04_after | (no subject)

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trowa

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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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Quatre laughs, quietly. "Maybe it's for the best that neither Une nor her daughter come here," he smiles slightly. "Either that or it's a shame."

Quatre straightens a little, to take out his handkerchief and dry off his hands of the worst of the tangerine juice. He leans back as he does so, though.

"Do you know if she's plotting anything here?"

Quatre's leaning back against the hay bales mostly, but his shoulder is a warm weight against Trowa's own. His words are a little slower, a little more deliberate, than usual; you'd have to know him well to hear the drowsiness underneath, but Trowa does.

It's faintly strange, this situation, but not unwelcome.

It's Quatre, and they're in a private place with no deadline, and Trowa can keep watch. So there's no reason to rouse him to alertness.

"[Probably in the background,]" says Trowa, who doesn't see why anyone wouldn't do so. That's what contingency plans are for. "I haven't seen signs of anything focused. [Milliways isn't the] Bats' [jurisdiction. They seem to be mostly off duty here.]"

"Hm," Quatre agrees, after a moment. "That makes sense. Do you know a Will Scarlett, here?"

"[We haven't met.]"

Which doesn't mean Trowa hasn't seen him, or heard the name. But he doesn't know much about him, and in this case he hasn't seen enough to really put name and face together.

"Mm."

Quatre sighs, and looks up towards the roof, before glancing over and smiling slightly at Trowa. "He's supposed to be pretty well connected, but I haven't met him yet either."

Trowa accepts that.

With some curiosity, but if Quatre doesn't volunteer anything, he'll ask again sometime when Quatre's not half-asleep. It's not immediately pressing.

The funny thing when you're trying to stay awake is how, without outside stimulation, even the thoughts towards staying awake become a sort of lulling influence.

It only takes about a minute for Quatre to drop off.

The conversation lulls. But quiet is something that Trowa's always been comfortable with, and Quatre relaxes into companionable silences too.

Oh.

Well. All right.

Quatre sleeps sitting up with the ease of someone used to long private shuttle flights.

That's also why when his right hand falls off his lap, he murmurs something which sounds like excuse me in Arabic, as he moves it back without actually seeming to wake up (he, um, doesn't).

Trowa doesn't mind Quatre falling asleep next to him. It's a safe place in which to do so, private and with clear lines of approach, and Trowa can and will wake him if anybody comes. And he learned to occupy himself with his own thoughts years ago; this is, in its way, just another kind of companionable silence.

It's just . . . different.

(Cathy falls asleep on his shoulder once in a while, but that's Cathy. She's a special case.

And Quatre did something similar once before, years ago, but that involved a lot more blood loss and adrenaline crashes. Passing out can be its own demonstration of trust, but it's a somewhat different paradigm.)

Quatre's leaning back against the wall of haybales, chin pillowed on his chest, but his shoulder is a warm weight against Trowa's own. The mechanics of muscle relaxation mean, inevitably, that he's leaning more against Trowa than he was.

It's comfortable enough. And there's no reason for either of them to be elsewhere for at least two hours.

Trowa settles back against the bales himself. He's good at keeping company with silence and his own thoughts. Altogether -- it's more than comfortable enough.

There's a moment about twenty minutes along, where Quatre's shoulders tense and his eyes suddenly jerk open.

He doesn't move, other than taking a slow breath, before he relaxes again. There's a momentary pause, and then he straightens. He smiles at Trowa, embarassed, and checks his watch.

"Sorry," he says in English, because he's awake enough to realize that's his default with Trowa but still just-woken-up enough to forget that they were speaking French before he drifted off.

Trowa hasn't moved.

"It's fine."

You'd still have to know him well, or be very good at reading tiny expressions, to note the affection under the words.

But it's a little less hidden than sometimes.

Quatre's smile loses its sheepishness (though not its tiredness) as he leans over to kiss Trowa softly, right hand settling near the bottom of Trowa's left ribs.

He doesn't seem inclined to deepen the kiss, but neither is he particularly inclined to move right now.

He hasn't seen his boyfriend in awhile.

Yeah.

Trowa may be less tired than Quatre, but he's no more inclined to move away. They live far apart (and the diplomats' visit forced a rescheduling of Quatre's recent plans to visit), and even with Milliways their paths only cross every few weeks at best. Phone and email aren't at all the same.

So -- this is nice.

A few minutes later, Quatre breathes a half-laugh by Trowa's chin.

"I should probably look into that coffee, so I don't fall asleep on you again."

He presses his lips against the side of Trowa's mouth and (regretfully) pulls away.

"Probably," Trowa agrees, amused.

(But he turns his head to follow Quatre's motion, and steal one more light kiss before Quatre finishes pulling away.)

Then he leans forward to retrieve the thermos on the floor.

Quatre smiles, bright and somewhat surprised, and turns to pick up his mug and take the tangerine out of it, setting it beside him on the bale.

He's pleased. You can tell by the way he goes back to watching what Trowa's doing, once he's got an empty mug in his hands.

What Trowa is doing is . . . picking up a thermos.

And unscrewing the top.

Exciting!

It's amazing how many boring things are suddenly more interesting to watch when they're done by someone attractive.

Er, when you're also dating them. (Um.)

And the imminent caffeine, honestly, doesn't hurt.

Quatre slants Trowa a sideways glance. How does he want to do this? Hand Quatre the thermos, have Quatre hand him the mug, have him fill up the mug while Quatre holds. Also, more importantly: "Would you like some also?"

Because if they're doing the while-Quatre-holds option, he is more than capable of holding two mugs at once.

"Sure."

Why not? It's early enough in the day that he doesn't mind the caffeine.

Even if, unlike Quatre, he tends to subsist more on decaf. (This is a calculated habit to keep caffeine an effective stimulant for his system, and avoid addiction to it. Trowa's control issues do in fact extend to beverages.)

He doesn't particularly care how the coffee-pouring logistics settle out. This means there's a brief back-and-forth of glances and mug gestures, the easy sort you get with people who've been friends for years, and Trowa ends up pouring for them both. (After Quatre retrieves the second tangerine from Trowa's mug also. They probably wouldn't mix well.)

It's only around noon for Trowa, but Quatre's about four hours on and usually, on days like today where he's planning on actually getting out of work at 5 (vanishingly rare), he wouldn't go in for caffeine this late.

But he does have a dinner to go to, later, and it won't be the sort where purchasing coffee would send the right impression.

"Thank you," Quatre says, once the mugs are full. He waits for Trowa to finish capping the thermos and setting it down before handing him his mug.

This is easily managed.

Trowa doesn't say you're welcome. It's a given, and Quatre's not the kind of person who needs to hear it said anyway.

He just sets the thermos down again in easy reach, and accepts his mug companionably.

Quatre sets his newly-freed hand around his mug, and just sits there letting the warmth seep through the ceramic for a long moment before he seems to catch up with what its purpose is, and he drinks.

Mm, coffee.

Trowa doesn't spend quite so long communing with the very concept of coffee.

But it's not as if he objects. This, too, is comfortable.

It's several minutes before Quatre speaks. (But he hasn't fallen asleep in the meantime.)

"I think I'm going to get a room here," he says, quietly. "For future use, I mean. If Cassandra's is the standard, they're quite nice."