night before I have to deal with them!"

"I'm trying to. But you're fucking falling apart." Enough was enough. He opened his mobile and hit rocket dial. Quatre had been Number One on the list since they were kids. He put the phone to his ear just as Kaelin rocketed past him, not sparing a hefty slam into his shoulder first. The next slam was the door, as Kaelin did exactly what he'd promised to do, and left. “Fuck," Trowa said.

Which, of course, was the first thing Quatre heard when he answered the ring. "Excuse me?” his oldest friend demanded.

"Oh, hey.” Trowa grabbed his boots and slid into them, leaving the laces for the moment. “I was just calling to say I was keeping Kaelin here tonight and we could talk about it in the morning. But he just stormed out. I'm going after him. Can you just wait on this tonight, Quat?"

There was a long silence-- he'd forgotten where exactly it was that Kaelin got that talent from. Then Quatre said, "Where did he go?"

"He didn't want me to call you. I'll find him." Key, car keys, but if Kaelin was on foot it would be better to be the same. Where the hell would he go, anyway, out here way past the residential quarter? "Look, I have to go. Can you just deal with Luce tonight so I can do that?"

Another silence, long enough Trowa was opening his mouth to fight again; and then Quatre just hung up. Trowa cussed at the mobile, but there wasn't time to stand there being hurt. He made sure the door locked behind him, and set off at a jog for the street.

Tram. The tram was the most obvious. Kaelin didn't know where anything was around here, which meant he'd have to go back into town. Except he wouldn't go home. Where did kids go when they were pissed at all the adults they knew?

To their friends, of course. And he'd only ever heard one name repeated.

Jamie Schbeiker opened the door on a ratty little apartment, and said, “Kae's in my room. But you have to hurry. You gotta be out of here before my mom gets back. She doesn't know about you yet.”

“Great,” Trowa answered. “One giant fucking conspiracy.”

Hilde's place had all the earmarks of a single parent household. Too dirty, too old, too frazzled. There were newspapers spread open on the table, red ink circles around the job ads. A hoover that hadn't been used in a little too long left out on the carpet. An overflowing trash bin full of microwave dinner trays. Duo's picture on the wall, taken with her back when they'd actually resembled a couple, in the Great Breeding Days after the war. Everyone had shacked up then. A real rash of war babies.

Including the one sitting on the bottom bunk bed, in the little closet passing for a kid's bedroom.

“Kae,” Jamie said, and twisted away from Trowa's gaze when it turned to him. “He's here. You want me to tell him to go, or is it cool?”

Kaelin got to his feet, for the pleasure of turning his slim back on them both. He stared out the window as if he were too bored to look at them. “Whatever,” he said.

“Thanks, Jamie.” Trowa reached over the kid's head for the door. He levered it closed, slowly pushing Jamie out with it, and latched it when it shut. “Is he going to listen at the keyhole?” he asked Kaelin.

“He already knows all about you anyway.” Kaelin refused to turn. “So are my parents right behind you? Or the cops?”

“No. Maybe.” He nudged a pair of discarded shoes out of his path. “For the moment, it's just me. So get your head out of your ass and come home with me.”

"Which home?"

"Our home."

Kaelin's shoulders slumped.

"I'm just... trying to limit the damage, here," Trowa said. “Come on. None of this is fatal.”

"Feels like it." Kaelin exhaled. It was only a little shaky. "I left my toothbrush there anyway."

“So get over here.”

Kaelin obeyed, finally. Trowa yanked him the rest of the way and kissed him; he tried not to notice, so much, that it was the first time since their first night that it felt tentative. He didn't mention he'd only asked for a night, and he sure didn't add that he'd be surprised if they got that much. Damage control. And no need for Kaelin to figure out that Trowa was capable of a little, very little, panic, too. Very little.

It was just that Quatre had never hung up on him before. Quatre had never stopped him from saying anything he ever wanted to say, before. They'd been-- Quatre had been-- a constant. A true north for his navigation. Even when he was walking away he'd known where he was leaving from. Not even dying or amnesia or-- pregnant girlfriends had fucked that up.

Quatre had never hung up on him, before.


**


He had figured that once they knew, there'd be visitors. He had expected Noin, and hoped for Quat. To open the door on Zechs Merquise was a surprise and a half.

“Why are you here?” Trowa asked.

Merquise shrugged at him. “I'm visiting,” he answered, easily enough, as if they'd just met in the street by chance, and not at the hotel room where he was hiding a kid who didn't want to be found. “A third-party intervention seemed most likely to defuse the situation without needless... noise.”

“Huh.” Trowa pulled his shirt on and buttoned it. “You look good.”

“You as well.” Merquise was the kind of man who was never going to look right out of uniform, but he still carried himself well. Trowa had lived most of his life with soldiers of one kind or another, less legitimate, kind, and some part of him was used to judging people by ingrained standards. Merquise met them. Authority, and a level gaze, and a competent, deadly air. Even when he was politely running interference for a madwoman.

“So,” Trowa said. “Which one of you persuaded her that beating me senseless wasn't going to stop us?”

Merquise raised an eyebrow. Even such a little movement was elegant. “Presumably a desire to keep the salacious details, which were not shared with me, quiet.”

“That sounds like that snivelling PR guy Quatre has,” Trowa noted. “They didn't even tell the messenger what he was messaging?”

“It's clear enough. Stop diddling her baby boy and find someone your age who doesn't look suspiciously like Quatre Winner."

That was like a precise hit with the tip of an epee-- slicing in exactly where it was meant to go, not a centimetre wide. Trowa smiled coolly. "No-one's forcing him to come here."

"I really don't want to have this argument with you."

"Fine.” Trowa kicked the door wide and turned his back. Merquise could follow if he “really wanted” to. “Beer?"

"The boy's not in there, is he?"

"Not this time, no." And the lie would have flown, except Kaelin chose that moment to come out of the bath in a billow of shower steam, a skimpy hotel towel wrapped low on his hips. Trowa decided to just keep walking; he opened the fridge and took out three bottles. He twisted the top from one and offered it to Merquise. Then he slung his arm around Kaelin's shoulders.

Merquise looked at him, assessing him, and for the first time since arriving he looked actually engaged. He never once looked at Kaelin. He said, "We both agree this is hardly the worst thing you've ever done, but do you really think it's worth the damage?"

He tried not to visibly stiffen. Kaelin did, and gripped his belt in back. "No one's being hurt here,” he said. “Except maybe Quatre, who has no right to be."

"Quatre's the one person who hasn't protested, and you know it."

"Tell your girlfriend to step off. She's not helping things." Deliberately, he titled Kaelin's head back, and sucked at his neck. He left a mark before he looked back again, to see if Merquise would take the point.

The problem, of course, with the kind of personality Merquise and those soldiers Trowa admired had, was that they didn't bend at the first provocation. If anything, Merquise went more internal, steadier even than before. He said, mildness itself, "Do you really think you turned out fine, after whatever man did this service for you?"

There was no possible way for Merquise to have aim that accurate. To know exactly how much of that to say, to know what there would be to remember--

Helluva lot younger than Kaelin.  And the guy was no hero.  It was ugly, violent, and furtive, deep dark in some bunker, some frozen shelter somewhere where Alliance wouldn't find them for a few days-- He'd traded his innocence for the hope of a little protection.  He'd gotten that, but the price hadn't hit home until he was older, until Quatre, until he'd had a real intimacy, and recognised what it was supposed to really be like.

He hadn't given Kaelin a lot more than that. A softer bed. A nicer-- not much nicer-- not much measurably more humane introduction to sex. And Kaelin had come back the next day to tell him it was love. Kaelin had believed every word he'd said and taken promises out of what he'd left silent. Kaelin had... been a child he'd treated like an adult who knew all the same things Trowa the adult knew.

