04_after | (no subject)

Entry tags:

oom,
trowa

(no subject)

When Quatre's watch goes off, he wakes up immediately, the late evening light drifting in through the window. He'd fallen asleep on top of the covers, though he expects the workers here wash them regularly. It was as much for comfort as anything else.

He changes into the clothes the bar gave him--the same black linen pants and practical shoes as it gave him after the Cullen party, but a soft blue-grey sweater instead of a long sleeve shirt. He carefully stores his already folded business clothes in the bag, and takes it down with him to the Bar (locking the door behind him).

He drops the bag and key off at the bar, and peels the tangerine he'd picked up while sitting with Trowa and Cass, and he waits for the former.

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It's not long after that Trowa comes in from the lake door. (He's got a good mental clock. Also, a wristwatch.)

He and Cass broke off the sparring some time ago. She gave him a beaming grin and a thumbs-up, and bounced off -- probably to get another milkshake, knowing Cass, although she's nowhere to be seen in the bar. Trowa stuck around outside for a while, until it seemed time to come in.

Hey, Quatre.

Quatre smiles at him, and offers him the third of tangerine left.

Trowa's clothes have some grasstains, and along his neck (in this light) there's some of the odd matte color that comes from sweat that's dried.

"She didn't beat you too badly, I hope?"

Trowa accepts, shaking his head slightly. Tangerines are good. (He'll offer Quatre back some of the sections, though.)

"She goes easy on me."

It's an oblique joke, of sorts. It's also perfect truth.

Quatre's smile quirks, and he straightens. "That's good. Cathy'd be pretty upset if you weren't intact."

"Yeah," Trowa agrees, amused.

Again, both humor and truth.

They have a show tonight, for one thing.

"I was thinking of taking a thermos of coffee with us," Quatre says, "and if you want, some more mandarines?"

"Sure."

To both.

"Tangerines," he adds, as a point of linguistic interest. Quatre's English is perfectly fluent, but it's not his first language, and sometimes more obscure vocabulary slips accordingly. To Bar, "Please."

Four tangerines slide obligingly into being, along with a brushed-steel thermos.

"Ah, thank you," Quatre says, committing the word to memory and ordering mugs as well. He transfers two tangerines to each mug, and smiles at Trowa, nodding to him to head out whenever he wants.

Now's fine.

Trowa scoops up the thermos, and leads the way.

It's a pretty nice day.

It is. Quatre starts humming as he walks, half-distracted by gazing at the sky.

The tune's not readily recognizable as anything by Vivaldi, but there you have it.

The tune will coalesce into something recognizable sooner or later, or it won't. Trowa's not particularly bothered, either way.

A few yards out from the door, he glances at Quatre. Where to?

"We might as well see how crowded the stables are," Quatre says, after a moment's thought.

Suits Trowa fine, and he turns his steps that way accordingly.

They seemed pretty quiet while he was out here with Cass. But someone could have spent all that time inside the barn, or just now headed there without passing through the bar. There's no reason to assume.

Quatre isn't humming; instead he's breathing lightly with a touch of uncertainty to it, as they enter the empty stables.

He follows Trowa up the ladder, one mug tucked under his arm, and sets the mugs down on a haybale.

Quatre's subtly withdrawn air could be tiredness, or a lingering bad dream, or the fact that he's still ill at ease in the new territory of the Milliways stable. All the same, he gets a glance that's somewhere between faint concern and inquiry, as Trowa sits down on a nearby bale.

There are several bales stacked together in a row here, the front rank of a stockpile that spreads to either side and rises high behind Trowa's back. Plenty of room for two.

Quatre smiles faintly at him; he hesitates, picks the mugs up again and sits down next to Trowa, though not as close as he could, offering him the mug and tangerines.

The look of concern garners another, slightly embarassed look. "Sorry," he says, quietly.

. . . Okay.

Trowa accepts the mug. And, deliberately -- after a brief invisible weighing of options, and with his own slight uncertainty better hidden -- lets his fingertips brush briefly against Quatre's wrist as he takes it.

Quatre smiles at his wrist. He uses the hand to touch Trowa's right knee and, after a moment's hesitation, lean over to kiss him lightly.

"I'm glad," he says, when he's pulled away (not completely, but enough to talk easily), "to see you."

Trowa's face has relaxed infinitesimally. You'd have to know him very well to see it, but it's still true.

"Yeah," he says.

It means, as often, me too.

Quatre relaxes, in turn, and smiles. He hesitates, for a brief moment, between kissing Trowa again and moving away; he squeezes Trowa's knee lightly and turns back so he's sitting normally. He moves, though, with the turn so that they're closer together.

He picks out one of his tangerines, and begins to unpeel it. "I liked Cassandra."

Trowa glances at him, tipping the first of his own tangerines out into his hand.

He agrees, obviously, but: oh?

"She was very friendly," Quatre explains, as he unpeels carefully (it's coming off in almost one piece).

"She clearly trusts you."

"We've been friends a while." This is agreement, not explanation; it's perfectly possible for Trowa to know somebody for years and not trust them.

It's also worth noting, though, that the number of people Trowa refers to as 'friend' is vanishingly small. Even if this is telling Quatre nothing he doesn't already know.

"A lot of people have a hard time understanding her."

Which baffles Trowa slightly -- it's not as if it's hard, so long as there aren't too many abstract concepts involved -- but he's known for a long time that most people are astoundingly unobservant. So.

"A lot of people think if you can't speak, you can't understand," Quatre says, with a slight shrug.

Mm, tangerine.

"When you went to her world, was it to help with the--ah, parapolicing?"

A lot of people think stupid things. But they knew that!

Trowa nods slightly, depositing his tangerine's peel in a more or less tidy coil on the haybale in front of them.

"She didn't need the help." Benefited from, but didn't need. "But it was informative."

Also: fun. Trowa doesn't quite bother to articulate that to himself. (Because Trowa sucks at having fun and noticing it.)

But, you know, bar brawls and rooftop acrobatics. (Bat-grapples are awesome.)

"It's non-lethal enforcement," he adds, although he doesn't expect that to come as much surprise. Quatre's met Cass, and Quatre is perceptive. And Trowa volunteered for the mission when he wasn't absolutely needed, which says things on its own. "Disable and confine for the official authorities. Gotham's got a very high level of criminal activity, from what I saw."