17-Nov-2000
Title: Barely Living
Author: TB
Archive: yes please
Catagory: angst, pov
Pairing: 5x?
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: weird
Spoilers: none
Feedback: please
Disclaimer: Not mine, never mine. Same sad deal.
He pulled away from my touch as if burned. I saw the fear in his eyes flash before it was suppressed. A sickly smile apologised for just a moment, and then he was gone.
I join Quatre on the patio. I say nothing as I sit beside him in one of the quaint wicker chairs; he says my name and pours iced tea into a tall glass, pressing it on me with all his familiar warm hospitality.
"The sunset seems especially beautiful here in the desert," he says, leaning back and stretching out his slender legs. Elegant fingers wave toward the streaks of pink and orange slashing through the darkening blue of the sky.
"It´s always loveliest when you watch it from your home," I reply at length. I sip the tea. Faintly bitter, beneath the tart of lemon.
The boy laughs, though it sounds tired. "That's true! You're so wise," he teases, but the fondness is genuine. Silence falls again, broken only by his breathing and mine, as we follow the dying sun with our eyes.
When dusk painted his golden face with shadows, Quatre said, "It's not your fault, you know."
The tea pauses at my lips: I set it aside, very carefully, in the precise centre of the coaster. "Isn't it?" I probably couldn't have read the expression in the velvet depths of his eyes, even if I'd been looking. Bitter, beneath the sweetness and the sugar.
He whispers so softly, so gently that I don't believe he is aware it's aloud. "No. Never."
I gaze down at my hands in my lap. "Then why can't I fix it? Why aren't my good intentions enough? Why aren't I better than the past--why can't I make the past go away? Why can't I ever ask these questions at the right time--why can't I ever offer answers?"
Helpless, the tight tiny whisper. "I don't know, Wufei."
I stand. "Thanks for the tea." I go back inside, and don't look back.
We meet in the hallway. I stop; he stops. All the brightness of the summer itself is captured in the smile he levels at me; I feel my heart clench. "Hi," I manage.
His blue-eyed gaze is like a caress. "Hi." He repeats it again, and smiles, pleased. "Hi, Wufei."
"Listen... " I shift to a more comfortable stance, plant myself more solidly, hands locked behind my back so that I will better resist the urge to touch him. "Are you--busy?"
A hand scrubs through his hair as he glances shyly away, blushing faintly. "Ah, no. No."
"Would you like to... "
An abashed grin. "Yeah," he agrees, and we both laugh, a little relieved. I shift again, relaxing, and hold out a hand. He takes it, face burning now, and I squeeze his fingers in mine reassuringly. We walk side by side, heading for the stairs. His arm brushes mine as we climb. His palm is damp with nervousness in mine, but I don't care in the slightest. I want to brush aside his tumbling locks and see his eyes again, so velvet and warm, drawing me in, drowning me in a million shades of blue.
At the landing we pause. Where do we go from here? To the promise of the bedroom, if we dare? We face each other. He smiles again, then tries to be solemn--but the grin breaks through. Dawn, lighting up the dim hallway. I am charmed, captivated, heated... I step toward him, close the distance, lower my mouth to his.
I slide an arm around his waist, and pull him close. His hands come to rest on my chest as I deepen the kiss, and send one hand roaming the supple lengths of his lithe body. He twists a little in my hold to accommodate my fingers tugging his shirt free from his trousers, exploring up inside to the satiny, tensely quivering muscles of his abdomen, up to the frantic fluttering of his heartbeat in his breast, jumping twice as fast as before when I brush the sensitive nipple, combining a gentle tug with a nip at the delicate shell of his ear.
My questing fingers meet the--
He pulls away with a gasp. Fear. It flashes over his face, too fast for him to hide it, too sharp. He shakes and trembles with it as he backs away, shaking his head.
"I'm sorry," he mumbles, and then he runs.
A hand comes down on my shoulder. I look up; Quatre stands behind the couch, looking down at me, worry crinkling his eyes. "Again," he says, his inflection unclear.
I nod. "It's all right."
