Adult-FanFiction.org : Gundam, Beyblade, DBZ, FMA

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
- 15
- 16
- 17
A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 4

Part 2
Dating... romance... boyfriends... what the hell did someone like me know about those things? All I knew about being a couple came from watching movies and television shows, seeing my parents' failed marriage, and my classmates that had hooked up with each other, holding hands and making out in the school hallways until a teacher broke them up. I got that couples were supposed to hold hands and kiss, Trowa and I had already done that and those things were easy. I liked the holding hands bit, and I even liked it when Trowa kissed me, even if the fervor that he did it frightened me sometimes.

I can't even say why he scared me like that sometimes, he just did. Maybe because I didn't understand his passion. I didn't feel that way about him and sure, I knew he didn't feel that way about me, that when he was kissing me, it was Quatre's lips that he was imagining. I was just an avatar, a stand in for the boy he couldn't kiss, couldn't be with. It was there between us, this thing we would never talk about, this pain.

Sometimes Trowa would kiss me or say something to me and I would react, and he would just look at me in confusion or resentment and I knew that it wasn't something that Quatre would have done and it would draw Trowa out of his fantasies, this security blanket he had wrapped around himself to shelter him from the reality of who I really was.

That look, that disappointment, knowing that I couldn't even be what he pretended I was, was a poisoned dagger in my heart. And the more time that we spent with each other, the deeper that dagger buried into me. In some ways, knowing that Trowa was using me in that way, that I was just Quatre's ghost, made things easier. Because there were times when Trowa was kissing me like that, so full of desire and longing that it made me feel like he was trying to devour me, and I would wonder why.

Why me? It seemed like every time I caught my reflection in the mirror, I had to ask myself that. Trowa was tall, dark, and handsome, the kind of guy women write trashy romances and bad fanfiction about. I would have thought that his removal from the basketball team would have reduced the amount of girls vying for his attention, but the opposite had happened. Even people that hadn't known him in middle school had noticed his change from shy to brooding. Apparently, for teenaged girls at least, tall, dark, handsome, and brooding is the epitome of sexy. In the time that we had dated, I had lost count in the number of girls that had asked him out.

Trowa had turned all of them down. I don't know why. He had never come out to me, had only ever said that he had been in love with Quatre. For awhile, I was certain that he wasn't bisexual, if only because he seemed to have no issues kissing me and had never had an interest in all of those girls pining after him. In a way, his dating me, even outside of my revelation that he was only doing it because of my connection to Quatre, wasn't all that shocking. Being gay is a rather difficult thing to live with, for a multitude of different reasons.

Even skipping over all of my (and I'm sure thousands of other homosexuals go through it in their lifetimes) struggles just to identify myself as gay, ignoring trying to hide it because of social stigma, and coming to the decision to act on it, what did a person do when they wanted to find someone of the same sex to be romantically involved with? Especially in a conservative town like ours? It's not like being straight. You can't just put a personal ad in the local newspaper or pick up someone at a bar. Nausten doesn't have a gay bar. Or a gay anything.

You can't even approach someone you know well. Even if you are positive that they both are like you and do like you, there's that fear that you're wrong. There isn't a tell with homosexuals or a secret handshake. There aren't even many dating sites on the internet that let gays join. I know, I tried to find some out of curiosity. So it wasn't like Trowa had a sea of choices in finding a boyfriend. He had lost something special and wonderful in Quatre, and not just because of his love for him. What were the odds, especially in a town like this, of him finding out that someone he liked was also gay, and knowing with surety that he liked him back? Trowa and Quatre's odds had been astronomical if I thought about it too hard, and even knowing that, Trowa had walked away. It was like he had thrown away any chance of happiness in his life.

Enter me. I don't delude myself into thinking that I made Trowa happy. I know that I hadn't. I'm still not sure what had made Trowa kiss me that day. Some days, when I remember that kiss, I'm grateful for it. As upset and enraged and depressed as it had made me, it had answered a question that had been burning in me and torturing me for a long time. At the time, that question had been unimportant compared to the agony of Quatre's death, but I had survived. I had tried to kill myself and I had lived and I had decided to not bother trying for a third time. My feelings about my sexuality or lack of one had lain in wait to bite me in the ass later on.

The two kisses that I had gotten in my lifetime before Trowa and I had started dating had clarified things for me when pondering those same things for years had gotten me nowhere. I didn't like girls, but I did like boys. Or at least, I liked it when they kissed me. So at the same time I hated and resented Trowa for that kiss, I was grateful to him for that clarity.

But if I thought about it too hard, the memory of that kiss unnerved me. Not the kiss itself, but Trowa's reasoning for it. I had thought back then that he had done it because he had been desperate for some kind of intimacy, some comfort. Or perhaps he had done it out of fear of watching me nearly kill myself in the same exact manner that Quatre had.