Trowa licked his lips. "Kaelin. Go make us some coffee, okay?" He squeezed the back of Kaelin's neck. “A couple cups. Merquise. How you take it?”

“Black,” Merquise answered. “Thank you.”

The kitchenette was hardly out of hearing, but it gave at least the illusion of privacy. For the adults in the room, that was the implication, and Trowa had to admit that it probably illustrated exactly the point Merquise had come to make, but there was nothing to be done about that when what was going to be said was really directed at Trowa, not Kaelin.

He got right down to it. “He could've gone home with some gold-digger."

"And I'd be talking to someone else, then. But I'm talking to you, and you ought to know why I shouldn't be."

"He's better off here than he could be. I at least give a shit, no matter what Noin thinks. You think I can just drive him off? Do you really think I haven't tried?"

"No, I don't think you really have." Merquise came two steps closer. “He'll cry a little and he'll feel burned by love. And when he's older, and wiser, he'll be better for having retained at least a little innocence." Another step, and Trowa realised that he had his back to the wall, and the only door was behind Merquise, not him. Merquise never so much as moved to touch him, but Trowa was stiff with knowing he could, that not many men did this if they didn't mean to.

“Didn't you wish you'd had that?” Merquise said. “Just a little innocence. Would have helped with the long nights, wouldn't it?”

Boxed him in, nicely as an expert. You really had to know what you were doing, to get it right, so effortlessly. To know what effect it had. Stifling. Hard to look up, let alone breathe.

And then, abruptly, Merquise passed by him, to go lean against the kitchenette counter. Kaelin handed him a steaming mug.

“Thank you, Kae,” he said, urbane as if he'd never just run a guerrilla hit against home turf and come out with the bounty. He sipped the coffee, and let the mug rest between his hands. “I'm sorry, son, but it's time for you to get your things together. I'll drive you home.”

“And I'm sorry, too, Mr Merquise, but I'm not going to go,” Kaelin answered, every bit as level, even if he was a foot shorter and as fresh-faced as any OZ cadet had ever been. “I'm where I want to be.”

“And where you can return in ten months, when you're eighteen.”

“Which is exactly how old my father was when I was born,” Kaelin said, this time with the edge showing. “Which makes him seventeen when he and my mother, who was years older than him, were pregnant with me.”

“It was a different time.”

“No. It's different now.” Kaelin flattened his hands on the counter. Trowa watched him, feeling as if he were listening to the sounds of some film playing in another room; he could see it all, but nothing felt real. “I've grown up to every story anyone could tell about the Colony War and the Alliance Years. I'm not with Trowa because I was forced to be, I'm not here because I'm hiding from an army or because I need food or shelter. I'm here because I love him. I'm here because I choose him.”

“Kaelin.”

The kid's head swung around to him. And then, a second later, without even being told, Trowa saw Kaelin understand.

“No,” Kaelin started.

“Kaelin.” He cut across the denial and got absolute silence, though Kaelin's eyes were already going red. “Go pack your stuff, okay. You should go."

Kaelin didn't protest again. Trowa could almost be proud of that. Kid didn't lack for-- anything but the things he wanted.

“Merquise will drive you home,” he said.

Kaelin took it with more dignity than anyone enduring what he was ought to have displayed. His jaw went into lock, and his shoulders went back. Evenly, so evenly, he replied, "The coffee's on."

"Thanks."

"You want cream and sugar?"

"Look, Kaelin, it's just not worth it."

Kaelin ignored him. He poured a mug for Trowa, and one for himself. He stood sipping it, which announced as well as anything else he could have done-- that he was still a kid, after all, and thought if he pretended long enough he wouldn't have to hear it.

Trowa said, “Go home.”

"You're not pitching me out."

"Yeah, I am. I'm not right for you."

"Because Mom's friend came over to yell at you? I was right enough last night."

"I'm not arguing that you're not beautiful. Or that you don't turn me on.” Merquise stood there with his head ducked low. Kaelin stood there staring at him with too much going on behind the eyes, too fast. Trowa had to go two breaths before he could finish. “But I can't be what you need and I'm not willing to lose your father's friendship because we're fucking. There are plenty of appropriate guys out there. Find one of them."

Kaelin licked his lips, and looked down. He looked down at the mug in his hands, and then he turned and dropped it into the sink, and then the carafe after it. The carafe shattered on impact, and everyone flinched, except Kaelin. Kaelin said, low and poisonous, "I was so wrong about you."

"Yeah, kid. You were."

"They joke about how you're in love with him. I knew you were thinking about him when you were with me. They all think you're pathetic."

He took the second body slam Kaelin gave him in as many days, and thumped into the wall behind him. He didn't move, even after they left.

**

The bar was the least dive-like of all the dives on the block, but that wasn't why he chose it. There was a little rainbow flag almost hidden in the corner of the display window, under a hand-written sign for a new drink special. It wasn't like L2, where there were entire sectors full of gays or gay-friendlies. Bars like this were non-existent on L4. Almost. He was curious to see it, if nothing else, and hopeful of a certain kind of prospects, if it would help pass the evening faster.

Not much impressive, as it turned out. The bell clang as he opened the door was subdued, like the atmosphere. It was dim, but it was clean, at least, and the waiters wore actual uniforms, spruce polo shirts that showed off muscles in the right places without being overly obvious. The clientèle didn't measure up quite as well as the staff. He got a few glances on the short path to the bar, but it was mostly couples or older men, who stayed occupied with the business at their own tables. There was a prominent license displayed over the taps. Everything had the overly-cared-for look of a place that expected to get hit. It didn't exactly welcome with open arms.

He ordered a beer and chatted with the bartender long enough to decide he didn't want to stay for the conversation, and paid upfront for the drink instead of opening a tab. The bartender came back as he was taking out his wallet to pay. “What was that, three fifty?” Trowa asked him.

“Try five fifty, sweetheart,” the bartender answered. “Here. With compliments from the gentleman.” He put a long-stemmed martini in front of Trowa.

“I don't take drinks from strangers.” Trowa used two fingers to push it away. It sloshed with a strong smell of sour apple green.

“Your loss, honey.” He took the tenner Trowa handed him and went back to the register for change. Trowa turned, as casually as he could, and sent a subtle glance around the bar. There was no-one immediately obvious looking back at him-- no, there he was. Almost hidden by a support pillar, in a dark little corner table. Zechs Merquise.

Merquise raised his glass in a silent toast. Trowa grimaced and turned his back again. That was not a face he particularly wanted to see. In a gay bar.

It still stung, how Merquise had known exactly what to say, the day he'd come to take Kaelin away from the big bad man who was tarnishing his innocence. Merquise wasn't exactly one to talk-- child soldiers had one thing in common, no matter if they were “real” military or rebels hiding in abandoned satellites, and that was adults who wanted to control you and change you.

It wasn't fair, entirely, to compare Trowa to that. To compare Kaelin to that. They all chose, even if they only thought they did, but Kaelin was-- rich. Loved by his parents. Privileged. Educated. Safe. Trowa didn't want to change any of that, take any of that away. But maybe it was fair to say that he might, accidentally, without even wanting to.

Trowa turned around again. Merquise was still looking at him. Sour apples, indeed. That was probably meant to be a joke-- if it wasn't supposed to be an insult.

“Your change,” the bartender said. “Honey, you listen good-- we don't get faces like that in here much. You need to take one for the team. Make us proud.”

He cracked a smile at that. “Yeah. Probably you're right.” He pocketed his cash, swept the drink off the bar, and took it across the floor to Merquise's table.

