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A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)	By : shinigamiinochi Category: Gundam Wing/AC > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 2207 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing AC or the characters from it. I am making no money from this story

Chapter List
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A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 4

Part 1
　

December 21st, 2007
　

Life is weird. I guess everyone has a moment where they have to realize that at some point, but it seems to happen to me over and over again. Weird is looking back at my life these last three years and realizing that not a single thing has changed, even though sometimes I like to tell myself that it has. Weird is finding myself doing things that I told myself, years back, I would never do again, or just plain never stop doing, like writing about my shitty life in a journal again, or caring about another person again. Yet here I am, with a fresh, clean journal that I just filched from my English classroom, writing about things that no one besides myself gives a shit about.

I don't even have a reason anymore. I just woke up this morning and thought about everything that happened this last week. Hell, I thought about everything that's happened since I last wrote in one of these and I wanted to write it all down. I can't say why, it didn't help me any last time, but I didn't see any point in ignoring the urge. It's not like I have anything better to do anymore, not after last week. I guess that sounds pathetic, but that's ok because it is.

Weird is the knowledge that the last time I wrote in any journal about my life, I was sitting on my bathroom floor, slicing my left wrist open with one of my father's razor blades, happy to end everything about my life. Now three years have gone by, how's that for anti-climatic?

I survived my second suicide attempt, obviously, since I'm not writing from beyond the grave. I'm such a fuck up, I couldn't even kill myself right. I thought I had done it all perfectly. I had waited until my father and mother were out of the house, found the newest, sharpest razor in the drawer my father stored his shaving tools, sat on the ice cold bathroom floor and just did it. I didn't even hesitate, I just raked the razor across both of my wrists and waited for myself to bleed out. Only I didn't.

Don't get me wrong, I lost a lot of blood, enough that I had needed a transfusion, but not enough to end my life. I can laugh about it now, how perfectly that failure describes me. I try and I try, but it's never good enough, I never get anywhere. Realizing it back then, waking up on that cold floor, it had just depressed me.

I had cut my wrists the wrong way. I hadn't even realized that there was a specific way you were supposed to do something like that. I had seen people do it in movies and on television, so I had just assumed that was the best way. It had never occurred to me that I should have done some research on the subject. Instead, I just almost died.

It hadn't hurt, cutting my wrists. I mean, it kind of had, at first, just the act of cutting, but nearly bleeding out hadn't. In a way, it had almost been pleasant. The hard floor under me had been ice, but my blood had been obscenely warm. If I had been able to forget that that warmth had been coming from my life bleeding out of me, it would have been nice. Eventually, I had been so weak and faint, all those little things like worry and fear and sadness had just... disappeared from me. For the first time in the thirteen years of my life I had been... not happy, but empty, completely empty of everything, both good and bad. For a moment, I even forgot about Quatre.

I blacked out. I didn't see any beautiful, white lights or an angel beckoning me or some voice telling me it was or wasn't time for me to go. There had been only blackness and nothingness. Then, I woke up to my father lifting me up by the front of my ratty t-shirt and slapping me hard across the face. He had come home early, something I never would have predicted. I didn't have any doubts that I hadn't died, unless this is Hell, just more of the same shit I've lived in my entire life. But not even my father's blows or his screaming at me to get up and demanding to know what the hell I thought that I was doing as he had roughly and tightly wrapped my wrists up in towels had been enough to combat my blood loss and I had lost consciousness again.

I woke up again in the hospital to my father arguing heatedly with the doctor that had worked on me. My wrists had been bound and I had felt incredibly weak, and would for the next couple of days, even after I had gotten a second transfusion thanks to my dad. The doctor had been arguing to having a psychologist see me. I guess my father hadn't been able to excuse away my wounds like he could when he hit me. If I had just slashed one wrist, maybe he could have lied and said I had done it while cutting vegetables or something, but I had been careful to do both wrists.

My father had wanted nothing to do with getting me therapy. "All he needs," he had told the doctor angrily in a growling tone, "is time with his family. We'll sort it out, not some fucking quack that will just put bullshit ideas into his head."

I guess 'time with his family' just meant 'some sense beaten into him' because as soon as my father won that battle with the doctor and got me home, a beating was exactly what he gave me.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" he had roared at me, "What the hell did you think you were doing, trying to kill yourself?! How pathetic are you?!"

He had screamed at me for a good ten minutes, calling me all sorts of names for my stupidity before plowing his fist into my gut. I was probably lucky I hadn't had a second trip to the hospital that day. On a normal day, I would have felt bitter and angry about him beating me when I was already hurt, even if I had been the one to hurt myself for once, but I was just so weak and so emotionally drained at that point that I hadn't cared. If anything, that beating had been a good thing.

While I'm sure this will sound terrible, every punch that my father had given me that day had made me happy, as happy as I was capable of feeling in my apathy. It was tiny, a one, single, good thing in the emptiness that my life had become, and I had probably clung to it for that reason alone. Because my father could have just not cared that I had tried to kill myself. He could have looked at me with the same kind of stare that my mother looked at me with and walked away. Instead, he had been enraged that his son had wanted to kill himself.

He had been mad that I was so weak to do something stupid like that, but he had cared enough to be angry about it. Knowing that he cared at least that much was confusing and painful and made me feel that weird burst of love I would feel for him when he showed that side of him, but the bruises he gave me that day only reminded me of how fleeting those feelings were.

"And clean up the goddamned mess that you made in the fucking bathroom!" had been my father's parting shot as he left me there on the kitchen floor with a bloody nose and a black eye.

When I managed to pick myself off the floor and go up to my room to nurse my wounds, I laid down and cried, because the pain meant that I was still alive. For a second, as I laid on my mattress mourning my failed suicide attempt, I saw Quatre sitting on the floor in front of me. He wasn't a mirage or a dream or a trick of the eye. He was as real as the walls of my room. He reached over and touched my hair like he would have done if he had been alive and had found me crying.

"Ssssh, it'll be alright," he had soothed, his voice as clear and real as my father's had been when he had screamed at me.