If that latter reasoning were true, it would imply that he had cared for me back then, and if the former were true, it meant that all of his reasons for pushing Quatre away amount to nothing. And just the possibility of that is too horrifying for me to consider. Because there was no way in Hell that Trowa could have known that I'm gay. I hadn't even really known at that point. A rumor is one thing, but... he had turned his back on my best friend to save his reputation, only to kiss me in a public place for some reason I can't be sure of. He had kissed someone who could have destroyed his life. Fuck, I might have done that anyway just because I had hated him.

But he had kissed me. After pushing away the person he truly loved in fear, he had kissed me. No matter how long I think about that, it makes no sense if he hadn't done it out of some kind of senseless, knee-jerk reaction. Unless he had truly believed that I was gay like him. But there was no way he could have. But the more I think about that, the more fear worms into me and I start wondering if there might be something about me that just screams fag, something that Zechs had latched onto besides my rejecting his sister. Some days, I can truly hate Trowa for doing that to me, for making me wonder if this is going to follow me entire life. I think I can handle being gay. I'm not so sure I can handle not being able to hide it.

I guess I can understand Trowa kissing me if he had been desperate, and I guess I can understand him asking me out, because at this point he knew that I was like him and what other choice did he have? He could date me in secret and pretend to be straight, that was the easiest choice for him besides completely ignoring his sexuality. What I would never understand is if he had asked me out because of some kind of interest in me personally.

Compared to a guy like Trowa Barton, what am I? Let's ignore the stigma against me at school for being the one that Relena and Zechs bully. Hell, let's even ignore the piss poor financial situation that my family lives in and where I live. What am I, outside of all that? I hadn't changed all that much since Trowa had first kissed me. I was skinny as a rail and pale. I had very little muscle tone to speak of and my cinnamon colored hair was a far cry from Quatre's white-gold hair color. I still hadn't cut it and my pony tail had gotten down past my shoulder blades. I didn't wash it as much as I should because my dad refused to let me shower more than three times a week and no more than ten minutes because our water bill was too high. Our heater was broken on and off again constantly anyway, so bathing in the winter was not something to look forward to.

My clothes were old and ratty and they got washed less than I did. I guess my eyes are pretty, Quatre certainly said they were and made me look handsome, but Trowa's eyes are a much more pleasing shade of green than my weird blue-violet eyes. I'm not smart. I'm not witty or even just slightly funny, what little humor I have is probably dark and I'm self-aware enough to know that I don't smile very much. What intimacy we had, I never initiated. I never had the money to take Trowa anywhere and while I can admit that I'm not ugly, despite what Quatre would insist, I'm not handsome, either.

So what was Trowa getting from dating me? Me, not his fantasies, not the ghost that he imagined he was kissing, but me. Hell if I know. Some days I'm sure that it doesn't even matter who I am to him, like I don't even exist. I'm possessed by the ghost of my best friend and I can't even feel his warmth, all the things that I had loved about him. Everything good about me, about my life, comes from him while I'm just... empty.

But there are some days when Trowa kisses me and looks at me and I feel like he's seeing me and not just using me as some kind of conduit. Those days when I look at him and seeing him look back at me, I feel... I don't even know. Love? I'm not sure, still, after a year of us dating, that I loved him. But I cared for him in those moments, and I would feel as close to the happiness that I had felt when Quatre had been alive as I can. At least I can say, with honesty, that I care... cared for Trowa more than anyone else in my life, besides Quatre.

I don't know how he felt for me. I want to think that he cared, at least a little bit, and at first, that was easier to delude myself into believing. Our dating wasn't much to write home about. We would meet when we could, before school, before my work shifts, after my shifts, and during my days off on the rare occasion that those happened. Our meeting places were always someplace where no one would see us and if Trowa took me out somewhere to eat, it wasn't in Nausten. I got used to it after awhile, being his dirty little secret, because he was also mine, although that decision had never been mine. He hadn't even asked.

It would have been a bigger pain in the ass if Trowa hadn't had a car, a perk to dating someone a year older than I was. That took the sting out of him smuggling me out of the town to eat in a neighboring one. If I looked outside the hurt and the secrecy, I liked those dates. I had never been outside of Nausten before in my life, and while none of the places that Trowa took me to were really exciting, besides the time he took me to a zoo in Hope, the only town near us that actually has an attraction like that, it was incredibly nice to be away from my home town for a little while. Not that any of those towns were more liberal, it was just relaxing to have people look at me and not worry about what they were seeing. In those places, I wasn't a cop's kid, or a juvenile delinquent, or a fag, or white trash. I was just a teenager hanging out with a 'friend'. No one knew what that friend did when we left those public places and got me to some shaded, secluded area. No one saw when we held hands under the table or Trowa's hand would brush against mine a little too often, or how that hand would sometimes linger on my back when there was no one looking at us.