"You always were such a fag," he said, and took the open chair across from the man.

Merquise was drinking a perfectly normal whiskey. He toasted, again, and sipped at the icemelt. “Your boyfriend too young for bars?"

"I don't have a boyfriend." The drink tasted as bad as it smelled, but it was at least heavy on the liquor. "You slumming, Merquise? I didn't think this was your kind of place."

“I like to mingle with the common folk every other Tuesday."

That was funny. Might even have been true. They were the belles of the ball, certainly. There were definitely eyes on them now, people taking an interest. He wondered if people always fell over themselves for Merquise.

"So,” the man said. “You broke up with Kaelin?"

"You should know,” he retorted. “You're the one they sent to drag him off."

"I didn't really expect you to listen."

“You gave a pretty good imitation of it." He shrugged, and took a deep swig of the martini. He was back to the notion of finishing fast and getting the hell out. “Whatever. None of you were wrong. Apparently."

"He was too young for you."

"Yeah."

"No-one denies he's an attractive young man. I don't think the theory shocks anyone."

"So now that we've established this was the best thing for everyone, can we drop the platitudes and the rationalisations and just drink our fucking alcohol?"

Merquise took that in better grace than it was delivered. He even managed to shut up. He signaled the bartender for another round, and Trowa turned to make sure that what he got was a beer, not another joke. They were mutually silent until the drinks came, and with them a bowl of peanuts. Trowa seized on them first, not because he was hungry, but for something to do with his hands besides get drunk. Now that he had an audience who knew him, he wasn't so keen on getting shit-faced. No need to confirm all of his bad habits in front of other people. He broke open shells, several shells, and rattled the paper-skinned nuts in his palm before funneling them into his mouth. "So you really come here?” he asked around the mouthful. “On a regular basis?"

Merquize answered easily enough. "I discovered a long time ago that the person I used to be was not the person I wanted to be, and that it was a matter of choice."

He thought about that. He'd often thought about Merquise, actually-- the two men he had been. Merquise had re-invented himself, more than a few times, in the past. Maybe not so distant past as all that. "Who do you want to be?" he said.

"Sam Massey."

"Who?"

"Sam Massey." Merquise sipped at his new whiskey. "I went to Academy with Sam. He washed out. I had completely forgot about him, until I ran into him, totally by chance, a few years ago. He's a father. Two kids. His wife is a chemical engineer. She's gorgeous. He drives a family van and a Harley, wears a suit five days a week and leather the other two. He smokes dope once a month at poker, and what his priest doesn't know won't hurt any." He drank again, and let the glass rest gently to the table. "He's the most normal human being I've ever met."

The long answer amused him, when he hadn't expected to be amused. He began to let his guard down. Merquise wasn't here for another kick in the ass, after all, not if he was going to talk like that. "Kinda kinky there, Zechs. I don't know. Normal has never been for either of us."

"No,” Merquise agreed. “But it's not the worst goal to bear in mind."

“Good luck with that then."

"So how long has this been going on with you? The mid-life crisis."

He coughed on a carbonated mouthful. "Mid-life what? You're kidding, right?"

"You have all the classic signs. Up to and including a fling with some pretty young piece of fluff." The creases next to Merquise's mouth suggested a smile. "I admit, going to your best friend's son was an extra effort, though."

"Kaelin was not a piece of fluff to make me feel young again. And you're on dangerous ground, Merquise."

"Stop feeling so threatened. The worst I'll do is take a few swipes at your pride."

"I'm not threatened. I'd just rather not talk about Kaelin."

"Message received." There was a pause as Merquise tilted his head and however many pounds of hair he still had back for the final swallow. "So in a week of what I presume was enthusiastic and athletic fucking on bear-skin rugs, you actually developed feelings for a teenager?"

"I distinctly heard, 'message received.'"

"Oh, was I supposed to obey something?"

"One rule. Kaelin's off limits."

Merquise reached across the table to touch Trowa's wrist. "All right. For real."

He wasn't fooled, this time. He didn't relax. "No problem," he lied. "You always did love playing devil's advocate. So to speak. Treize must've loved that."

"I believe he regarded it as one of my many sterling qualities, yes."

There was a lot about Merquise that Treize had probably 'loved'. Merquise was bland enough to let it hang there, implied. Trowa didn't like that. Didn't like that Merquise seemed to have the upper hand every time they faced off, knew where to strike whenever it came Trowa's turn.

"So you couldn't find a man your age who appealed?" Merquise asked, one more time disregarding his requests. Trowa slammed his bottle to the table.

"I only sleep alone when I want to," he said flatly.

"Want to, then?"

"What-- with you?"

"I did buy you a drink."

How was that for being blindsided. He called for a second beer, buying time. Who knew L4 was going to be full of offers? "I'm cheap, but not that cheap, your highness."

"I suppose I can spring for another."

"Why?"

“Why not?" The third round was fast arriving. Merquise arranged their empties on the edge of the table, a little glass wall between them and the rest of the bar. "I haven't had you since you were my bit of fluff, a few decades ago. Maybe you remember. Maybe not."

He remembered. It had been before Quatre-- well, during Quatre, but before he'd figured out certain important things. Heero had been monofocussed on the upcoming duel, those long cold weeks in the arctic, and Trowa had felt a loyalty to him, a need to be close to him and support him, heavily coloured with hero worship. The littlest things had been capable of utterly devastating him-- a frown when he'd expected a nod, silence when he wanted a thanks. Heero's steady resistance to touching him. His nights were full of confusing dreams, and with nothing to do but trail Heero around there was nothing to distract from everything he couldn't do anything about, and everything had taken on the same nightmarish importance. Catherine. The war. Blue eyes and a disappointing inability in himself to say no to them.

Well, that at least was in character. He probably couldn't get drunk enough to forget Kaelin in one night, but maybe it was worth a try after all.

"To what end?" he said, remembering suddenly there'd been a question.

"To your end." Merquise raised pale eyebrows. "Unless you're a top, these days."

There were ways and ways to forget, maybe. One of them probably wouldn't wake him up with a headache and nausea. So why not? They were both adults, which was Merquise's point, and he already knew it would be good. Assuming Merquise managed to keep his mouth shut, or at least put it to better use than poking Trowa at every opportunity. Probably he shouldn't count on that to happen, but he could always walk away. Merquise wasn't going to come stalking him, like Kaelin had. Nobody who wasn't seventeen was going to figure Trowa Barton was worth it.

Trowa finished his beer, and said, "I guess we can work that out."

Merquise grinned into his glass. "We can take the tram to my place."

It was the second time since arriving on-colony that he was dangerously close to getting off in public transport. Merquise stood close behind him, though there was plenty of standing room, even that time of night, gripping the same handle as Trowa, and sometimes just gripping his hand. Merquise was still taller, if not by as much these days; tall enough to lean a little over him, close enough to feel his breath when the tram rocked them against each other. And Merquise had an instinctive feel for how to touch, too; a man's touch, a mature touch. His finger trailed the soft hairs at the back of Trowa's neck, rifling gooseflesh and raising shivers; nothing more sophisticated than that, but he didn't need more. It was-- kind of perfect. Trowa found himself staring out the window with a crooked smile on his lips.

"I was never your bit of fluff, Zechs," he said.

Merquise smirked down at him with heated eyes. "You were damn close."

"I guess we'll see what else we can get close to now."

He played at almost-kissing Trowa. Their mouths were only a hair apart.

"Do it," Trowa whispered.

Merquise immediately released Trowa's waist. "This is our stop."

Tease. A very capable tease.