Then I blinked and he was gone, just a vapor. That second, I vowed to myself that I was done with crying. I would never shed a tear again. Not for Quatre, and especially not for myself. I spent the rest of my night scrubbing my dried blood off the bathroom floor until I pulled the stitches in my right wrist and had to take a break until the bleeding stopped.

It had felt so weird cleaning up my own blood, knowing that it had all come from my body. I tried to tell myself that it was just a stain, like any other, but that only made me feel worse, like I was nothing but a stain, waiting to be scrubbed out. There was just so much of it, and it was so dark, almost black from drying on the hard floor of the bathroom for days. The feeling of it on my hands as I scrubbed at it with the bathroom sponge we used to clean the tub was revolting.

At some point, I had found the journal. I don't remember why I had taken it with me that day, or what had possessed me to write in it as I had lain there, dying. I don't remember shoving it behind the toilet, but there it was. Maybe I had had a single moment of clarity before I had blacked out, enough to know to hide it from my father. It was caked with blood on the later pages, for obvious reasons, and was pretty much a lost cause for writing anything else in it. It was disgusting to me, the dried blood brown and kind of looked like pudding or very dark and thick coffee stains, but I couldn't make myself throw it out. I tossed it in the secret compartment in the floor of my room and I haven't looked at it since.

I haven't thought about it since. Killing myself, I mean. At least, I haven't thought about with any kind of seriousness. I don't know precisely why. Before, ending everything, escaping all the pain and apathy I was feeling after Quatre committed suicide himself had been all I could think about. A future beyond that had seemed impossible. Now that I was faced with it, you would think that I would try to kill myself as soon as possible.

But I didn't. It wasn't because I had failed or I was suddenly scared of death or I had found something to live for. It was simply because I realized something as I had laid on that hospital bed, listening to my heart monitor. What was the point? My life had never had one, so why would my death? At some point, I had stopped believing that I would go to heaven and see my best friend again. So what was the point of ending anything? No one would mourn me.

But even more than that, I realized that I didn't deserve to die. Life was pain and that was exactly what I deserved. Why should I get any kind of relief when I had let down the only person in my life that had truly cared about me? The thought of trying to kill myself again suddenly felt selfish to me and I quickly lost all taste for it. But I guess that I never tried it again is more because my apathy grew after I survived slitting my wrists. It grew like a tidal wave in me until I even stopped caring about ending my life.

There is a word for what my life is now. Stagnant. It means when something has stopped or can't develop or advance, like when a river goes through a dry season and all these little pools form in the dirt. The water can't flow like it's supposed to, can't continue on to where it needs to go, and it becomes stale and foul. That's my life, my existence. Unmoving, unable to progress, just stopped where I am. Because nothing changes for me. Since the moment I watched Quatre fall in front of that train, nothing has changed at all. At least, nothing that I need to change.

I suppose in the last three years, things have changed a little. Tiny, unimportant things. When I turned fifteen last year, my dad decided I was old enough for a better job than waiting tables. Don't get me wrong, I didn't quit any of my shit jobs for something better, I just got a third, shittier job. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, from 4, right after I leave school, to 9:30 at night, I work at the pizza joint. I'm allowed to work the ovens now, so I can actually make food, but I still have to wait tables, answer the phones, do the dishes, and make the pizza boxes, so it just feels like more of the same to me.

Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday I work at the diner, 3 to 8 on Wednesday, 9 to 3 Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday from 9 to 1, and Fridays from 5 to 11 I work at one of the factories in South Nausten unloading cargo brought in from the train yard. Just like my other two jobs, my dad got me that one. It's just as illegal as the others were when I was thirteen, especially my 9 to 1 shifts, and unloading freight is supposed to be a job for someone older than 17, but I guess my father has a deal with the manager of the factory just like my other bosses.

I make the equivalent of time and a half at the factory as I do at my other jobs, which would be a pretty sweet deal if my father didn't take all my earnings. The job itself is hard, I'm lifting and sorting through cargo meant for someone twice my size and by the time I go home, I'm so tired and sore from moving all that heavy shit around, I feel like a middle aged man instead of a teenager. The guys that I work with don't like me very much, because of my age, but it's a job and it helps pay the bills.

You would think that all that manual labor would have gotten me some muscle tone, but of course not, that would have been something good. Instead, I'm still the same averaged height, scrawny kid that I've always been. The only difference is that I get more back aches and random pains in my hips. It's not that big of a deal, though. I still don't sleep much these days, usually four hours at a time if I'm lucky and I do my homework during my breaks and in between shifts. What else do I have to occupy my time except for reading and work? It's not like I have a friend to hang out with anymore.

Well... I guess that's sort of a lie. Or it was. Remember how I said that life is weird? On the same day that I had vowed to never cry again, I had made myself another promise. I had promised that I would never again get close to anyone, I would never open my heart to a single person. Because Quatre's death hadn't hit me so hard due to my own miserable failings, but because I had loved him.

If we hadn't been friends, it wouldn't have hurt. If I hadn't had four years with him as my best friend, I never would have known what it was like to be truly happy, to have someone to rely on, only to have it all ripped away from me. If I had never met Quatre, I was certain that, no matter how much my life had sucked without him, I never would have tried to kill myself. I had thought that it would have been easy to keep a promise like that. I hadn't thought that I was capable of loving anything anymore.

But as it turns out, I'm as incapable of keeping a promise to myself as I was keeping one to Quatre. Emotions are tricky little shits and when they worm their way in, they're like parasites, making you do whatever they please, regardless of what you want. I hadn't been able to stop being friends with Quatre. I think that, even if I had tried to stay away from him, even if I had known how much it would hurt down the road, my loneliness would have drawn me to him no matter what. And I think that, when I had gotten that phone call last fall, even if I had known the heartache it ended up bringing me, I still would have answered that call.

It was the very first week of the tenth grade for me. I was sitting at my desk, trying to get my geometry homework done, a subject that, for once, wasn't frustrating me to the point of screaming, when my father walked in with the phone in hand. It was the same phone we'd had for the last five years and the dent from my father throwing it at the back of my head was still there. This time, he didn't throw it, he just handed it to me.

"You have a phone call, some kid," he said in that gruff way of his that told me he was irritated, but only mildly so. It was safe, for now.