We didn't do much more than make out and touch like that. Even after we had been dating for six months. Even when Winter turned into Spring and Spring turned into Summer, the most we had done was kiss with our tongues and one time I let Trowa put his hands under my shirt to touch my bare chest. I can still remember that, how cool his hands had been and how warm they had made me feel. I remember holding my breath the entire time and I had had that feeling again, like I was going to suffocate.

It wasn't for a lack of Trowa's trying. I suppose it's kind of funny. He was the one who had the issues with his sexuality, although he was also the one who understood a hell lot more of his sexuality than I did mine. He was the one who was so desperate that no one find out that we were so much as friends. But Trowa was also the one who initiated those moments, he was the one that wanted to touch me more. I could see it in his eyes when he leaned in to kiss me, that desire, and I could feel it in his touches as they evolved from the feather-light ones of our earlier relationship to harder, more insistent ones.

Those things frightened me. He frightened me, when he looked at me like that. I'm not a child. Hell, I had already turned sixteen by the time that we had started dating. For as long as I can remember, people, mostly Quatre, have been telling me how fucking mature I am. I told him once that for me, being an adult is easy. I've had to more or less take care of myself since I was a kid thanks to my parents' negligence. It's being a child that's hard for me, dealing with people treating me like I can't be responsible or trying to act my age. But for all of that, when it comes to things like this, things like romance and dating and having a boyfriend, being an adult... sex... I am nothing but a child.

Sex. I know less about sex than I ever have about dating. I've never had any interest in it and I still don't. I've never felt... felt that desire and curiosity that everyone else my age seems to have in spades. When it had finally filtered into my head that liking Trowa kissing me meant that I'm gay, I had felt relief. I had thought that some part of me was normal, at least in terms of wanting companionship. I obviously wasn't asexual, so it was just a matter of time for my body to catch up with my classmates'.

Only that had never happened. That desire that I saw in Trowa's eyes was never in my own. When he touched me roughly, or kissed me with that incredibly passion, a passion that I couldn't even fathom anyone directing towards me, or that time he had touched my chest, some part of me liked it. But mostly? I felt fear. Fear because I didn't even know if I wanted sex. Fear because... not only did I not know what gay sex entailed, I wasn't sure if I would ever want it, if it would hurt, if I would always be so... so empty of wants and desires and passion. I hated myself for it. I was a teenager, not a child. But sex is for adults, something that I never thought I would have to think about until I was an adult. Yet every time Trowa looked at me like that, I was reminded that I am an adult and it is time for me to grow up.

But that fear is there, always. I know it frustrates him. Trowa's older than I am and I knew what he wanted from me. I knew that he didn't just want kissing and going out to dinner. But I just kept biding my time with him, hoping he would never press the issue. I never wanted him to figure out that he was dating a child, one that just... couldn't give up and become an adult already.

The very first time that fear really came to a head was in early July. My early morning shift at the pizza place had been cancelled and I didn't have another shift until late that night at the factory. The last thing I wanted was to stay at home all day, so for the very first time, I initiated one of our dates and asked Trowa to meet me in the park.

The park itself was far from secluded, but it was bordered by a really thick woods and the only people that really went in there were the occasional bird watchers and joggers following the path. Walking around with my... fuck, even writing it is still weird. But walking around with my boyfriend was a whole lot preferable to staying at home with my parents.

Things at home haven't gotten any better since the last time I wrote in a journal. They had just gotten worse. The local police department had gone through some large budget cuts that year and a few of my father's coworkers had been laid off. My dad hadn't lost his job, but his partner had, something that I had been pretty happy with at first, until I realized that my father's partner losing his job didn't mean I was going to see him any less. If anything, he seemed to hang out at our house even more and bully my father into going out drinking more than he already was.

As far as I'm concerned, losing his job couldn't have happened to a nicer person than Pat Donovan. Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Pat is older than my father, a friend to whatever member of the family had gotten Dad that job, something that Pat liked to hold over my father�s head whenever he wanted him to do something he didn�t want to do. Pat is just a worse version of my father; judgmental, quick to anger, hates and complains about pretty much everything, drinks beer and whiskey like his life depends on it, and is a complete and total piece of shit to his wife.

Or I assume he is, since whenever he hangs out at our place, whenever he talks about her, he just calls her �that miserable cunt� or �cooze�. I wouldn�t put it past him to be beating her like Dad does to Mom. I had never met Mrs. Donovan personally, but Pat would often come around with cookies or cake or some other treat that she had made for me, so my opinion of her is already a tiny bit higher than the one I have of my mother. Maybe one day Pat and my dad will let me have some of the food she makes instead of eating it all themselves so I can see if she�s a decent cook.

