21-Sep-2000
Category: Adventure, Action, Romance, Dark Angst.
Pairings: 1x2, 3x4x5 (Combinations thereof.)
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money being made or sought here, just having fun.
Notes: PLEASE READ!! Okay, Trowa and Wufei are back, they are I promise.
There are some serious Emotional Angst and other Dark Emotions going on here
along with a little D&S (Dominance and Submission.) Also some LEMON (Graphic
Male/Male sexual content. 3x5 to be exact) If two consenting males pushing
the sexual envelope disturbs you, be warned now.
Bonne (bonnejeanne@yahoo.com) is the wonderful puppeteer of Wufei. I'm responsible for Trowa and Quatre and Duo.
Quatre took advantage of the day's rest that Heero and Relena had provided for him. When he stepped out of his suite to meet the next morning, he was once again the poised young Winner Heir that every vid-camera was used to filming. He picked his schedule back up and in a couple of days, no one could tell that he'd be absent for that one twenty-four hour period.
Quatre and Relena continued with their meetings and their negotiations. Slowly, things were starting to turn to their favor. Relena was introducing important trade and tariff bills to the Colonial and Earth governments. Breaks for companies willing to base factories in the L2 colonies.
Quatre used his not insubstantial political power to help push the bills through. He then followed the gesture up by using WEI as a large carrot, dangling key business partnerships in front of smaller companies who still were unsure of the risk. Marylin Phipps assisted him with the tricky negotiations as well as the soothing of many WEI executive feathers.
Some of the older men believed the young master was being hasty, making deals that would backfire. Marylin met with these men and painstakingly went over each and every proposal, showing the true strength of the machinations.
In truth, WEI was growing at an almost astounding rate. Though he had not set out to do it, Quatre was in fact doubling his company's assets, profits and power. The little blond had been going over the paperwork one evening when the enormity of the situation struck him...
"Oh...fuuudge." Quatre had said, throwing down his pen and groaning loudly.
Sitting in the suite with him, devouring a sundae, Duo Maxwell had looked up and grinned maniacally. "I heard that... you almost said it. Come on Quatre... say it... say.. fuuuuck."
Quatre had lowered his hand and glared at the braided boy. "Blow me Maxwell."
"There we go!" Duo crowed proudly. "I knew you had it in yah. Now, what's the problem?"
Quatre flicked his middle finger at the grinning boy and flopped his hands down on the papers stretched out in front of him. He made a couple of helpless gestures before finally squeaking. "It's... growing!"
"What's growing? That pile of paperwork? Hold on I think I've got a Zippo somewhere around here." Duo balanced his ice-cream in one hand and made a production of looking. He blinked when a balled up piece of paper sailed across the room and knocked his cherry off onto the carpet. "Hey!"
"Baka." Quatre grumbled. "I mean the company. WEI is growing. Like it wasn't already too flipping huge to begin with."
Duo glared at Quatre and set his sundae down like it was a crown treasure, then he began searching for the cherry on the carpet. "I thought... growth was a good thing."
"Well... yes... but... Oh hell Duo, Wufei and Trowa are gonna kill me. I promised Wufei I'd spend more time on *my* life not WEI... and now... Aaarrrgggghhhh." Quatre howled, burying his face in his hands.
Duo located his cherry and triumphantly picked it up by the stem. "Ah hah!"
Quatre looked up quickly, for some reason thinking Duo had found *the answer* when instead he saw the braided boy blithely pop the cherry into his mouth. Quatre went a little green.
"DUO!"
"Whuf?" Duo asked innocently around the cherry.
"That was on the floor!!"
Duo munched the cherry and swallowed. "So? Not like I have to worry about you having... *done* anything on the floor." Duo waggled his brows wickedly.
Quatre fumed. "That's it Maxwell, remind me of my stressed and celibate state. Besides... how do you know *I* haven't done anything on the floor." Quatre raised his brows sassily.
Duo just waved him off. "Bah, you? Please. You probably send the shower gifts of mildew cleaner after you..."
"SHUT-UP!"