I hesitated to take the phone out of pure confusion. There was not a single person that would be calling me, not anymore. Not even Zechs called me to harass me, something that he had done to Quatre before. At least we had thought it was Zechs, the caller had never said their name, but Quatre had insisted that he recognized his voice. My father looked equally confused at why anyone, my age or not, would be calling. He was distracted enough not to get angry at my taking so long to grab the phone.

"Hello?" I asked in bewilderment, expecting some kind of trick or something nasty. Why else would one of my classmates call me?

"Hey."

My eyes widened, staring at nothing in complete shock as Trowa Barton's voice filled my ear.

I hadn't heard from him for a year and a half, not since the day I had screamed at him at the train station. I had seen him, once in awhile, mostly at school, but neither of us had tried to talk to each other. What did we have to say to each other? All that we had in common anymore was not something that either of us wanted to talk about, so I was a bit mystified as to why Trowa was calling after not saying a word to me for more than a year.

I could never bury Quatre down deep inside of me, but I couldn't look at my memories of him for too long, either. The only way that I could continue to get out of bed every morning anymore was to not think about anything at all. Especially after the nightmares I continued to have. It was in me to just hang up on him, but I couldn't. Because although I would never admit it to anyone, and I had a hard time admitting it to myself, Trowa confused me and he conflicted me.

I still hate him. Now, I have only more and more reasons to hate him, but back then when he had called me that night, I had had plenty of reasons to hate and distrust him. He was still the boy that had gotten my only friend killed. He was still a coward and unwelcome in my life. But... but at the same time, I felt... I can't even describe it adequately. I liked him. I liked him enough to take his phone call without telling him to fuck off and cutting him off.

Trowa had been my first kiss. My very first, real kiss, because I just can't think of that kiss Relena had given me as my first still, because of how I felt about her back then, the turmoil it had given me, and especially how I feel about her now. But Trowa, as much as I had and still do hate him, that kiss had been real to me. Even if he hadn't actually been kissing me.

When I thought about Trowa, I thought about him turning his back on Quatre the day that he had killed himself, and I thought about him telling me, in anguish, that he had liked him, too. But I also thought of that kiss, the feeling of his smooth lips on mine and the warmth they had given me, the feeling of his hand on my thin shoulder and the subtle, earthy smell of his deodorant. I thought about that night when the three of us had gone to dinner together, how shy but endearing he had been, how we had connected, how I had enjoyed just talking with him, how I had thought that he could be a friend for me, one that I desperately needed.

And I thought about all the times that he had made Quatre smile, made him laugh, made him glow just by being around him. I could deny it all that I wanted to make it easier for me, but the truth was that for all the pain Trowa had made Quatre feel, he had also made my best friend feel deliriously happy. When it came to Trowa Barton, my brain just couldn't decide if I hated him or liked him, it couldn't just pick on one thing and just feel that one thing. My life would have been so much simpler if I had just decided to hate him and push him away. But hadn't been able to.

"Hey," I said back. It would be one of the worst decisions I had ever made, "What's up?"

A year and a half is a long time. I won't say that any of my anger at him had suddenly gone away during that time, but I found that I could hold a conversation with the upperclassman, especially over the phone, without eviscerating him like I had at the train station. My father went back downstairs and I was relieved. If I did end up yelling at Trowa, I didn't want him right next to me. It was weird enough talking to the first boy that had ever kissed me, and still confused me if only because it made me remember that I had liked it, in front of someone like my father that hated people like us.

"Do you want to go see a movie this Saturday?" Trowa asked me with just a small bit of that familiar shyness he used to talk to Quatre with, obviously unsure of himself, but not quite in the same way that he had been with the boy he had had a crush on.

His question only confused me further. If anyone had called me to ask that, I would have known that it was a prank, but with Trowa, I knew that he was being sincere. Not because we were on familiar terms, which we weren't. After I had hit him and he had kissed me and I had hit him again, I had absolutely no idea where we stood with each other. We weren't friends, but we weren't enemies, either. Begrudging acquaintances? Somehow that didn't quite touch on our complicated relationship. No, I trusted Trowa not to try shit with me simply because he didn't have that sort of thing in him. No matter how he had changed since Quatre's death, he wasn't cruel for the sake of cruelty like Zechs and Relena.

I could have demanded to know why he wanted to hang out with me all of a sudden. Did he want to hit me in revenge for my hitting him that time? Was he worried that I would tell his friends and teammates about him kissing me? If he had called me a few days after Quatre's funeral, I might have been paranoid that either of those things were the case, but more than a year later? Only two scenarios made any sense to me. Trowa either wanted to talk about Quatre, our one connection besides that kiss, or for some reason, he was actually lonely and I was the only one he could call. Maybe he had had a fight with his friends, I had no clue.

"Sure," I said instead of asking him anything, "if you're paying."

I told myself that it didn't really matter why Trowa Barton was seeking me out after all this time not saying shit to me. It wasn't like I had anything better to do that Saturday, I had that day off for once. I could tell myself that, that I was just bored and going to a movie wasn't something I could afford to do, but that was a lie. The truth was that I was lonely. Painfully, down to my very bones lonely.

I didn't want to acknowledge it at the time, but hearing Trowa's voice again, hearing him ask if I wanted to hang out, a thing that I hadn't done since Quatre's death, made something in my chest hurt, but it was a good hurt, a yearning. It was like using a muscle that I hadn't flexed in a long time, and I suppose that was exactly what it was.

I wanted to go, not because I had nothing to do but read, or even because I wanted to see a movie, but because I wanted to see him. If I'm being honest with myself, I wanted to do something with another human being, and I wanted to see that boy who had kissed me for a moment when I had been thirteen years old and hurting worse than I ever had in my life.

I knew that it was wrong. Trowa was a stranger to me. I hadn't known him that well to begin with, and after a year, after losing the boy that he had loved, even if he had been total shit at loving him, had changed him, like it had changed me. And Trowa was still Quatre's. I still hated him and held a small amount of affection for him, if any. I had no right to want to be around him when he was absolutely nothing to me, simply because I was tired of being depressed and alone.