Thankfully, Pat and Mrs. Donovan never had children. Given the choice things he has to say about kids and teenagers, and the snide, hostile looks he gives me whenever he visits, I�d say the no kids thing is his idea. Losing his job only made him worse around me, constantly throwing around remarks that my long hair makes me look like a �hippy faggot� and that I�m lucky he isn�t my dad or he�d have kicked my ass raw until he had beaten my �no good, worthless, pussy attitude� out of me before I had even seen double digits.

Once, while I had been making dinner for them, Pat had sneered and asked my dad what the point of keeping me around was since I only did things that a bitch could do without the benefit of fucking. My dad had just laughed and said that I was better at cooking and cleaning than my mother could ever hope to be. That my father found the disgusting things Pat said funny, especially that, equating his son to nothing more than a more useless woman, hurt.

But Quatre had been alive back then and I had managed to sneak off to talk to him while my father and Pat had been eating. I never told Quatre about Pat, but just seeing him had made me feel better. Now that he�s dead, Pat�s bitter hostility has lost some of it�s bite. When his words and my father�s mirth start to hurt, I remember that last smile on Quatre�s face and how it had turned into a red smear when the train had hit him. No matter what is happening in my life, that memory always makes the hurt dim, because nothing can possibly hurt me more than that one moment had.

You would think that my father would have been grateful that he had gotten a pay cut instead of getting laid off, but seeing his friend and partner of fifteen years lose his job had thrown him into a frenzy. It had seemed like every single day for months, he would come home drunker than I had ever seen him before, ranting about the betrayal and unfairness of what had happened to Donovan, and practically itching for a fight. I was smart enough not to give him one and had stayed out of his way as much as I could, only getting myself hit on a couple of occasions and nothing more serious than some heavy bruising and a cracked, but not broken, arm.

However, there is one person in the world who hates Pat Donovan more than I do, and that's my mother. She was far from safe from his contempt and disgusting humor. Every filthy, inappropriate joke he told and every misogynistic rant he gave in her vicinity seemed like it was an attack on her, and it probably was. I have never seen anyone, with the exception of my father, who can get under her skin like Pat does.

So when she heard that he had been laid off, although she almost always stayed out of Dad's and my business, I wasn't surprised when she snidely told him, already well into a bottle of whiskey, that it 'serves the prick right.' I might have thought that, too, but at least I had the sense to never say it out loud.

That night, I had thought that he was going to beat her to death with the amount of rage those four little words evoked in him, that I would have to call the police on him just to get him to stop. I hadn't been that frightened in a long time. I tell myself that he never would have done it. At the end, he had stopped himself, and I cling to the sureties that I've had since I was a child that my father didn't have it in him to go that far. But you know what, these days... especially after that night, I feel a bit more fear of him.

My mother spent an entire week in the hospital from that beating and when she came back, she never mentioned Pat again and neither did I. I was more careful around my father than I had ever been before, like he was a hive filled with the nastiest hornets imaginable. I spent a lot of time pulling double shifts, hiding in the library, and hanging out with Trowa. I never talked to him about my problems at home, partially because I was ashamed and partially because I was afraid of hat Trowa's reaction to it would be.

Beyond my father's ever escalating rage, and both his and my mother's ever growing alcoholism, his pay cut hurt us pretty badly. We were already budgeting and scrounging for every dollar, having that careful budget reduced even further only increased all of our stress levels, especially since the more stressed my father got over our finances, the more prone he was to take it out on one of us. If it weren't for my and Mom's jobs, I don't even want to think about what would have happened to us. Dad gave me a small allowance, barely anything at all, just enough to buy lunch once in awhile, but I never spent it on anything. I was too scared to, because that tiny amount of money, squirreled away in the hole in the floor that I hide these journals is sometimes all I have when we run out of grocery money.

And sometimes the free food I get from the pizza place and diner after my shifts are over are the only meals we see if one of the other bills goes up too much, like our oil in the winter. Last month, our electric bill came up short and Mom had to sell the dryer because there was no way in hell that Dad was going to get rid of the TV. It's not that big of a deal, I guess. We have a clothes line and I'd rather have damp, cold clothes than no power. But there are days when it's cold out and I miss having shirts right from the dryer. In days like those, I just want to take a baseball bat to the damned television set.

My home life was a powder keg, ready to go off without any kind of warning, so even if I hadn't enjoyed my time with Trowa, it would have been easy to accept any invitations he had to go out. I think he had been a bit surprised to have me call him that day, but he had sounded eager over the phone, even for something as boring as a walk. It was wonderfully warm out, not bitingly hot or humid, but warm enough for me to put on the only cargo shorts that I own. I fussed with deciding what shirt I should wear, an old, powder green one or the deep blue one with silver wave designs on it that I had picked up that week at a bargain bin sale.