He couldn't have retraced the walk from the tram stop to Merquise's apartment if he'd had to. The reality of their little assignation was hitting him, and his blood was up-- a lot was up. And it felt-- different, than that short time with Kaelin, in ways he hadn't even realised he was missing. There was a strange kind of freedom in being able to do whatever the hell he wanted without having anyone look twice at them, or at least no more than they would for any gay couple walking up the street with their hands down each others' pants. Which Merquise was very free about doing, squeezing his ass, slipping a hand up his jacket to his pecs. He was turned on, no denying.

But not by little Mr Sam Massey. It was an odd thought to have. With Kaelin, it hadn't really been about sex. Sure, the kid had run a strong campaign to get him into bed, but he'd been aware the whole time of who it was revving him up. Now he honestly couldn't say it had anything to do with Merquise.

Merquise had a proper hotel, not the long-stay residence Trowa had got. They had to cross the lobby, though it was thankfully empty of anyone to stare as Merquise sucked on his neck. He got Merquise's shirt open in the lift, and Merquise pressed him against the door to do a very dirty thing with straying fingers. There was no more wasted speech, not now. Merquise finally got the key in the lock, and they tumbled through the door. Trowa got a muzzy impression ritzy modern digs, fresh flowers in an ugly black-and-white arrangement, two uniforms hanging neatly pressed in the open closet, and then Merquise had him against the wall again, stripping him of his jacket, pinning him there with his hips and rocking against him. There was no more play in the deep, forceful kiss that pressed his jaws open, in the tongue that invaded his mouth. Trowa dragged Merquise's jumper off over his head, dug fists into the tangled hair that sifted down. It was silent, and serious, and if it lacked a little of the-- sense of play, of excitement, that it had had with Kaelin, well, there was nothing going to be wrong with the way it ended.

"Bed, couch-- floor-- or right here?" Merquise opened his trousers and stroked him one-handed. Sure touch, callused fingers, with a primal sense of exactly how hard was just hard enough. Trowa returned the favour, ripping the man's zip open. No underwear, of course, which should've been silly, not sexy, but he was just glad to have the hot heavy cock come easily to hand. He'd forgotten how hung Merquise was. Smug about it, too, self-satisfied in the smirk Trowa tried to bite from his lips. He took a thick handful of warm balls and squeezed them.

"I really,” he said, “don't give a shit."

Merquise did exactly what Kaelin had done. He reached for Trowa's wallet and found the condom in the pocket.

Painfully familiar.

There was only one way to deal with pain, in his experience. Bull right on through it.

He took the condom, this time. He tore it open with his teeth and got it started unrolling with his tongue, then went down between their hips to slip it onto Merquise. There must not have been too much like hesitation in his actions, because Merquise didn't pause at all, still jerking him off slow and rough, lips against his ear, his neck, teeth digging at his collarbone. Still close like that, Merquise walked him backward, fingers teasing his ass crack, fist on his dick around front using it like the handle of a push-cart to move him in the right direction. His calves hit a mattress, finally, and he went with the shove that pushed him backward, bouncing off a silky duvet. Merquise took care of the rest of their clothes, pulling his shoes off with his jeans and underpants, then kicking his own to the carpet. He posed for a moment with one knee on the edge between Trowa's legs, fisting himself with a palmful of lube, eyes hot as he touched himself. Trowa made an equal point of enjoying the show.

“Why'd you get involved with this at all?” he asked. He pulled one of the decorative pillows from behind his head and propped it under his hips.

“Noin asked.”

“Don't you mean Lucy Darling?”

“Quatre makes her a better husband than I ever did. She was a comrade before she was a friend.”

“Facts is facts, huh.”

“You were wrong for the boy.” Merquise lowered himself down, positioning Trowa's left leg high on his shoulder and setting muscular thighs to Trowa's hips. “He was wrong for you. This is right.”

He shut down the conversation with a rough kiss. Merquise obeyed that signal, at least. He fit the tip of his cock to Trowa's asshole, and then he pushed in.

It had been several years at least since he'd bottomed. He had completely forgotten how it felt. There was no pause for adjusting, no consideration for any pain he might have felt-- not with Merquise. He was moving immediately, deep strokes that sawed in and out as if he could barely squeeze back in each time. Merquise didn't spare extraneous touches, not now, except to gather up his dick and balls in one tight grip that guaranteed he wouldn't be coming too quickly. No tenderness here, not even in absence-- it was a good hard fucking from start to finish, cracking the headboard against the wall, creaking the mattress springs, driving the breath out of him with each thrust. He would have had to be dead not to be into it.

Into it. Not Merquise.

They separated long enough for Trowa to roll onto his stomach. Merquise lay over him, sliding back in more easily now, urging him into a low crouch, a rougher rhythm. Trowa let Merquise take care of balancing them, freeing his hands to dig his nails into the thick flexing thighs behind him. “You have a great body,” he said breathlessly. “How often do you work out?”

“Three hours three times a week.” Merquise fisted his hair, wrenching his head down, exposing the back of his neck to sharp teeth. “You're perfect.”

“I try.” Merquise gripped the headboard. "Harder," Trowa said, and braced himself too.

Merquise could do harder. Harder everything. Trowa found himself pushed face-down into the pillows, his ass in the air. Merquise held him down for it, and abandoned himself to everything but the slap of their bodies together. Trowa didn't even have to touch himself. For maybe the first time ever, he came just from being fucked. He shot his load into the duvet and lay panting into the pillows. He rocked with the four more violent thrusts, and then Merquise stilled behind him, his hands painfully clutching Trowa's hips.

Perfect. Right.

He allowed Merquise to go collapsing on top of him, since it was kind of the done thing, but the man turned out to be pretty heavy. He bore it for a few minutes before shifting significantly. Merquise took the hint with a huff of breath, and rolled off him to the side. Trowa had to fight his hair off his face, smashed down and tangled from being shoved into the pillows, but the view was worth it. Merquise really was a good looking man. The-- he found a clock facing him from over the television in the entertainment centre-- twenty minutes of solid effort had wrung them both out, but Merquise was basking in the afterglow, sweat matting the hair on his chest, gleaming on his skin.

"Do this often?" he asked eventually.

“I don't sleep alone unless I choose to," Merquise mimicked him. There was no bite in it, though. He ran a lazy hand over Trowa's chest, and let his palm rest warmly over Trowa's stomach. "No, not often."

He smiled a little. He didn't, either, not really. Maybe if he'd been a little more-- satisfied--

Or not. There was more to Kaelin than a one-off. Whether he wanted there to be or not. It wasn't like he'd really said no. Kaelin had been able to waltz right back in where he wanted, minus a little pride, perhaps, but it was good to feel like you'd earned something. Won something. Not like Trowa, who was probably a little too easily pushed around. He'd let himself be dictated to since landing at the shuttle port. Go here. Do this. Sleep with me. No, with me. Let go. Merquise at least didn't seem to think it was a serious short-coming, or not serious enough to outweigh a ridiculously easy trip into bed.

He hadn't even argued about topping. Next time. Merquise was democratic enough for turn-switching.

Next time. His mind was making itself up without his input.

Merquise said, "Don't take it the wrong way if I drift off."

“Am I staying?"

"If you want. If not, I understand."

"I'm tired. It's cold out.” It was perfectly balanced, of course, because L4 was nothing if not self-consciously perfect. Perfect. “No point rushing," he said.

Merquise yawned into his hand. “I'll toss breakfast into the deal." He finally got rid of the condom, and tossed a few fluttering tissues at Trowa. Trowa took them, but made the extra effort to get up and find the opulent little bath to take a piss. When he got back, Merquise was dozing, just as promised, mouth slightly open in a way that suggested snoring. Trowa nudged him over onto his side, which he took to without any protest or without really even waking, and that was the last thing Trowa remembered doing before going to sleep.