"No. No. Wufei... Oh, I'm so sorry." He sighs, and his hand drops away.
I return my gaze to my book, adjust my glasses with a casualness that is entirely faked. "It's all right," I repeat, almost pleasantly. "I understand. It takes time. Everyone has--limits. Needs. Space is obviously one of them."
"It shouldn't have to be like... " he trails off. Another delicate sigh accompanies the thump of his slight body settling into the cushions beside me. "Don't you ever get frustrated?"
I turn the page without finishing the last paragraph. I was only pretending to read, anyway. "I try very hard not to."
"Why? Why do you try so hard, when all it ever earns you is rejection?" Real wonderment, in his voice, in the hushed tone that carries so much concern along with the confusion.
I take my time to reply, staring down at words that are nothing more than spider-scribble to my tired mind. "Maybe I think it's worth the wait."
"But--"
"No buts," I interrupt, so softly he barely hears. "No buts. When the time is right, it will happen. I am willing to wait. I will wait. Love is worth waiting for."
Quatre touches my hand. I look up. His earnest little face has arranged itself into lines that are familiar from the war--Quatre the Leader, Quatre the most versed in the ways of emotion, of the heart. Quatre the Eternal Empathiser. Quatre, the Eternal Friend.
"You're a good man, Wufei," he says.
I do not reply. I pretend to read my book, and Quatre sits beside me, thinking thoughts known only to himself.
He climbs into my bed, not between the sheets, but under the quilt. I feel his tentative hand in my hair, sifting through the ebony locks still damp from my shower, brushing over the line of my cheek.
"I'm scared."
"I know."
"Forgive me."
"Only when there is something to forgive."
He rolls on to his back. I can imagine him staring up at the ceiling, frown creasing his brows, smoothing out into sorrow. I face the wall, and try not to yearn for the body heat separated from me only by a piece of linen, and his haunted past.
We sleep.
Quatre laughs as he splashes water at Duo, who enthusiastically pumps the water-gun to full pressure, shouting a war-cry, and aims a precise and furious assault on the blonde's sun-burned limbs. Even Heero smiles at their antics.
Trowa hands me a plate of sandwiches, and I place it beside the vegetable platter. Together we arrange the last of the food on the table--set at a safe distance from the continuing water fight by the pool--the slip out of our house slippers and tee shirts and join the fun. Trowa shows off a little of his famous skill from the stage of the diving board; I join Heero at the shallow end, and let my feet dangle in the cool water.
Duo has eliminated all resistance from Quatre. He looks over at me, and for a moment, just a moment, that wide grin falters.
Trowa cannonballs into the water, and I am left with just an impression of the perfect blue eyes before Duo revs up the water-gun and whirls around to aim at the insolent Heavyarms pilot who dared to reopen the battle.
Heero stretches. "I'm hungry," he tells me, and gets up. Muscles ripple as he stretches his lean body. "Want anything?"
"No. Thanks." I forget the Japanese boy as soon as he stops speaking; I watch the boys in the pool. My hungry soul aches with longing as I seek out and try to capture the only gaze that matters--try to hold the evasive blue with black orbs that must be begging--
I fail.
He sighs against my shoulder, then lets his head fall back into the pile of towels that serves as our impromptu bed. I kiss aside the long hairs at the nape of his arching neck, follow the sloping lines of his collar bones to worship the bare chest. His hips rock up against mine suggestively, and I have to bite my lip against a groan of anticipation.
"Oh, Wufei," he moans, low in his throat, the sound full of desire. It was worth the wait. He's mine, the lovely creature, the perfect, perfect lover, he is worth it...
I reach down between our bodies and massage the half-hard erection I find. He pushes against my hand, straining, making only the tiniest noises in response to my actions. I take my time, working a knee between his thighs. My fingers dance nimbly over the ticklish ribcage, eliciting little gasps. My fingers probe the edges of the scars, ridged and crinkled--
He cries out. Fingernails rake my skin as he tries to push me away.
And I hold on. "No," I say, firmly. I hold him down, and grab his hands, pulling them out over his head and pinning them. He freezes. The blue is like ice--no, like a storm, whirling, swirling--staring up at me. Fear.