I paused, realizing that I was worrying over attire like a girl going on a date, which was half true, I guess. I didn't often care about what I wore when I went on those dates with Trowa for a number of reasons, the biggest being that clothes weren't really anything that I had ever worried over before. I wore what was clean and what was appropriate for the weather. I had so little clothes that it hardly mattered and even if I had wanted to dress nice for him, my apparel usually consisted of jeans and t-shirts.

If I did have anything nicer, I probably wouldn't wear it, partially not to rouse anyone's suspicions to suddenly be wearing nicer clothes and partially because I would be too nervous to. This will probably sound incredibly stupid, but if I thought about my clothing around Trowa at all, I dressed a bit down when I went to see him. I didn't want to send some kind of signal to him that that particular date was special or want... want him to have any kind of interest in other things, so I dressed like I was just going to school.

I can't say what was different that day, why I suddenly wanted to look nice. I couldn't say why I suddenly felt... upbeat for once. Maybe it was the nice weather, maybe it was finding myself with time outside of work, maybe it was the thought of being able to get away from my parents for a little while. Or maybe it was because I was going to go see him. I don't know, but for the first time, I consciously decided to dress nice, or as nicely as someone like me can dress. I chose the blue and silver shirt because it was new and looked nicer than the faded green one. And because, I hate to admit, Quatre would have said that it brought out the violet in my eyes.

Sneaking out of the house was easy. It was something that I was quickly becoming a professional at, sneaking past my drunk father before he could notice me. I will always remember what he had done to me back when Quatre had wanted me to watch one of Trowa's games with him, how he had almost broken my arm for no reason at all. It was just simpler to never let him see me try to leave or walk past him or generally just never let him realize that I existed.

Sure enough, as I walked through the kitchen, I glanced into the living room doorway and saw my father sitting in his chair, watching a recap of a baseball game that had been on the previous night, nursing what looked like his third beer, and it was only noon. It made me wonder if this was all he did while I was at work and he wasn't, just sit in front of the TV and get drunk. I felt sad for him, then.

My life wasn't exactly great and exciting, but it was a nice day out and he didn't even give a shit, just continued on in his own, alcohol filled world. Maybe I was depressed, maybe my own world was filled with nothing but gray and bitter memories, but I never wanted to live like that. Like him, only existing for the next swallow of beer, the next time he could release all of his bottled up anger.

I knew, just looking at him, like a rabbit looking at a dozing dog, that if he spotted me, a fight would occur and it would only happen because he was bored. Memories of that night he had pettily tried to break my wrist filled me and I became too scared to try the front door. I had a new method of sneaking out of the house in these desperate, frightful moments and I very carefully, very quietly, opened the door of my parents' bedroom, just enough to squeeze through, and just as quickly and silently, shut it behind me. My mother wasn't home, which made this my perfect escape, otherwise I went out the small windows in the basement that I could only fit through because I'm so skinny, and even then I sometimes take off a bit of skin.

I managed to open one of the windows, slip through it, and close it again without anyone, even one of our noisy neighbors, seeing me. My father had yet to realize what I was doing. I didn't want to think about what he would do to me if he caught me just going into their bedroom, let alone using it to get out of the house undetected. I wished, not for the first time, that I had a bedroom with windows.

The day was almost disgustingly nice out, one of those days where it seems like the sun will never set. It made me wish that I lived somewhere further South, some place that wasn't so cold and dreary all the time, but I suppose a part of the reason why a day like that puts me in such a good mood is it's rarity.

I walked sedately to the park, which wasn't as teeming with people as I had worried it would be. On a day like that, most people were probably at the beach. I was thankful about that. As much as I like the warm weather of Summer, the fact that school was out and we were more likely to run into classmates made these dates of ours difficult. It was stressful and frustrating, but I probably owed it for one of the things keeping Trowa from insisting we... 'advance' our strange relationship.

I walked along the jogger's path into the woods a good ways before I spotted Trowa, emboldened by not seeing anyone else in the woods with us. I wasn't surprised to see that he had beaten me there. His house was a lot closer to the park than mine and he hadn't needed to sneak out of his like a thief, like he was doing something wrong just wanting to leave the house on a nice day.

"Hi," I waved unnecessarily at him.

"Hey," he responded back, his customary greeting that always made me feel like he was talking to a casual friend instead of his boyfriend.

Trowa looked just as painfully handsome as he always did. He was wearing a grey, Henley shirt with the top two buttons undone, modestly teasing his lightly tanned chest, and a pair of dark blue, slim jeans that hugged his long legs. His light brown hair was slightly mussed like it always seemed to be. I could never get my own straight hair to do that without it looking unkempt and lazy. On Trowa, it looked fashionable.