**


He woke up sore on the inside and numb on the outside. Merquise was draped all over him again, and his arm had gone tingly without access to his blood. He turned his head to bite Merquise's shoulder hard enough to wake him. He got a mumbled 'ow', but it served. Merquise rolled away. Trowa flexed his arm gratefully.

“You're heavy," he said.

"Are you blaming me?" Merquise fumbled for a travel clock on the bedside table. He muttered something unintelligible and got up for search that ended in clean underpants out of a suitcase.

"Late for something?" Trowa asked him.

"Starving."

He laughed. He rubbed a little sand from his eyes and stretched out the kinks. Merquise's swanky hotel had a better bed than the one he'd been living on. He'd have to sneak a look at the mattress tag later. “What's for breakfast?"

"Oatmeal."

“You're kidding."

"Yeah." He tossed a pair of boxers at Trowa, and shimmied into a pair of tighty whiteys with a disgusting sort of inherent grace. Trowa displayed absolutely none of the same, fumbling out of the bed, tripping in a corner of trailing sheet and having to look under all sorts of furniture he didn't remember being there the night before as he looked for his clothes. He found his jeans draped mostly behind a settee, couldn't locate his underwear. It wasn't worth wearing Merquise's, though.

Joining the list of ways Merquise's hotel was better was the expansive kitchen and dinette attached to the suite. It was as large as the kitchen Trowa had had in his last place on Earth, and newer and nicer, at that. Merquise was digging in the full-size refrigerator, and he emerged with eggs and packaged meat as Trowa followed him in. "Coffee?" Trowa asked.

"Cupboard over the stove. Get it started?"

"Sure." Snooty African beans in a jar, not a bag. There was a grinder next to them, which reinforced Trowa's notion that fancy food was another way of saying hard work. He filled the grinder and set it to running. Merquise had a pan on the stove heating, and a large spread was taking over the counter. Sausage, potatoes. Corned beef, being shredded, currently, with a fork, for a purpose Trowa wasn't awake enough to figure out. He did jump when Merquise suddenly turned around, a plant from the windowsill in his hand, a leaf being pushed past his teeth.

“Mint,” Merquise said. “Chew it.”

He did, but only because he could taste that it really was mint. “You're not normal, Zechs."

Merquise kissed him, lingering at it. “Mint,” he said again. “How do you take your eggs?”

“Over-easy.” He went through the business of setting up the coffee maker, autopiloting through a task his hands knew better than his brain. He was turned again for another culinary assault on his mouth, this time a cut pepper, and a minute after that a sliver of the corned beef. “What are you making?”

“Hash and browns.” The pan was sizzling, and Merquise kept the contents moving, flipping, fussing with a spatula. Trowa managed to dodge the next bit of finger-food headed toward him, and warned, "I'm not fifteen any more."

"Who said you were?"

"You don't need to hand-feed me."

He shrugged his acceptance, and fed himself instead. "Plates are the cupboard over the sink."

Maybe he wasn't fifteen, but he did feel-- less. More awkward than Merquise. Maybe it was too much clarity in the memory of their last 'morning after', when Merquise had been far kinder than Trowa had expected, and been rudely dealt with because of it. Apparently Trowa hadn't outgrown that response. He didn't really care about the finger-feeding; it was the gentility of it that put him off. Grown men didn't finger-feed. They fucked and ducked. Assuming they stuck around til morning.

He'd been shoving men out the door for a decade. Until Kaelin.

Jesus. He had to stop thinking about the kid.

He set the table without being asked twice. "You surprised me. Last night."

“Did I?"

"A little. Yeah."

"Pleasantly or un?"

Trowa shrugged. "Plans for today?"

"Dinner with Quatre and Noin. Lucy Darling, that is. You?"

"Sure as hell not that." Merquise grinned at that. "I've got shit to do. You can come by after your dinner with the family if you feel like it."

Merquise left the cooking for a moment to meet his look. It hung there, his invitation, long enough for him to regret it, and to remind himself that fucking and ducking was a good idea for a reason.

"Want me to bring anything?" Merquise asked.

"Toothbrush.” Trowa twitched a smile. “I hate when people try to share mine."

He still had Kaelin's.

Merquise nodded peaceably. "Probably around half nine, then."

"All right." He used the fork he'd put out on the table to reach into the fry pan. He speared a thick chunk of corned beef. "I'll stock up on oatmeal."

He finally got an outright laugh for that. "You do so."


**


The second time he went face-down in a pillow, he realised he'd forgotten to ask-- say-- about topping. In his own bed.

“Didn't I hear you were shopping for an apartment?” Merquise asked. He hit the mattress with a little jounce, muscular arms propped behind his head, all aglow and still awake, at least. Trowa, on the other hand, was fighting off a nap.

“Yeah,” he said. “I applied at a couple of places.” He squirmed for comfort. “So-- you're obviously carrying something, though.”

"What?"

"It's like you're trying to get something out of your system." He grabbed for the tissue box. He was running low. He hadn't replaced it since renting the room. He shared the last two with Merquise, and flung them at his trash bin. “Out of yours and into mine. No-one fucks like that who hasn't got some kind of issues.”

Merquise followed his shot with the second tissue, swishing right into the bin. "Maybe the rest of the time I'm trying to hold it in."

"Why bother?"

“Part of growing up is reigning in your impulses. Isn't it?"

It seemed like Merquise spent a lot of time reminding him of growing up. Trowa hadn't figured out if it was intentional. "Not all of them,” he said. “Do that for long enough and you'll implode."

"Or grow up."

"Over-rated."

“I'm not surprised you think so." Merquise plumped his pillow and settled facing Trowa. "You haven't asked me if Kaelin was at dinner."

He tried not to freeze in place. “Why would I?"

"No reason, then."

"Was he?"

Short pause, with Merquise looking at him, blue eyes a mystery. "No."

He swallowed. Flicked his eyes to the painting on the wall, impressionist flowers, a terracotta house somewhere on Earth. "Lucy cooked?" he asked casually.

Merquise snorted. "Noin can't cook in a microwave. Quatre did."

"Let me guess. Paella." He could smile for that. "He always makes paella."

"Mmhm. Fresh mussels and langoustine. Decadent."

"Tin roof ice cream over chocolate pound cake for dessert."

"No, he didn't tell you? They're on low-sugar diets now."

"That's hilarious. And it won't last."

"I think it's precautionary. Family history of diabetes."

"Who, Quat?" He propped himself on an elbow, a little concerned now.

"His grandfather. He's not sure if his father had it. Died too early. Of course if he can't have sugar, Noin won't eat it, either. Better altogether to remove it from the house."

"Shit. He never said a word."

"He's not actually sick. Why would he say anything?"

He shrugged away Merquise's determination to be sensible. He was projecting and he knew it. He was just sure that Quat would never speak to him again, about anything; if it was his kid he probably wouldn't.

It didn't take Merquise but a moment to cotton on to his thoughts. He said, quite gently, “Quatre will forgive you. Noin won't, but you never cared about her."

"Not particularly.” He pulled the pillow under his chest and lay on it. “One way or the other. Why would I?"

"She's married to your past lover and the mother of your present one. Reason enough to at least watch which way the wind is blowing."

“Kaelin and I are over. Quat and I probably are too."

Merquise kissed him, and rubbed his neck tenderly. "You really don't know the first thing about Winners, do you?"

"Apparently," he said.




He couldn't say life on L4 wasn't interesting.