I let him go, hating myself for trying to force him, hating myself for not making him stay. And he runs, like the frightened child that he is.
I visit Meiran's grave today. Quatre has asked to join me. We pack; we don't speak. Quatre has flowers he is bringing. I have nothing. I have long ago given up that useless tradition. Meiran's field of flowers was dead, just as she. The grave is only a marker--a memory.
Duo is waiting in the living room. He knows where we're going. From the way he hesitates, he wishes it were him at my side; blue eyes flicker. But in the end, he only shoves a big brown shopping bag in my hand.
"I know you won't remember to eat unless someone sticks a post-it note to your forehead," he mutters. "Try not to forget, though. You're gonna put worry-wort grey in my handsome braid here, and you know my feelings on that!"
I smile with feeling I don't posses. "Thanks, Duo." Quatre seconds that. We leave him standing there in the foyer, and I open the car door for the blonde pilot, take the wheel for myself.
"Why do you keep trying?" Quatre asks. It's like he can't resist. He has to know.
"Honestly?" I back out of the driveway, and accelerate gently up to fifty kmph. "Sometimes I forget why. Sometimes, because I want it. Sometimes, because I know we need to keep trying, or we'll let go of each other, and never find out how much potential we have, how much love we have to offer. Sometimes, just because I'm stubborn."
Silence for the rest of the three hour drive.
Quatre places his flowers by the bronze plaque that is all that remains of my dead wife, of my dead colony. He kneels there in the dirt, getting dust and sand all over his neat khakis, staring at the marker with a kind of sad reverence.
I say, "It's going to rain. Let's go." My grieving is over. Or maybe, waiting, curled up inside me, paused, knowing that it might be needed for another loved one, soon, another bond that is breaking into pieces, shattering slowly, bleeding to death.
I look over at him, where he plays a game on one of those pocket electronic things. He is losing. I reach over to gently brush hair away from those devastatingly blue eyes.
"I love you," I say.
He looks up at me.
"I love you," I repeat. "That's the why, the how, the end. I know you were hurt. I won't hurt you. I don't know who did it, but I am not them. And I am not leaving, until you tell me to." I am shaking inside. So hard. "And if you tell me to leave, you'll never hear another word about it from me."
His face crumbles into lines of pain. "Wufei," he whispers.
I stare ahead. I said all that I could. There isn't anything left inside me.
The scars on his back, the marks of a tormentor who must have known how cruelly they were crushing him... doesn't he know how beautiful he is, scars or no scars? Doesn't he know that I would never do that him, that I love him so much already, so much it pulled me through a war--two wars!--doesn't he know that I fall every time those incredible blue eyes look my way?
Doesn't he know that I'll never ask the questions he's still too terrified to answer? That I'll never demand to know who did that to him, never force a confession of his suffering from him? That I'll never push him farther than he wants to go? That I would wait for him forever, even knowing that I could never touch him, hold him, have him? All I want from him is love. No--not even that; I can live without love. All I want is for him to let me love him.
The words come out stained. Bitter, beneath the pleasing surface, just like his tea. "I don't know, Wufei. I'm so sorry. I don't know. I just... don't know."
Silence, again.
"Quatre."
He looks up. Blue, so blue, an ocean, a sky that I could fall into and never surface from, envelops me.
I hesitate. "Just--I'm here. Know that. Always, Quatre. I love you."
He goes inside before me while I bring the car around to the garage. Duo is in there, puttering around. He comes and stands by my door as I pull in and turn the engine off. For a long time, I just sit there; he waits, an oily rag twisting in his hands, shredding slowly.
I open the door, and get out. I hand him the keys, as if I were giving up some precious artifact. He takes them, grips them so tightly his knuckles turn white. Blue eyes search my face, hoping--finding nothing.
And he sighs. The keys go into a pocket, the rag gets tossed into a pail. A slender arm, deceptively frail, goes around my shoulders. "Come on, Wu. Let's go in."
I smile a small smile. "Yeah."
The End
(:./erin/barely)