And so the evening had continued till finally Quatre kicked Duo out on his rump. For all that Quatre's base of power was growing, he still could not seem to secure one thing. A solid hold on the Unity companies. No matter how hard Marylin and Alexis dug, the leads faded like phantoms. It was frustrating.
What was more frustrating was the fact that Roger Mattes was not a stupid man. He knew that Quatre was after him and so far was keeping one step ahead of him. The two would meet in public, cordially, like a pair of sheathed swords. They danced around each other, playing the game on the very edge. With each encounter, Quatre grew more and more aware of his enemy. However, the more he learned of Mattes, the more he was lead to believe they were missing a crucial piece to the puzzle. Mattes, was not Unity's *brain*.
One day, while Quatre danced his intricate dance, somewhere, in space, in a room managed by people who didn't ask a lot of questions, Trowa sat on the end of the bed, watching the vidscreen. It was a telecast of a conference, where both Relena and Quatre were speaking. He was watching the screen, his expression impassive to anyone who didn't know him. To someone who did, he looked intrigued, attentive, watchful, yet saddened all at the same time.
Lost in the vidscreen, he barely registered when the door opened and Wufei came in. Dropping his jacket on a chair, Wufei found a seat in the minuscule room and started watching the conference, watching Trowa at the same time.
Relena had finished her speeches and Quatre was in the middle of his. The small blond looked full of energy as he skillfully worked the audience, leading people into asking questions and at the same time subtly deflecting, questions he didn't want to deal with. Trowa listened to the words, filing them away. He and Wufei needed all the information they could get. At the same time he watched the little blonde's mannerisms.
"He seems lively enough." Trowa spoke quietly. He spoke now as much to reassure himself as to break the silence. There was a tense... tightly wound air about the tall, green eyed boy. It seemed to charge and fill the room, as if Trowa had no idea how to dissipate it.
Wufei felt the tension but it did not cause him to feel uneasy or tense in his own right. He accepted it. His eyes moved from the blond on the vidscreen to the tall boy who had just spoken.
"He's dealing with it," he said simply. It was an acknowledgment of what he knew, what he could see and sense - Quatre was stressing but determined to work through it. "How about you?"
Trowa shifted a little on the bed. He pulled one long leg up across his knee and rocked back a little. "I am.. unsure. The space has given me a lot of room to think. In between our activities. I thought it would make things clearer but it just fogs them up further. I miss him, I don't like being this far away from him for so long. At the same time. The longer I'm away... the more I *think*"
Wufei studied his lover. "It's going to be quiet for a little while. It will take a day or two for the information I'm fishing for to surface and we'll have little to do but wait. A part of me is thinking it might be a good time to go pay a visit... and another part of me says to leave him. If we show up now, he'll have to go through all this again. What do you think?"
Trowa went silent. Watching the rest of the telecast. It wasn't that he was ignoring the boy at his side but rather he'd slipped into one of those driven, thoughtful silences that Wufei had witnessed over the past couple of days. As Quatre wound up and finished his speech, the commentators came back on. Trowa reached forward, reluctantly turning off the vid.
He stood and paced within the small confines of the room. Coming back to lean against the worn dresser in a classic Trowa pose. Hip against the furniture, arms crossed, one legs slightly cocked, balanced on the ball of one foot. He studied the carpet for a long moment before finally lifting his eyes and looking directly at Wufei.
"I think... that I would like to ... talk. Get some of this..." he tapped his temple, "out in the air, where it isn't so scary. If you have the time?"
Wufei got up, coming to stand in front of Trowa. "I have the time to listen," he said, looking into those green eyes. "And I have the time for anything else you want. Anything. I mean it."
Trowa gave that quick, little shy smile that only his two lovers ever saw. Then he reached up, touching Wufei's cheek lightly before nodding. "Thank you. You might want to sit down... this is going to take awhile."
Wufei nodded and slipped off his shoes, sitting cross-legged on the floor by the bed.
Trowa again looked down at his toes, his features screwing up into a troubled expression of deep thought. "I don't know where to start. I've been... making myself think, since that time in the study, when you stopped me. I didn't want to face these thoughts or feelings, because I felt they were somehow, wrong, unjust but ignoring them doesn't make them go away, does it."