The thing with Merquise became a regular. They never attempted to spend the day together, which he liked; if they made plans they were always for just the evening, never even for the night after, and he liked that, too. It made it feel spontaneous, or at least-- uninvested. What the hell.

What the hell, everything. Life had always been a bit fucked up. A lot fucked up. It was easy to hold back when there wasn't anything there to pour into. He had no anchors, and he knew it; no job, a fractured friendship, living in a hotel.

“Only for a little longer,” Merquise reminded him. “By the way, did you need references?”

“You don't think Quat will say nice things about me when they call him?” He finished his steak and dropped the plate onto the coffee table. Probably Quat would, actually. He was just that fair. Ridiculously. “Une will make the light shine out my ass. Don't you think?”

“Oh, definitely. She doesn't hold grudges at all.”

“You know, Quat said, the first night I was here, something about we'd both seen it coming. But I didn't.” He swigged at the warming last swallows of his beer. “I knew I wasn't particularly happy. I thought it was general life entropy.”

“Anyone who knows you could see you weren't cut out for a long-term commitment to a job as regimented as Preventers.”

They worked, in an odd kind of way. It was comfortable. They were both men who reserved emotion. Who didn't make a big deal out of things that weren't. He still didn't like how Merquise had a way of saying uncomplimentary things as if they were obvious, but he wasn't wrong. For years he'd been feeling like control of his life was just out of reach. Other people seemed to find it easy and convenient to control him, though. It had been easy to develop inertia. An antipathy to creating his own movement. It didn't help that all around him there were people who knew exactly what they wanted and how to go out and get it. It was just like being back with Heero in those early days of the war, playing the clueless tag-along while Heero made all the decisions. Trowa had never known what he wanted. He hadn't ever really wanted anything.

Except Quat. He loved Quat, or at least that's what he'd told himself it was at the time.  The symptoms all fit the disease, and in his warped frame of reference, it was a sickness then.  A cumbersome sickness he was careful to hide, like he hid what he felt for Cathy.  He hadn't had the luxury of forming attachments then.  It wasn't until after the war that he'd accepted what he felt for Quat was what it was. In true form, of course; by then, having Quat was impossible. He'd meandered through his little angsty crisis for so long that Quatre's feelings for him had mellowed from passion to friendship. He still hadn't figured out what it meant that he'd been replaced by Noin, of all possible people. So maybe he'd lied to Kaelin. You were confused all the time, and by the time you finally got a little corner of your shit together, it was too late, and the opportunities you'd thought were immutable turned out to be as short as a nine-month pregnancy.

He cleared his throat. "I never was a good company man."

Merquise set his dish down as well, and settled on Trowa's little couch to look at him face-on. “What will you do now?” he asked.

“Go off somewhere. Write the great colonial novel.”

“Oh, indeed.”

“And there will be sex in it. A lot of sex.”

He got a surprised and hearty laugh for that. "Well,” Merquise said, “you've got one reader primed and ready." He lifted his hand from the back of the couch and let it rest on Trowa's shoulder. He squeezed gently, and then pulled softly at Trowa's collar. It slipped a half-heartedly closed button and opened enough for Merquise's thumb to brush his skin.

Trowa said, "Primed and ready is good."

They were well past the point where it needed any more introduction. Trowa pushed the coffee table skidding away on the carpet and settled on his knees. Merquise popped his jeans and Trowa peeled them down. He was already hard and leaking. Big surprise. Since they'd begun this he'd hardly seen Merquise any other way.

“More tongue,” Merquise murmured at him, and there was something else after that, but he tuned it out. He knew plenty what he was doing and had no intentions of taking instruction. He even rather liked it. Even when the guy was hung like a baby's arm. He scooted closer, with Merquise's hand in his hair urging him on.

So of course Kaelin came in then.

Merquise got out a "Shit" when the door started opening. Trowa jerked away and threw a pillow at the lap he'd been sucking. Unfortunately, Kaelin wasn't a moron, so there was no hiding what they'd been doing. Kaelin stood there staring at them like he'd been stabbed in the chest. Repeatedly.

Trowa pulled his shirt closed. "Come on in," he said dryly.

"I knocked," Kaelin accused.

"Yeah, I heard you. Most people go away when no one answers. Did you come to return your key?"

Merquise eased to his feet, pillow secured in place. He grabbed his jeans from the floor, and made himself scarce. The bathroom door closed after him.

Kaelin was still in shock. His face didn't hide a damn thing. Every horrified thought was perfectly clear. Trowa fixed his buttons. "Hi," he said, trying for a gentler tone. "Sucks that you had to walk into that."

"I--" Kaelin's chest heaved with uneven breaths. He was still wearing his school blazer. He was carrying a flute case. "I've barely been gone a week."

"Seventeen days, Kaelin."

"With him?" He flung a hand after Merquise. "He's old!"

"Not much older than I am." Everything took a sideways slide into the ludicrous. He dragged a hand through his hair, only then realising it was standing on end from Merquise rubbing all over it. "Look, you don't belong to me any more. And it's better if I leave you alone."

"If you wanted to dump me for someone else you should have just said so!" Then Kaelin blanched, so suddenly Trowa actually took a step toward him. "Unless you were already seeing him--"

"You know better."

"Well, then-- why? I thought-- thought it was something--"

"And I thought you were gone.”

"Because you tossed me out!"

"Yeah. I did. I care about you too much to put you at war with your parents for a relationship you're probably going to outgrow in a few months. And I care about your parents too much too."

"Yeah, I can tell you're really broken up over the whole thing!"

He tried for a reasonable tone. It went ignored. "Did you sit home pining the last couple of weeks, baby? Come on--"

"I thought we had something. I thought, I don't know, if I came back here, I could-- convince you." Kaelin swallowed. He opened his mouth for more, but the bath opened, too, and Merquise emerged, immaculate. Kaelin glared, but Merquise, with great aplomb, did not even glance at him. Instead he came to Trowa by the couch, and kissed his cheek. "Good luck," he murmured.

Trowa touched his arm. "Hey. Sorry."

"It's all right. Another time." He put his shoes on. "Hello, Kaelin,” he said then, and inclined his head exactly the right increment to suggest they were all behaving like children, and should pull it together or else. The man was born to lead. “Good night."

It gave them exactly the right amount of breathing time, too. Trowa sat on the couch as the door snicked closed. Kaelin was clutching his arms to his chest-- it was a good visual for a broken heart. "You thought what, kiddo?"

Kaelin came a step closer as if he were jumping into a pit of snakes. And even though Trowa had just been going down on a man who was by any measure an ideal of masculinity and good looks, something in his gut went tight looking at this undergrown little boy who couldn't stop forcing his way into Trowa's life.

"Convince you to take me back," Kaelin whispered.

He had to clear his throat again. "Why?"

"Because I'm better for you than Zechs Merquise!"

He had to laugh. There was something kind of wonderful about that brilliant display of arrogance. He put a hand out, and that was all it took. Kaelin was on his knees at Trowa's feet like he'd flown the distance. Trowa urged him up onto the cushions, into the space beneath his arm, and held him there. Considering he'd just spent seventeen days talking himself out of this very thing, his brain didn't seem to be speaking louder than the elation, or the tenderness. The triumph.

Healthy dose of fear, too. God, the kid had defied everything to come back here. Even Trowa. What did you do with someone who could do that? He wasn't sure he could live up to the promise. The kid was no angel, but it felt like a long-lost chance. Like a fresh start.

"It's going to change things,” he managed. Kaelin's hair smelled exactly as he remembered. “Between the two of us, and them, forever. Maybe in ways you won't like."