Although I had a lot of... issues with my sex drive, I can admit that I found him attractive and I enjoyed looking at him, especially on a day like that when it was warm enough for him to wear a short sleeved shirt. I liked the shade of his skin and length of his arms and legs, though who knows why.

Trowa didn't have much muscle mass, not even as much as Zechs did, but there was a power to those limbs that if I thought about it, thought about how they were longer and stronger than my own, made my heart race just a little bit faster. And when he held my hand and I realized he could engulf all of my with his one hand, it made me bizarrely happy.

That lightly tanned face blushed in approval as he looked me over, my own face heating with embarrassment.

"You look nice," he said softly.

"Thanks," I said, tugging awkwardly at the hem of my new shirt in my shyness and glancing at the plastic bag he was carrying, but not saying anything about it.

We walked further into the woods together, not really talking about anything, just the kind of white noise that people made when they were enjoying each other's company. We talked about how hot it had been that week, school, television shows, and our jobs. Like my father had done for me, Trowa's father had gotten him his job at collision center business. Because he wasn't eighteen yet, there wasn't much he could do at a place like that beyond paint jobs, oil changes, and cleaning the place up, but the work was steady and more importantly, it paid more than minimum wage.

His dad was friends with the guy that ran the place and thought that the work would give his son some skills and money towards college or whatever else he expected Trowa to do when he graduated high school. He didn't know that Trowa was using that money to take me out on dates, though I guess the loss of that money wasn't the main thing his father would have been pissed about.

Trowa's father, at least to my knowledge, wasn't like mine. But he didn't need to knock Trowa around to get him to do what he wanted him to do. He was stern, with a heavy hand. I can still remember how Trowa had sounded when he had told Quatre and I that he wanted to study biology or get into photography so he could travel the world and study animals, but his father refused to accept it because it was impractical. All of that sad disappointment. I don't know if Trowa ever told him that he had quit basketball, but I imagine he must have. Something like that is hard to hide. I wonder just how terribly his father had taken that.

Like me, Trowa hated his job, but he was just as much under his father's thumb as I was mine, out of a mix of respect, fear of disappointment, and fear, so he worked hard at it. We traded stories about our coworkers as we walked and I had to admit that his story of one of the new mechanics accidentally getting pink paint all over their boss's equally new car trumped my story of a customer walking into the pizza place I worked at with, demanding to buy one of our gallon cans of tomato sauce because his dog got sprayed by a skunk.

"I saw Transformers with my mother yesterday," Trowa told me when he finished with his work story.

"Oh?" I asked with probably more interest than I actually felt, "How was it?"

While I do enjoy movies, Transformers is definitely not the sort that I'm interested in, regardless of the fact that pretty much every one of our classmates had seen it or were excited to see it that weekend.

"It was... ok," he shrugged, "Not great, but not awful. There was nothing about it that you would like, though."

It made me stupidly happy that he knew that I wouldn't like it for some reason.

"There really isn't anything out right now that you would like, but Stardust comes out next month," he told me.

"What, you mean they made a movie adaptation?" I asked him incredulously, well aware of how wide my eyes were.

Trowa snorted in amusement.

"How can you not know that?" he chuckled, sending a little shiver down my spine, "You never pay attention to anything that's happening, even to the news, do you?"

"The news is depressing," I said in an expression that probably looked close to a pout, "and I don't watch commercials. I just mute them or go do something else until they're over."

I didn't tell him that I had stopped watching the local news the day that I had seen the report of Quatre's suicide, or that one of the reasons why I didn't watch it anymore was that my father always did after work and it was usually something that sent him into a worse mood.

"Well, yes, they made a movie adaptation," he told me with a smile like he thought my ignorance was endearing somehow instead of annoying, "Would you want to go see it?"

"Sure," I agreed a bit too quickly and realized that I was smiling a little bit before I could stop it, unable to not feel a small bit of excitement to go see an adaptation of a book I had read a bunch of times as a kid.

Suddenly Trowa had an arm in front of me, keeping me from walking forward and I worried that he had spotted someone. We hadn't really had any close calls so far in our relationship and I was at a loss of what to do if we ever had one.

"What's wr-" I started to say and he shushed me, his eyes fixed to some point ahead intently.

I followed where he was looking and saw two raccoons clinging to one of the trees, staring at us with beady, black eyes just as intensely as Trowa was staring at them. They didn't look nearly as big as the raccoons that visited our trashcans late at night and I wondered if they were cubs or the 'coons where I lived were just oversized.