I was a leech, using the person my best friend had loved to make myself feel better. Quatre had been dead for almost two years and I was still a disgusting excuse for a friend, and the longer that Quatre was dead, the deeper into filth I seemed to sink. But I couldn't help it. I had nothing. I barely had a heart anymore and from the moment I had heard Trowa's voice through that telephone, I remembered what it was like to feel something, to feel human.

I couldn't stay away from him no matter how guilty I felt about it. No matter how much I felt like I was cheating on and betraying my one, true friend. I just want that understood, that anything and everything that happened after that phone call was entirely my fault.

"Yeah, I'll pay," his deep voice informed me in a nonchalant way, but I could still hear that slight shyness in his tone and had to wonder if it was just because of his introverted personality or if he was a bit scared of me. If he was, I couldn't blame him, "Is five o'clock alright with you?"

I hadn't thought about it back then, why Trowa had chosen five o'clock to see the film, but it's obvious to me now. The theater wouldn't get busy until around seven, and very few of our classmates would go to see a movie on a Saturday night before nine. He could have just been uncomfortable in a crowd, or he might have had something to do later that night, but I know that wasn't the case.

Even that early on in our... hell, I don't know what the fuck to call the relationship we would eventually bungle our way into, I still can't really call us friends, but even that early on, Trowa hadn't wanted anyone that might know him to see him with me. He had been willing to stick his neck out for Quatre to a degree, to be seen hanging out with him, being friends with him, but he had never been willing to stick it out for me. Never for me.

That's obvious to me, who would want to risk anything for someone like me? But just because it's obvious, just because I understand it, it doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt me every time I examine those memories.

"That's fine," I told him, "I'll meet you at the theater."

He didn't offer to drive me or even walk me there like Quatre would have. He didn't tell me the name of the movie or why, exactly, he had called me instead of one of his teammates, but I found that I didn't really care that much. Not that that was anything new. I found that the more time passed with Quatre gone, the harder I was finding it to care about anything. I guess, beyond all my reasons and logic and excuses, that's why I kept hanging around Trowa, even when things went wrong between us. I was just too relieved to know that I could still feel something.

Even when he hurt me, some part of me was still so happy that I wasn't so dead inside, I couldn't feel it. After Quatre, I had cockily believed that no one would be able to make me feel pain like that again. I never realized, through the whole fucked up mess, just how easily Trowa Barton could hurt me. Or that I would be the one to let him.
*****
He wore a dark green shirt that suited his eyes as perfectly as his jeans suited his long legs, and a dark denim jacket. It's funny, I can remember exactly what Trowa had worn the day that he had invited me out to the movies on a whim. I can even remember how shy and awkward he had seemed as he had greeted me and that he hadn't just paid for my movie ticket, but some popcorn, soda, and peanut butter candy as well. But for the life of me, I still can't remember the name of the movie we had gone to see. It had been some sci fi, adventure epic, the kind of movie that had tons of explosions, special effects, very little intellectual plot, a busy, beautiful heroine, and a take-charge male lead.

It had been the sort of movie that I never would have chosen myself, but I had found it enjoyable enough. I have to admit, though, that I paid more attention to Trowa sitting next to me than I had the film. I had tried to puzzle him out, how I had found myself sitting next to the same boy I had punched a year ago. The longer we sat there in the half empty movie theater together, the more that I was convinced I had fallen into some kind of fever dream and was just hallucinating all of it.

That I enjoyed it, and that I blushed every time his hand brushed against mine to grab a handful of popcorn, also made me feel ashamed. It was a bittersweet moment for me. And when I figured out that that hand was brushing up against mine a bit too much to be an accident, I couldn't exactly ignore it, but I pretended to anyway because it didn't mean anything.

"Can..." he said to me at the end of the movie, standing outside the theater, rubbing his hands on his jeans in an incredibly shy and worried way that was endearing to me, "...can we do this again some time? Hang out, I mean. If you would want to..." his words were borderline babbling with anxiety.

We didn't talk about why he had called me. We didn't talk about Quatre. We didn't talk about me hitting him. In fact, we barely said anything at all to each other. I think that's a good thing, probably the only reason why we got through those hours without screaming at each other. It had been awkward to the point of agony and not entirely pleasant, but I found as I walked home that I felt... I wouldn't call it happy, I wouldn't even call it content. But my mood, though bemused, was lighter than it had been since the day that Quatre had almost gotten run over by that truck. That was more than I had had in a very long time. So when he asked me that, I shrugged nonchalantly and ignored how it made me feel entirely.

"Sure," I told him, but I was sure that it would never happen again.

Why would it? He hadn't seemed to really enjoy being around me. He hadn't talked at all to me and had seemed more like he was scared of me than he wanted to be around me. I just couldn't imagine why he wanted to hang out and had thought him asking me if we could do it again was just his way of being polite. So it rather shocked me when he called me next Saturday to go bowling, something that Quatre had loved to do, and again the Saturday after that to some local concert. I had only been familiar with the band because Quatre had listened to them on his mp3 player while studying with me. They weren't really the kind of music I liked, but they weren't bad.

Before I even realized what was happening, the two of us were hanging out together every single weekend, like clockwork. After that first time, Trowa started to warm up a little. Most of the time, he was still quiet. I would call him brooding, but that isn't quite right. He just wasn't social with me like it had been with Quatre, but the silences, little by little, became more companionable and less awkward, less like there was something he wanted to say to me but didn't dare and more like there was nothing that needed to be said between us.

Sometimes, he was like how he had been on the very first night I had officially met him after the only game I had ever watched him play. He would talk about what his life had been like back before his parents had settled down, how he missed the circus, how he didn't miss the traveling. He would talk about mundane things like the music he liked, a book he had recently finished, little things that meant little to him and less to me. Things that we couldn't fight over, couldn't get hurt about.

We never talked about Quatre. Trowa never brought him up and neither did I. It was like we had both wiped that day at the train station between us clean from both of our memories. He pretended to be fine. He wasn't. I'm not as stupid as people think I am, at least not when it comes to seeing when people are lying, even if they're not saying anything. Trowa acted the same as he always did around me, but that was only to hide the fact that he wasn't the same at all. I had lived with my father for too long to miss the darkness that was in him, the anger and bitterness simmering under the surface. It was the same anger and bitterness that was in me. It made some part of me to see it in someone else, to know just how much Quatre's death had hurt someone. Sometimes I would look at him and see myself peering back at me and I would hurt for him, and I would feel better at the same time just knowing that I wasn't alone. It was a fucked up feeling.