He stopped and looked up at Wufei, his handsome features looking very young and vulnerable as he slowly opened up the shutters that shaded his soul.
"No." Wufei said softly, a note of experience in his voice. "They never go away."
Trowa gave a little nod and he looked at the darkened vid screen. He made a few false starts, each one ending before the first syllable had fallen from his lips. Exhaling slowly, he brushed his hand through his hair, musing the longish auburn bangs and unconsciously hiding his features.
"I..told you when you asked that in our physical relationship, though I do the taking, it's not really a possessive act because even then... it feels like it's Quatre who's possessing me. I never really let myself think about it before, I mean.. umm it really wasn't high on my list of mental priorities at the time." Trowa blushed a little at this admission.
"But it's more then that. Lately I've been thinking about it, specially seeing the way you and he interact when not in bed. Somewhere, along the line, I realized that he's put up a front with me. A shield that holds himself away and while he demands everything from me... I'm not getting everything from him in return. It makes me angry Wufei."
Wufei listened, finally nodding. Then he said, "You are getting... what *you* have demanded."
"What I have demanded?" Trowa asked.
Wufei took a breath and let it out. "Yes. What have you demanded from him? What have you insisted on? What have you refused to do without?"
Trowa went quiet, mentally chewing on the words. "I, don't know what to demand of him Wufei. I never felt.. like I was missing anything. I don't know.. it's all so strange. I guess, that from the start I wanted to protect him. But he doesn't really even let me do that. Even back in the war, I tried to protect him, to get him out of all this. It never worked, he'd just pop up like a bad penny."
Trowa took a deep breath and shook his head. "Do you know how weak that makes me feel? I tell him.. to let me take care of something or not to do something and then he just has this way of slipping through the one little loophole I forgot to plug. It feels like he's constantly manipulating me, just like he did that audience on the vidscreen. I know he... doesn't consciously do it. He doesn't wake up in the morning going *hmm.. how can I run Trowa's life today,* he just... does it and it's just getting worse Wufei. Then.. with what happened in the study. Yes, I had him bound, on his knees, helpless.. and he still wrested control of the situation away from me."
As he spoke, Trowa got more and more wound up, finally moving away from the dresser and pacing in quick, angry strides, his hands hanging on tightly to his sides as if he feared letting go of his own body would cause him to start striking at things.
Wufei watched him for a moment. "The power he has over you... is only what you have given him," he said quietly. "Do you want to take it back?"
"I don't know Wufei. All I know.. is I don't want to feel weak with him. I, it's selfish but I want him to need me as well as love me. The more I'm away from him, I see him and he looks so sad and I want to go to him but being away, it feels like this huge pressure is off my shoulders."
Wufei got up and went to the vidscreen. He typed on a query and the computer answered by putting a picture of Quatre's father on the screen.
Wufei looked to Trowa. "The first time I saw this man's face, I felt... worried," he said. "At the time, I did not know what was happening between all of us. I knew only that I... that I wanted something. That he was offering me something. And that you were standing aside, so I thought and letting it happen." Wufei sat on a chair by the screen, his posture not the usual correct straight one. "I... I thought at times about trying to take him away from you. Not honorable thoughts but I had them. There was so much I didn't understand and I was so tired of being alone."
Wufei looked up at Trowa, not holding back but letting the other boy see his less-admirable motivations. "When I saw the picture of Master Winner, I knew that even if I tried, I could never succeed in taking him from you. That was when I realized I must find a way to accept something else. I wonder if you know what I saw when I looked at this man's face?"
As Wufei spoke, more and more of Trowa's masks lifted, leaving behind an expression that spoke of an admission that the taller boy was going to have to make as well. For the moment, he walked closer to Wufei, reaching out to put his hand on his shoulder as he looked towards the vid screen and towards Quatre's father.
"What do you see Wufei?" He asked softly.
"What he sees when he looks at you," Wufei answered. "He doesn't know it but I see what draws him to you, what binds him to you. It isn't your weakness. It is a strength he sees in you that reminds him inescapably of his father. That man who was strong enough to build his empire, run his family, follow the hard principle he chose even against the tide of the times. That man who chose to die rather than give up those principles. That strength. Quatre yearns towards it. He needs it. Yet he fears it. He fears that he will be unworthy and it will be taken away. So he drives himself and he drives you and you let him."