I looked back at my boyfriend. He looked... enthralled by them, like he was seeing some rare and wonderful. That childlike expression of wonder turned his handsome face into something outright beautiful. I felt, for the first time in years, that I was seeing the real him. All those hard, bitter edges that had taken root in him after Quatre had died just melted away and I finally saw the boy that my best friend had fallen in love with. I wanted to take a picture of it, preserve that expression somehow.

"You've never seen raccoons before?" it was my turn to be incredulous, but I made sure to keep my voice down so I wouldn't spook the animals off.

Trowa shook his head.

"Never this close," he admitted.

I couldn't help a soft snort.

"You should come to my side of town when it gets dark, then. They're always rifling through our garbage and picking fights with the feral cats," I said, unimpressed with the animals.

I like animals, and I guess raccoons are cute, but I wasn't as interested with them as Trowa obviously was. I suddenly realized that at some point in his excitement after grabbing me, he had started to hold my hand, something that I was much more interested in. I didn't say anything about it or even clench my hand, more scared of spooking Trowa than the raccoons.

The 'coons finally decided that we weren't going to do anything and scampered up the tree, breaking the peaceful spell that had settled over Trowa. He continued to walk down the path, but didn't let go of my hand. I worried about someone seeing us like that for only a moment. My fear of being caught was absolutely nothing compared to his, so if he wanted to hold my hand, I wasn't going to complain. Things like that, holding hands, the light kisses that he would give me sometimes were things that I loved about our relationship. I just wish that it had been enough for him.

"I brought lunch if you're hungry," Trowa spoke up again after we had been walking for awhile, far enough that it was unlikely we were going to run into anyone else at that point, and gestured to the plastic bag he had been carrying.

"Sure, did you make it yourself?" I teased.

Let's just say that Trowa was never as capable as me when it came to cooking, so if he ever brought food, he had usually bought it somewhere.

"No," he grumbled, "my mother made it."

I almost laughed at him, but then I imagined what he had told his mother to get her to make two lunches. I thought about him telling her that he was going on a date with a girlfriend or just hanging out with a friend and any humor I had felt about his inability to make anything dried up. We abandoned the jogging trail then, pushing through the various bushes and other obstructions until we found the clearing.

I had found it when I had been younger, before I had even met Quatre. My father had been in one of his rages and I had somehow managed to escape the house before he turned his full attentions from Mom to me, but not before he had hit me in the back with the metal end of his belt three times, hard enough that it had ripped right through my shirt and slashed my back with the last hit. Later, when I returned to the house, I would struggle to take my shirt off and find bruises that were a disgusting mix of blood red, purple, and black.

I had walked to the park that day because my usual hideaway, the library, had been closed by then. I had walked through the woods, on and on, until I had stumbled upon this weird little clearing right in the middle of the untamed mess of briars, weeds, and gnarled trees. It had looked like something out of a fairy tale, just this clearing of soft green grass, the trees spaced just enough apart that you could see the sky, far enough away from the path that I'm not even sure if anyone else knows about it. While I'll always think of the library as my sanctuary, I like going to that clearing when it's warm out to just be by myself. It had quickly become the perfect place for Trowa and I see each other without being seen.

Trowa hadn't thought to bring a table cloth or blanket for us, but I didn't really care about getting grass stains on my clothes and the blanket of grass was thick and soft to sit on. Lunch turned out to be club sandwiches, mixed fruit, some kind of fruit punch in thermos' that had stayed cold despite our long walk, a bag of potato chips that we shared between us, and two slices of white cake with chocolate frosting that had obviously been purchased at a bakery, given that Trowa's parents were only slightly less useless at cooking than he was, and I really do mean slightly. But the meal was delicious all the same, and it was free, so I wasn't going to complain.

When I was done eating, I laid down on the grass, the spot we were in giving me a perfect view of the gap in the trees where I could see the sky. It was a deep, cornflower blue, the clouds floating above us, passing us by, were of the innocently white and fluffy variety. For only a second, I remembered the last time Quatre and I had been in that exact, same spot, so many Summers ago. I had brought some Cole slaw and fried potatoes that I had made from scratch because Quatre, despite his not liking fried foods, had told me once that he loved them and would never get tired of them. He had brought his tea and a checkered table cloth for our impromptu picnic.

We had sat there in the clearing together, eaten our food, and played that stupid 'that cloud looks like' game. I felt a dull ache in my chest as deep as the sky that had housed those clouds. Years after his death, every memory of Quatre that would flash through my head like that hurt. But the pain wasn't the sharp agony that it had been before and the same memory that would have driven me to tears and hysterical sobs left my eyes dry. Some would call it 'improvement'. I call it 'different,' because what people don't get is that change doesn't have anything to do with better or worse and just because I wasn't crying all the time anymore, it didn't mean that time had lessened the hurt. That ache in my heart might have been dull instead of sharp, but it still hurt like hell. I might not have cried, but I still felt like screaming.