"I don't care,” Kaelin said, of course. “They're just my parents. I love you."

He hugged Kaelin close with a shaky laugh. "That's bullshit. It's never as simple as that. But I... love you, too."

Quat would have heard it. Merquise might have, too. Kaelin had been raised with love, though, and those words were daily usage to him. Trowa didn't mind. It was enough that he knew. It was enough to know he'd been wrong, a million years ago, when he'd thought he'd never feel enough to actually say those words.

It was enough that Kaelin heard what he wanted to, which was the same adoration he was giving Trowa. He turned up to Trowa like chains couldn't have kept him down. Like masturbation had been hell. He kissed harder than he'd ever done it before, so deep that neither of them could breathe.

"You taste like him," Kaelin said. He slid onto Trowa's lap and bent his head back with hands cupped to his cheeks. “You smell like him.”

"I'm sorry."

"You're mine. I'll fight for you."

He curled his arms around Kaelin's hips. It was like the whole world had gone back on kilter. It just felt right. He tried to tell himself the flood would pass and he'd wake up in the morning with a big load of reality to deal with, but his blood pressure wasn't listening. He felt high as a kite.

"You stole that key,” he said. “Didn't you?" He bit Kaelin's plump lower lip. “I knew. I wondered if you'd use it."

Kaelin grinned down at him. "So what-- you expected me to come back all this time?"

No. No, he honestly hadn't. What a wonderful way to be wrong.

"Bastard." Kaelin bit back, enough to sting, and soothed it with soft caresses with his tongue. Trowa was hard as a rock, harder; crazily turned on. Kaelin arched in his arms, and his hands were fists in Trowa's hair, locking him into place. "You have no idea what I went through, and you were here going down on him."

"Sooner or later you'll forgive me." He had to move or go insane. He dumped Kaelin onto his back and pressed between his legs. It wasn't enough, but it was almost too much. He panted into Kaelin's neck. “Forgive me.”

Kaelin dared him with dusky eyes. "Make me want to."

“Is that an order?” He fisted Kaelin's groin until he groaned, and then he popped open each brass crested button on his trousers until he could push them down the hips that writhed up against his. Kaelin tried to sit up after him until Trowa pushed him down. He lay clutching the sofa arm behind him as Trowa slipped his trousers down his long legs, and when they were on the floor by two shiny black shoes he opened his mouth over Kaelin's cock and swallowed him in. It wasn't at all like with Merquise-- he couldn't stop himself from touching skin wherever he found it, hips and belly, the heaving chest under the starched white shirt. Kaelin was touching him, too, his face, his lips, his eyelids, his hair. When he began to move his head, Kaelin gasped. There was talking, incoherent words, but he didn't have to listen to know what they were, a frantic explanation for things that didn't matter, now. Anger fell by the wayside, and the only thing left was need.

He needed. Wanted.

Kaelin wrapped his legs taut about Trowa's shoulders, the only warning before he came. Then he lay there, limp and fighting for his breath. Trowa swallowed and climbed gingerly to the cushions over him, waiting for a sign to start again.

He got a sign, all right. Kaelin opened his eyes, and said, "Be mean when you break up with Zechs. Really mean. Cruel."

Trowa grinned fleetingly. "I think we already did. Did you bring your stuff?"

"No." He went a little shamefaced. "I... wasn't actually sure you'd take me back."

"Are you sure now?"

The sun broke dawn on Kaelin's face. "Yes."

"Probably going to have to wait for a formal move until school's out for the year."

"I can really move in?" Kaelin's voice cracked in excitement.

"Isn't that the next step?"

He couldn't have said a single other thing that would have made Kaelin as wild as he was dragging Trowa down on top of him. He lost his balance, and they tumbled to the floor with a hard thump, but there was no time for pain. Kaelin ripped at his shirt, at his pants, couldn't get him naked fast enough.

They never even made it to the bed.


**


He drove Kaelin to school in the morning. He called the Winner house, but there wasn't an answer. There wasn't an answer from Merquise, either. It was at least possible they were all out together, doing something adult and normal, and not plotting Trowa's death. He tried to hold to that thought.

Quat was waiting outside his hotel room when he got back from the academy.

Trowa slowed, but the crunch of gravel under his boot was enough. The blond head came up out of the newspaper, and Quat straightened.

"Hey,” Trowa said, around the clog in his throat that was probably his heart. And lungs, and stomach. “Lose your way or something?"

"Ask me in,” Quat answered. “We'll order some kind of greasy food. I know you have beer in there."

He made a face. He could hardly believe it was going to be this easy; in fact he did know better. But it was at least not Noin, and maybe-- a little-- some tiny part of himself was glad to see Quat there, glad to know that Quat would look at him, speak him to still. He didn't like those tiny parts. They always got bigger, when it involved Quat.

"I don't eat greasy food any more," he said, and stepped past Quat to swipe his key card. The door swung open noiselessly and let them into a dark room. He chose against the overhead light and turned on the small dim lamp over the table, instead. He looked back to see Quat toeing off his shoes, as if the hotel carpet were something to worry about even.

Trowa removed his last two beers from the fridge and passed one, unopened. Quat wouldn't drink it-- he never did. It was one of his arcane little social graces, like the shoes, like the English style tea he always served because white customers didn't like the Bedouin coffee he should have offered. It had used to frustrate him, frustrate him so much, to watch Quat pretend to be all these things he wasn't, and probably it had been on the list of petty things he had taken with him in the flounce when he left. Probably it had been unfair. What Quatre was was a person who thought about other people first, and it made him happy to please them.

“Someone rang from Westwinds Apartments,” Quatre said. He sat gingerly on the couch. Trowa propped himself on the coffee table. “I told them you were handy with the toolbox. I think it's in the bag.”

“Thanks.”

“I'm glad you're sticking around for a while.”

“Yeah?” Trowa opened his bottle and put it to his mouth before the hiss of escaping carbon was finished. “Thanks. Want to me help me pack?” He swigged again, and thunked the bottle to the table. “Kaelin's not here.”

“He was.”

“Look--”

"You can only sleep on the couch for so many days before your back gives out, or your principles do."

That threw him off the confrontation he was about to start. “What--'s up her ass now? "

He was very surprised when Quatre opened the beer. He sipped, barely enough to taste it, before he let it sit again; but it was still more than he'd seen Quatre do with alcohol in twenty years of friendship. With concern he noted how tired the other man looked, how run down. It was a shock to notice grey hiding in the gold at his temples.

Quat said, "I was gone for so much of his childhood. Absent even when I was there. I chose work. And Lucy loved him more than she should have, maybe. Probably we did this to him long before you even showed up in the picture."

"That's bullshit, and we both know it. Kaelin didn't go looking to replace what you were, but were too busy to share. He went looking for exactly the opposite."

Quatre sipped again. "You know he almost drowned, when he was four. I don't know if he remembers. He fell into the pool at Lucy's parents' on Earth."

"So you and Luce have been crowding him ever since? He does, by the way. Remember. He told me."

"I pulled him out. He wasn't breathing." Quat peeled the label where it was sweating, carefully shredding it from the bottle. "I was holding him and he was so little and still. Cold from the water. I guess I never really let him out of my mind, from that moment. For years whenever I looked at him that was the first thing I saw, and not the person he was becoming. He's taller than me, you know. Three inches."

"Yeah, Quat. I know." He took a deep breath, to be sure he still could. His chest felt oddly tight. "You were probably right to put a stop to it. You always were good at taking care of him. He knows that. Even if he's mad now. It's just that--"

"I didn't come to hear you say I was right. I know I was right." Quat said it the same calm way, but there was a bitter undertone that didn't suit him. He took a real swallow of the beer, and grimaced it down. "They stop trusting you, this age. Even when they know your reasons are decent, they resent the intrusion. I want to shake the teeth out of him sometimes, but once he stopped trusting me, what else is there to do but let him make his own mistakes? Choices. Choices, not mistakes. I hope not mistakes."