"He saw his father destroyed." Trowa said quietly, finally looking from the vidscreen to Wufei. "It's not something he talks about, not even with me really but he was there. He and his elder sister Iria. They weren't able to get the shuttle up to the satellite in time before the colony shot it down. They were close enough that the explosion threw the shuttle hard, killing Ira."
Trowa looked back at the vid. "Guess he's got a reason to fear that type of strength. He saw it destroy itself despite his own wishes. I wish he understood. His father's choice, his motivation. I can't help thinking, that if he hadn't been right there... he could of. As it is, all he seems to be able to understand is that for all his skill and kindness and commitment, he failed. For all his father's strength... it was gone in that instant. He built and flew the Zero in retaliation. I think that's why I don't hold the fact that he tried to send me to hell a couple of times with the Zero, personally." Trowa gave a little grin. "I sometimes wonder if he's forgiven the colonies though."
Wufei tilted his head slightly. "That man did not destroy himself. That man simply chose his principles over his life. He chose his own need for honor over the needs of his own son. He placed himself in the line of fire. There was a chance the colonists could have chosen not to take his life. Then his principles would have won. He gambled his life. Quatre did the same when he became a Gundam pilot. But all he knows is that the strongest thing in his life was taken away. So he tries to become that strength. But he is afraid, Trowa. If he can keep you in a bottle, he can keep something for himself. You've let him believe he can do it. But his spirit knows."
Wufei shrugged. "That day he found out that the colonies were no different from Earth. That the colonists could choose to do wrong things. Perhaps there is no forgiveness when one's ideals die. I don't know. But what is between you and he... that is for you to settle. I won't..." Wufei looked down, then up. "I won't let you use my presence as an excuse to slip away completely."
"I don't want to slip away Wufei but neither do I want to be in a bottle." Trowa stood up, agitated.
"Then break the bottle."
"I don't know how!" Trowa snapped a little, frustration getting to him. "Every time I try to reach towards him, he just.. slips through my fingers, weasels through a loophole and another damn mask slips between us. It's like trying to grasp a phantom. And here I'm supposed to be the damn ghost." Trowa waved his hand irritably at the picture of Master Winner.
Wufei stood up and hit a button, making the picture go away. He stood in front of Trowa, crossing his arms over his chest. His features shifted and suddenly he was looking at Trowa with what appeared to be cool contempt.
"So it's hard... and you are whining," he said in a very familiar *Wufei Chang* tone that Trowa hadn't heard in a long time.
Trowa turned, snarling slightly in response to the contemptuous tone but he didn't say anything, merely retreated behind his silent walls, walking away from Wufei towards the bricked up window.
Wufei watched, taking a deep breath and letting it out. "I should have known that wouldn't work," he said quietly. "But I'd be willing to have you hit me, if it would help you get out of this circle you've trapped yourself in."
Trowa's stiff shoulders trembled a little, then dropped. His voice was quiet, apologetic. "I don't strike that which I love. There is no fairness in my hitting you because I'm confused and angry with myself and with him. It's why I can't bring myself to be jealous of the fact that you've slipped past.. many of the masks I'm still trying to figure out. You've run the maze and I'm still at the start. I probably wouldn't even be looking to attempt the path on my own. He'd... have just... succeeded in running me off without either of us understanding what happened between us." Trowa sounded quiet, young and miserable as he spoke honestly.
Wufei looked at Trowa, his dark eyes showing darker memories. "I had nothing to loose, Trowa," he said. "You did have something you didn't want to risk. What do I risk when I confront him? Loosing everything? I can still hardly believe I'm allowed to have it in the first place. You won't push it too far. You hold yourself back, telling yourself you don't want to hurt him. You don't want to loose what you have for something that might be better."
Trowa shook his head, his voice barely a whisper. "You're wrong Wufei. There is one part of the puzzle, you never knew... and neither did he. I was in love with you before that disastrous mission ever happened."
End Part 15
(( Feedback? You know our muses live for it. :)
Laekin
Please send comments to: seregill@aol.com or bonnejeanne@yahoo.com