If I didn't blame Trowa so much for Quatre's suicide, I would have felt guilty about it. I wondered if his parents saw it, saw how that nice, shy boy that I had almost became friends with one night over dinner had rotted away. I wondered if they saw that he was quicker to frustration now, quicker to anger, how there always was a shadow in those handsome green eyes. I wondered if they saw that sometimes he just got so sad, so far away from everything living.

I knew in those moments that he was thinking of Quatre, thinking of what he had lost because of his own inaction. In those moments, I felt so close to him. I felt... affection for him. An affection that still frightens me because of how grotesque it is. But I never claimed to be a good person. The tragedy is that Trowa had been normal once, at least more normal than I could claim to be. He had been nice and shy and sweet in his way, mature and smart. But now? Now he isn't any better off than I am, just a miserable excuse for a person, grasping desperately on to something, just to pretend that they aren't rotting, aren't stagnating.

I think I knew that entire time, somewhere deep down inside of myself, exactly why Trowa had sought me out, even if he had bumbled through it at first. Going to see some big, blockbuster film, going bowling, going to that concert... they were all things that Quatre and Trowa had done together. That night that we had all had dinner together, Trowa had confessed that the boys that he hung out with weren't really his friends and I think that's the truth. I think that when Quatre had killed himself, Trowa had lost the only person that he could really talk to, just like I had.

Quatre and I weren't that much alike, in truth. We had been best friends, but our personalities had always been vastly different and we had liked different things. So the idea that Trowa was attempting in a half assed kind of way to replace the boy that he had loved with me had always struck me as ridiculous, but it really wasn't. Maybe Quatre and I had had different tastes in music. Maybe we had had a different sense of humor and acted differently during the same situations, but that was all just surface stuff.

In reality, I was the only person in this entire, stupid town that Trowa could really talk to, not that he ever did. I was the only person who knew that he was gay and I was the only one that knew how he had felt about Quatre. I was the only person who knew the real reason why Trowa had changed, why he looked so sad sometimes. I felt an attraction to him because of that sadness, like he was a kindred spirit in a way, so maybe he felt the same way towards me.

I could accept that because I also understood that I was doing the same thing. Trowa reminded me of Quatre, the good and the bad. And it just felt so good to just have someone there to look at and know that he knew, he understood my sadness. And maybe that's fucked up, my replacing Quatre with the person that had gotten him killed, using his crush like that, but that's how I could keep being sort of friends with Trowa without going insane. It's sad if I think about it too much, that the only friend I can claim to have is just a ghost, a shade of what I once had. But I'm sure that Trowa can claim the very same thing.

I was aware of all of that by the time December 31st came around, but just because I was aware of how messed up our friendship was, and how hollow, when Trowa called me up to watch our town's New Year's fireworks display, I still agreed to go. New Year's is a big event for Nausten, in some ways bigger than the Fourth of July. The bars in South Nausten are always packed full every year and we set off this huge fireworks presentation from the beach.

Every New Year's Eve to New Year's Day, both of my parents disappear. My father isn't a social drinker, at least he isn't the type that would go out to a crowded bar to get drunk, so I know he probably just goes to one of his cop buddies' place. I have no idea where my mother goes, but it's a nice respite, knowing that I have 48 hours of an empty house with no screaming or swearing. Usually I just watch television and order pizza with the money my father leaves me. I hate crowds as much as he does, so until Trowa invited me to go, I hadn't seen the fireworks live since I had been five years old and my father had taken me.

That year, December 31st had fallen on a Sunday and I had been given work off both that day and Monday and we were still on our Winter vacation from school, so it had seemed like a better way to spend my free time than sitting at home. I felt a little thrill of excitement when I hung the phone up after Trowa's call. I had been feeling it more and more, each and ever time I saw the older boy. I don't really know how to describe it, or how to reason it.

It wasn't the excitement that I felt every time I had seen Quatre. Trowa and I would never click like Quatre and I had, but I felt... something when I was with him. And the more time I spent with him, the more that something grew. It wasn't love. I want anyone, if anyone, who reads this to understand that. I was not falling in love with Trowa. I didn't have a crush on him like Quatre did. There was no burning desire or passion for him in my heart. But I liked him, I liked him as much as I was capable of, and considering that I can't even claim that much for anyone else, that I live my life in fear that I'll never even feel that kind of attraction to anyone. it was a welcome feeling.

What I feel for Trowa will always be complicated and confusing to me. I'll never understand why I could be excited to see him, to just to be with him even if we didn't say much, when at the same time he made me feel like shit and like I wanted to hit him again, but I'll never understand how I can love my father so much it hurts, and hate him equally as much, either. Maybe it was just loneliness, maybe it was just my yearning to fall in love like Quatre had, even knowing what it had done to him. Maybe I really did have a crush on Trowa, a small one. I hope that's not the case, that that entire time, I had been attracted to the same boy that my best friend had. I just don't know why I felt that way around him.

I spent the time before I had agreed to meet Trowa making us some food for a picnic, nothing special, just some potato salad, sandwiches using the left over ham we had had for Christmas and just a few things here and there I found in the fridge that needed to be eaten soon; pudding, apple sauce, cranberry sauce, and yams that our neighbors had gifted us. I took the time to make the potato salad from scratch, and some sugar cookies as well.

My cooking would never win any awards but I like making things, it's soothing for some bizarre reason and helps pass the time. Sometimes my cooking dinner will put my father in a better mood than coming home to take out. Lately, my mother has been forgetting to make dinner more and more, which has been the subject of many of my parents' violent fights, and even when I cook, she skips meals a lot, leaving just my father and I to eat together.

I worry about it. I want to think she's eating at the diner she works at, but she never seems interested in food or anything else, really lately, beyond her drinking. As long as there's a bottle of whiskey at hand, she just keeps to herself. There have been times when I've seen her retreat into their bedroom with one of those bottles or disappear to the front porch and I've wanted to say something to her about it, to beg her to eat something or to slow down. But every time, I just remember the things she screamed at me when I was thirteen and I remember how much she hates me, how much whatever I have to say is unwanted.