God. Quat hadn't come to tell him to shove off and disappear. He'd come to give his son to Trowa.

"Up to him, though, the process. Up to you. The extent of what I ask is that you not hide from me, whatever you do with him. Just not behind my back. That's all."

He licked dry lips. "What are you doing? This is-- stupid. Do you really think I can give him what I couldn't give you back then?"

"I think it's possible,” Quatre said. “I think I'd rather I not be the reason he couldn't at least try to find what makes him happy. I think I'd like to not be that reason for you, again."

"Your wife agree?"

"She won't interfere."

He knew that tone. He knew it was true because Quat had said it; and he didn't know an iota more, because Quat didn't want him to know. He didn't want to know. God, he could be destroying their marriage. Quat would let him.

No. Fuck it. Quat was a grown man and made his own-- mistakes. He'd married a woman he wasn't at all suited to, and she'd married him knowing Trowa Barton existed. This was how the world operated. People acted. People did. If Quat could let it go, so could Trowa. The only responsibility left was Kaelin, for all of them.

So in the end all he said was, “Thank you.”

Quat didn't quite meet his eyes. “I explained things to him,” he said. “He knows you did it for me. The rest of it, I suppose, is between you and him. Just-- date him. Try to remember how to do that."

Trowa stood. He waited for Quat to stand, too, and took his cheek, brushing it with a gentle palm. "It was never because he reminded me of you. Okay? I need you to know that. He's... not you."

Some of the lines by his eyes smoothed. "For all three of us, I'm glad."


**

"I'm sorry,” Trowa said, and surprised himself by genuinely meaning it. “I guess we're going to have to quit having sex."

Merquise laughed.

“You're not much chagrined,” Trowa noted.

“Not much.” Merquise smiled at him, a very nice smile, with actual warmth behind it. “I knew.”

“Knew?”

“That you're a pushover.”

Trowa made a face. They weren't quite so much the centre of attention this night; maybe the crowd sensed it was over, too. The bartender was making them wait between rounds while he flirted with dewy-eyed Pakistani at the bar. Trowa tilted his glass to swirl the few remaining drops together. "Knew all along, didn't you. Hell, you probably helped push this along."

"Don't give me that much credit, please. That I'm smart enough to see the light of day is plenty."

It was odd. He actually felt-- friendly. He never felt friendly. “Yeah,” he said, and reached for the nuts. "Well, whatever. Thanks anyway."

"No, I mean it. I think you're a fool, you know," Merquise said, but gently. "He's still a child in ways that matter. In ways neither of us ever had the opportunity to be, or his own parents, for that matter."

"I guess we'll see."

"He's made up his mind about you, certainly." Merquise set a few bills on the table for his drink. "He chose well."

"Now you're just being stupid." He slid the money back under Merquise's fingers. "I'm buying tonight."

"Thank you." Merquise covered his hand. He gave Trowa time to draw away; he could tell what was coming, but he let it happen, anyway. Merquise leant over to kiss him, not quite on the mouth, but near enough to express what it was meant to. It lingered a second long enough to convey an affection Trowa was sure he hadn't done anything to earn, and then it was over.

He exhaled hard. "You need someone a little bit permanent in your life."

"I thought that perhaps I might have found him." Merquise quirked an eyebrow. “Well, on to the next. As it happens, my leave is up anyway. Back to Earth for a while."

"You should look Wufei up,” he said, inspired. “He's settled there. And he's an actual grown-up."

Merquise laughed. "Are you setting me up?"

"Would it work?"

"I think I've had my fill of Gundam Pilots."

“Ha,” Trowa said. “Foolish mortal.” He wet his lips. "It's a nice facade, Zechs. The normal guy routine. It's good on you. Or does it go to the bone?"

Merquise shrugged with a modesty that might even have been real-- but probably wasn't. Trowa didn't blame him. Sometimes you were just that good, and he had a feeling Merquise was. "It's not effortless,” Merquise acknowledged. “But I like this work better than I liked the other kind, and I come out the better for it."

"It's a change for the better." Who would have thought? Considering they'd only been fucking for a grand total of-- what, ten days? He was actually a little wistful now that it was over. Before, when he'd let an opportunity go past, there'd never been warning, never been surety. This was definitely an opportunity, but he knew with absolute certainty that he was making the right choice.

Merquise, as he always did, seemed to know what Trowa was thinking. “Don't get your heart broken. It would be a shame.”

“We both know I probably will.” He pushed a peanut shell through a condensation ring on the table. “It's not some-- sideways fantasy. Or a mid-life, whatever...” He twisted his mouth and tried to shrug it off. “I'm man enough to admit I lost Quat because I thought I'd get him dirty if I stayed. I probably was, for real. Quat... he's the kind of person who would break hard if anyone ever hurt him. It terrified me. Kaelin's less like him than you'd think he would be.”

“He's a strong young man. Independent, God knows.”

“Yeah.” Fiery and independent, exactly. And they were free, now, to just find out if it would even work. The pessimist in him-- the realist-- gave it a year. Maybe two. Kaelin would grow up, grow away from him, and become his own man, and the man he'd be would be shaped by a great childhood love. There was symmetry in that. There was good in it. For all the pain it had been he wouldn't give up even the memory of Quatre, for his own life, even. Even knowing Quat loved him back, he'd never thought about what it was like to be the object of someone's feelings like that, someone's foundation. Someone's ideal. He'd fought wars, and figured this was probably more important and better a mark to leave in the universe.

He heard Merquise inhale, deeply, and looked up. Merquise smiled at him, just a small curve of the lips this time. "Call, some day," he said simply.

"Absolutely." Trowa smiled back. "You too."




When he noticed the braid, the thought that occurred to him was that L4 was some kind of odd special slice of the space-time continuum. He'd been thinking about Duo Maxwell, a month ago, when this had all started.

And a month ago probably would have dropped his sunglasses over his eyes and let his least-favourite war-buddy walk by without a word. But L4 was some kind of special odd slice, and so he didn't even surprise himself when he called out.

Duo detoured toward him immediately, before he even recognised who was calling. His face lit up, right into a toothy grin, and he clapped Trowa's extended hand into a firm shake. “Man, Trowa Barton,” he said, with that ear-to-ear grin. “Been an aeon or two, huh?”

Since the war, practically. Duo looked exactly the same-- hair the same, a worn blue jacket. Grease stains on the knees of his jeans. A line or two where there hadn't been before, but when he laughed they vanished. "A while," Trowa agreed diplomatically, and released his hand to resume his slouch against the bumper of his car. "I didn't know you were on-colony."

"My kid's graduating." Duo gestured to the academy at the head of the parking lot. They weren't the only people still outside, not inside watching the ceremony; Trowa figured it was mostly dads, the occasional smoker or uncomfortable relative unsure of his reception. Or maybe Duo was just late. He wasn't wearing a watch. Trowa had never met an adult man who forgot to wear a watch. He did have gum, though, a battered pack. He popped a piece and offered it to Trowa. "Why're you here?” he asked. “Visiting Quat?"

"I live here now." He took a slice. “Moved here a little back.”

"There must be some kind of advantage here I don't know about."

“Kaelin. I guess."

“Quat's kid, right? Jamie's always talking about him." Duo took lack of no for permission and joined Trowa on the bumper.

"Yeah,” Trowa said. “I've been seeing him."