I pushed those kinds of thoughts as far away from me as I could, storing the food in various Tupperware containers including an old tablecloth that I found stashed under the sink. I wanted to find a basket for cliche's sake, but we didn't have anything like that, so I just put all the containers in a plastic bag.

By the time I left the house, it was already dark out and people were walking about, on their ways to parties and bars or just walking home from work. It was unseasonably warm out for January so I took my time walking on foot towards the beach instead of taking the bus like I usually did. Since Nate had left me, I had started hanging out at the beach during the winter in between classes and work, and before school.

I just liked the... emptiness of it, that there were hardly any people around and all the noise that I could hear was the waves, wind, and birds. I liked sitting there in the sand or in one of the little benches and watch the waves come and go, just letting all the thoughts leak out of my head into nothing. It's the only place in this stupid town, besides the library, where I don't feel like I'm choking.

Trowa didn't ask me to meet him on the beach and I wasn't surprised. At school, even when we did cross paths, he never so much as glanced at me. He didn't need to lay down any ground rules for our friendship, I figured out all on my own that he didn't want people to know we were friends. It was bad enough that people still gossiped about him once in awhile.

A couple of people would suggest the possibility that he was gay, like they had the day that Quatre's journal had shown up on the school's message board, but mostly people seemed to think he was a victim to Quatre's affections, which I think, to Trowa at least, was much worse in some ways. But how long would it take people to think the worst of him again if he was seen with another faggot?

I won't lie and say that it didn't bother me. Sometimes I think about what would have happened between them if Quatre had lived. Would Trowa have eventually treated him like he treated me? Would he have acted like Quatre didn't exist at all, while spending his free time as his close friend or even boyfriend if they had ever worked up the courage to tell each other how they felt?

I'm glad that Quatre never lived to know that kind of pain, but I also don't think Trowa would have done that to him, not to Quatre. Not to the boy that he actually loved. I was a different story and while I understood it and I couldn't really hate Trowa for it, it hurt me deeper than I thought it would. I was his dirty little secret the entire time we hung out together and he was quite happy to keep me in that corner of his life.

In some ways, having that rumor that I was gay floating around was easier than what Trowa had to deal with. I already caught shit for my supposed sexuality. While I worry every, single day that someone, maybe even Zechs or Relena, will find out that that is exactly what I am, until it actually becomes fact, it's all the same. Trowa doesn't have to worry about being bullied over it, at least not until he does something to make people double think their assumption that he's straight.

But I pushed that hurt down deep, that I couldn't even wave hi to him in the hallways of our school, like I do with everything that hurts a bit too much. I pushed it down and I didn't get angry when he told me to meet him on the hill overlooking the beach, where no one would be that night and where no one would be able to see us. By the time I got there, Trowa was already there, sitting on the grass under a tree.

Despite the secrecy of the spot, it was a nice place to see the fireworks. No one was up there because there was plenty of room on the beach and it was warm enough for people to barbeque. Even up on the hill, I could smell the tantalizing aroma of cooking meat. Trowa was watching the various parties below on the beach, sipping from a can of soda. He looked up at me from where he sat as I approached and his green eyes, lit by the bonfire below, reminded me of some dark forest.

"Hi," he greeted, "Happy New Year's."

His ability to socialize with me without stammering or looking guilty or hesitant had greatly improved in the four months that we had been hanging out with each other.

"Happy New Year's," I echoed, "I don't know if you already ate, but I made some things to snack on if you're hungry."

"Sure," he said just a bit too quickly and there was the familiar gleam in his eyes that he got on the occasions that I shared something that I had cooked or baked with him.

Neither of Trowa's parents were very good at cooking. His family seemed to live on take out and frozen dinners. I suppose when you've lived most of your life in a place where you don't need to rely on your own shitty cooking skills, you don't learn how to do things like that. I think that the food I would make for him once in awhile was the most homemade food he had seen outside of holidays spent with his relatives.

Trowa always seemed happy when I gifted him with something, whether it was macaroni and cheese or a piece of cake, so I tried to do things like that for him as much as I could. Maybe I'm just that pathetic, but I liked the feeling of knowing that someone enjoyed my cooking or that someone liked anything I did for them at all. My dad seemed to appreciate the homemade food, but he seldom said anything to me about it.

Seeing Trowa light up like that, just come out of his shell and look like how he used to look like when he had been with Quatre made this weird emotion burst in my stomach. Whatever it was, it felt warm and bitter at the same time, but the warmth was stronger for once. As I laid out the tablecloth on the grass and handed Trowa the food to put down, I had a flash of deja vu.

Only it wasn't really deja vu, but a memory of when Quatre and I had gone on a picnic one Summer vacation when we had been twelve. In my mind, I saw his bright smile as I handed him the bowl of potato salad. In my mind, Trowa's eyes became blue-green instead of green as he looked up at me. If I squinted in the low light, I could see his cinnamon brown hair turn blonde. When his hand brushed against mine in taking the plate of cookies I had packed, I saw Quatre's pale hand, felt the ghost memory of his soft skin against mine.

I blinked and Quatre became Trowa again. My stomach twisted in agony, but I ignored it. In the three years since Quatre's death, I have become much better at handling these flashes of memory I get of those days when I had had a best friend, when I had been happy. A few months after his suicide, the mere remembrance of him, the things he had liked, the sound of his voice, the smell of the tea he had liked, used to send me into a black pit of despair and turn my stomach into a war zone that had me vomiting a few times.

By the time that Trowa and I had started to hang out, those memories still caused me pain, but it was like a knee-jerk reaction, like being shocked by lightning. It hurt and it unsettled my stomach, but I just rode through it until I could push that memory down into my guts. I did the same then on that hill. I forced the memory of that picnic down deep. I turned my head away from Trowa and saw Quatre sitting next to us on the grass, smiling up at me. Smiling, not out of any memory, but because he was happy that Trowa and I were sharing a meal together.

I'm not crazy, ok? I mean, I kind of am. But I'm not that kind of crazy. I'm not the kind of crazy that sees their dead best friend everywhere and thinks that they're really there, alive or as a ghost. I know that when I see Quatre, it's in my head. I picture him there because I want him to be there. Quatre is there because I need him, because whenever I was upset, he would always be there for me. Without him, I can't handle some things, so I put him there. I make myself see him.

I see him how he would have been had he lived, I see him doing things that he would do, like being happy that Trowa and I are getting along, even if I feel guilty about it. That's probably not much better than hallucinating him and thinking he's real, but it works. I get stressed and I see him, see him smiling or hugging me or touching my shoulder or hand and I feel better. I'm aware of how fucked up it is, but I don't care. And no different than my mother and her alcohol or my father and his rage, I can't seem to stop it. I guess addiction just runs in the family. I like to think that imagining my best friend is still there, comforting me, is more healthy than diving into a bottle or hitting things, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

Just like with my memory of him, I blinked and my vision of Quatre disappeared like smoke on the wind. He was there just long enough for me to feel better, like he was sharing the picnic with us, but not long enough that Trowa had any idea that I was seeing something that wasn't there.

"You didn't have to do all this," Trowa said to me as I sat down next to him.

"I thought it would be nice. It didn't take very much work and I didn't have anything else to do anyway, so it's not a big deal," I shrugged, hoping that it was dark enough out that he couldn't see the faint, happy blush I could feel warming my cheeks and that my nonchalant tone didn't sound as fake to him as I thought it did.

We fell into a companionable silence with each other as we ate, broken only occasionally as Trowa stopped eating to compliment my potato salad and cookies which of course only made my stupid blush worse. What the hell was wrong with me? I couldn't figure it out. Between the two of us, we finished off the food I had packed quickly and easily as the fireworks filled the sky. In truth, I hadn't brought that much beyond what I had made from scratch. My father would have been furious if I had used up all the ham, but if Trowa had wanted more, he hadn't complained.

"Have you picked your electives yet?" he asked me after finishing off the last cookie, those dark green eyes lit up by white, blue, and green fireworks shooting over the beach.

The new school semester was a safe topic between us. I was struck by a dark humor then, realizing that, just with Quatre, there were some things that we refused to talk about. But the knowledge that Quatre was one of those things just made me feel depressed again.

"I'm still trying to decide," I mumbled in embarrassment.

I was sure that Trowa had all his classes picked out weeks back. We needed to submit our class list that week, but I was still procrastinating. I wasn't really big on making choices about my future, even a short term future like next semester.

"I'd like to stick with Home Ec.," I confessed, "but I can already cook enough to get by, so that seems impractical. I'm not interested in any of the visual arts or music electives. I was thinking that maybe taking that intro to computer science class might be a good idea. It's something that I need to learn."

Trowa snorted.

"Duo, you've never taken a computer course before. I've seen you use a computer before, the most you can do is figure out how to search for things on the internet. You can't even type properly. Sure, that class can teach you a few things, but it's meant for Freshman, not Sophomores. To really learn anything that would be beneficial to you, you would need to keep taking computer science courses and you're already a year behind. Besides, you don't have a computer at home to practice on and you can't afford to buy one. A class like that would be useless to you. You might as well stick with something that you're good at," he pointed out.

His words were very matter of fact and logical. There wasn't any kind of spite to his tone or the kind of snide tone that my father got when he informed me, in great detail, of all the ways I was stupid and inferior to everyone else. What Trowa had said made complete sense to me. He was right, a computer course was worthless to me.

I had thought about taking it because my ability to operate a computer was pretty abysmal, but what would be the point? My parents were never going to get a computer and it wasn't like I was going to college, so knowing how to work one would be a useless skill. He was right, I knew that. But hearing him say those things, that I could barely use a computer as it was, and that I should stick to something that I was good at, implying where my father had never been so subtle that it was just something I couldn't do, that I would never be good at it, stung.

Trowa couldn't have known that my father said things like that to me all the time. He couldn't have known how he had struck a vulnerable place in me. He couldn't have known that he had hurt me saying something like that and I wasn't going to volunteer that kind of information. I didn't want him to know that I was so pointlessly sensitive.

"Yeah, you're right," I conceded and ached in silence, because he was right, "Home ec. would probably be more interesting anyway."

"Coach Horner has been trying to get a hold of you again," Trowa said with a small, amused smile.

"Again?" I groaned in irritation.

Coach Horner was the high school's coach for... almost everything athletic, and like our middle school coach, he took his job just a bit too seriously. Ever since I had entered high school, he had been after me to join his track team. He, like everyone else in this stupid town, had heard about me saving Quatre from getting hit by that truck, how fast I had run.

Even though my time on the track during gym wasn't anything special, he was positive that I just wasn't trying hard enough and I had some kind of untapped potential that was his professional duty to unleash. Every single time he came to me, begging, to join the track team, I brushed him off to his disappointment, but he never stopped trying.

"I told him last time that I'm too busy after school to go to practices," I grumbled, "and I have no interest in running around in a loop for hours, but he never listens."

"He's stubborn," Trowa nodded, "and never takes no for an answer. You're going to bucking him for the rest of your high school years. Why don't you just try out for the team to appease him?"

"Because I have zero desire in track!" I said with a frustrated wave of my hands, "And you have no concept of how annoyingly stubborn that man is. At least you're on his basketball team, so he doesn't have to hound you every time he spots you!"

White fireworks shaped like stars lit up the sky and Trowa's face again. I saw the amused expression on that face fade into one that was somehow all at once flat and sad, a familiar shadow filling his evergreen eyes.

"I'm not on his basketball team," he said softly, his words almost swallowed up by the booming sounds from the fireworks.

"What?" I stared at him incredulously.

I was sure that I misheard him. The idea that he wasn't playing basketball anymore was akin to my not reading anymore, it just couldn't be possible.

"I quit," he confessed, taking another sip of his almost empty soda bottle, "right after 8th grade. I haven't touched a basketball since. Not for lack of Coach Horner's trying," he snorted but it was a harsh sound, devoid of any humor and completely overflowing with bitterness, anger, and depression.

I stared at him for a moment and felt an intense sadness for him so strong, I might have cried if I had just let myself. I didn't ask him why he had quit something he had had such a talent for, such a future in and passion for. I didn't need to ask. I knew what his answer would be. He had quit because of Quatre.

He had stopped doing something that he had loved because he had lost someone he had loved. Maybe he had even stopped playing basketball because, in a way, it was the reason why Quatre had killed himself. Because in the end, Trowa had chosen his reputation and his sport over the boy that he had loved. Maybe he had stopped simply because it reminded him of Quatre, of all the times Quatre had watched him play. Or maybe he was just punishing himself for not being there when Quatre had needed him. No matter the exact reason, my heart ached for him. I had nothing like he had had, that talent, that drive, but I could imagine the kind of sorrow that had driven him to make that decision. I felt that sorrow every single day.

He glanced over at me and his expression softened. I knew that he was seeing understanding in my own expression, and the sadness that I couldn't manage to mask. That soft look in his eyes became warm as he realized that I knew exactly why he had quit basketball, that I understood why he had done it without him needing to say a thing.

Of course I understood, how could I not? I was the only person who knew how he had felt about Quatre. I was the only person in the entire world that could and would understand, just like Trowa was the only person in the world that understood my own sadness. I saw that understanding echoed back in those green-gray eyes, in the warmth and relief and shock of that expression, like he was realizing it for the first time.

I felt his hand on mine, could feel his long fingers wrapping over my own as he gave them a gentle squeeze. It felt so good, just that touch. I couldn't remember the last time someone had touched my hand like that, or anywhere close to it. When he leaned in close to me, I didn't push him away. For that moment, I couldn't think of a single reason to. Then his lips were pressed against mine and I was glad that I hadn't found a reason.

Trowa's lips were as smooth and cool as they had been the first time that he had kissed me, but he wasn't quite as shy and awkward this time. He seemed... more confident, although still a bit unsure of himself. This time, I didn't just sit there, letting him kiss me because I was too shocked to do anything else.

I felt this warmth in my chest at his kiss, a kind of subtle electricity and found myself, to my shock, kissing him back. I had no clue what I was doing, but just moved my lips against his, hoping that I was doing the right thing. It seemed to be ok, because then Trowa was responding to it and I felt like he was swallowing my mouth whole, like he was smothering me, but I liked the smothering. I felt a jolt through my whole body when he curled his other hand around the back of my neck and continued kissing me, nipping my lips a little and even that was ok.

When we finally parted, I felt like my face was on fire and I couldn't breathe. I don't know how long we had sat there on my battered tablecloth kissing each other, but the fireworks had stopped and the only light was from the bonfire below. His eyes looked so dark and hazy in that light, so full of something I couldn't name, but it frightened me. Then he was kissing me again, harder and surer before and I was lost with what to do, because his insistence was scary to me, but I couldn't find the words to tell him to stop or slow down, either.

So I let him keep kissing me and tangle his hand in my hair. I even squeezed his hand back and grabbed at his arm with my other. I could feel the muscles moving under the skin, could feel how strong he was. I had that feeling again, like I was suffocating, like I was doing something that I shouldn't. But it was like an avalanche in me. I couldn't get it stopped any more than I could try to control it. All I could do was just let Trowa do what he wanted and hope it was right.

I couldn't decipher the look in his eyes as he looked at me. It was like he wanted to do something, or say something, but he just stood up and didn't try to kiss me again. A part of me wished that he would, but another big part was glad that he hadn't. I felt so incredibly wrong. It was one thing that he had kissed me when I had been thirteen. I had been so shocked back then and I had still punched him for it, even if I had kind of liked at the time.

But this... I felt like I had done something awful. I hadn't just let the boy that my best friend had loved kiss me, I had kissed him back. I couldn't even really reason out that feeling of wrong from kissing him, if it was because I had kissed another boy or because it had been Trowa or because, even if I had liked the kissing, I still didn't feel anything for him besides a slight affection and friendship. My feelings were a swirling, contradicting mess inside of me and at that point, I wanted to shut them off completely. My lips ached.

I stood up and helped Trowa clear off the table cloth, folding it up and putting it back in the plastic bag while I tried to pretend that I wasn't still blushing like a girl.

"Want to do something tomorrow?" he asked me suddenly, and for once I was a lot more shy than he was, "I can take you out for something to eat or we can do something like this again."

I paused and stared at him with wide eyes like some kind of startled deer. It came on me suddenly, like he had punched me, that he wasn't asking if I wanted to hang out with him. I'm not quite sure how I knew, but I did, that he was asking me out on a date.

Like with so many things, we didn't talk about the kissing. Trowa didn't try to take it back or apologize for it. He didn't say that we were dating, that we were boyfriends, or ask me if I wanted to date him. I understood that, just like our friendship, it was something we were falling into. Only this was so much more dangerous than being tentative friends.

I don't think it hit me properly, what Trowa was asking of me, what he wanted. I never really thought 'this is my first boyfriend and I barely even have a crush on him.' If I had, I might have slept on it or told him no outright. What did I know about being a boyfriend? I didn't even really know how to kiss. I wasn't even sure if I wanted a boyfriend. Some part of me did, the part of me that was desperate for love, for normalcy.

But there was another part of me, the part that had led me to believe for a very long time, and if I'm honest, I still worry about it, that I'm asexual. It was that part that was screaming at me what a horrible idea it was dating Trowa. If only I had had the common fuck sense to listen to it.

"Sure," I said, my face beet red and my hands and stomach shaking, "I would like that."

It's a decision that I spend every day now regretting.
End Part 1
Author's Note: *flops* Yes, I have returned -_- After spending a lot of time compiling notes for this story and editing my novel (still looking for beta readers), I am back writing ASOL. This part was kind of a challenge for me. I struggled with the decision to just have Duo summarize what happened with his attempted suicide and his friendship with Trowa, but it's pretty true to his character that he wouldn't go into detail about it. The time jump was also kind of difficult, but necessary.
It dawned on me recently that I never put in warnings for this story. Is that something anyone wants or does everyone just not care this far into the story? (it would be located in chapter 1 tho)
Thank you to everyone who has given me feedback ^_^
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A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)