I pretended like the flashback had never happened, stretching my arms up and laying the back of my head on my hands. The move made my shirt ride up, exposing a thin stripe of my stomach. I saw Trowa notice it, saw his expression go warm and fixated. I ignored it, closing my eyes like I could shut him out, shut out all of his desires and passion, just make that part of him that wanted to touch me in ways that I didn't want anyone, not even him, to touch me disappear forever.

When I felt his hand curving around my thigh, those long fingers gripping my flesh and coming dangerously close to a place no one but myself had ever touched, it was like someone had jabbed a stun baton into my crotch. My eyes shot open and I saw him looming over me and the look on his face made my breath catch in my throat.

His eyes were just... alive with want and lust, this incredibly intense look that gave his entire being this immense energy that I can't describe. Looking up at him like that and knowing how much he wanted me should have made me feel amazing, that some part of me enticed this person who drawn so many girls to ask him out, but it didn't. That look... seeing all those emotions in him and how they drew him out of his quite and somber shell only served to make me feel dead inside. The things I felt seemed so pale and unimportant compared to his desire for me, this base emotion of his.

I should have told him to get off of me, that I didn't want it, but no words came to me. I felt paralyzed as he caressed the inside of my thigh. Even though I was wearing jeans, I could feel his fingers there as though I was naked. I felt this iron ball of fear in my gut, but I couldn't make myself do a thing that I wanted for some reason until that hand cupped my crotch and squeezed lightly and I watched, like some kind of trapped rabbit or deer, as his other hand started to unbutton my jeans and that fear tore out of me in a tidal wave of panic.

"Stop, Trowa," I ordered him and hated how weak and shaky my own voice sounded.

He ignored me, or he was too wrapped up in what he was doing to hear my tiny plea as he pulled the zipper of my jeans down.

"Please, you have to stop," I could hear how much I was panicking and my heart thudded painfully in my chest.

"Shhhh," he soothed, slipping his hand down the front of my jeans, "Just let me make you feel good."

In that moment, I felt trapped and lost. I should have hated him for making me feel that way, but I didn't. I hated myself. Here I was, in a place that most people my age dream about, being felt up by a man that I cared for, even if I couldn't claim to love him, who was incredibly handsome and popular despite his attempts not to be. I should have been happy. I should have been moaning with delight, telling him to go slow, or trying to kiss him. That's what a normal, gay person would be doing, right?

Instead, I felt terror and revulsion and helplessness. I felt vulnerable and I loathed myself for feeling that way. I was struck, like I often am, at how abnormal I am. I felt that fear again, that I would never be normal, that I would never feel the lust that Trowa was feeling, or even just the desire for more than just kissing. What the hell was wrong with me?

I wondered, then, what would happen if I couldn't get him to stop. Would he just keep going, or would he realize that I was being serious? He was bigger and stronger than I was. What could I do if I wanted him to stop and he refused to listen? I could not imagine, not even for a second, that he would willfully do something like that, just keep... touching me when I had told him no, he just wasn't that kind of person. But what did I know about any kind of people? It only filled me with more and more panic, that if I just left this up to him, he might even have sex with me, regardless of how I felt about it.

Slowly, all of my fear and panic turned to anger and I can't even say why, if his ignoring me like that had really made me mad, or if it was just easier getting angry at him instead of dwelling on how weak and small and worthless his actions made me feel. I grabbed his wrist in a tight grip and forced his hand out of my pants, making his eyes go wide, seeing me for the first time since he had touched my thigh.

"I said stop it!" I snarled at him.

It came to me then, how to make him stop and rethink what he had been about to do. I twisted his wrist, hard, just like my father had twisted my wrist all those years ago, only not quite as viciously as he had. My father had taught me well, I thought bitterly. He hadn't taught me to read, but he had, unknowingly, taught me a hundred ways to hurt someone. And I had just done it to my boyfriend. Later, when I stopped to think about that afternoon, I would feel revulsion at myself, but right then I was glad for it, because he hissed in pain and backed right the fuck off of me.

I sat up the second that he wasn't on me anymore, desperate for some kind of control and breathing room. Trowa flexed his wrist, but I knew from experience that I hadn't twisted hard enough to do any lasting damage. His skin was a dark red from me grabbing him so hard, but I knew that it would fade.

'I'm sorry,' I thought to say and seeing him like that, looking at his wrist with this betrayed expression, I was sorry, 'but I told you to stop and you didn't listen to me. I'm uncomfortable with you touching me like that. It scares me.'

I couldn't quite force myself to say those things, to admit to him how vulnerable I felt, to be that honest. Still, even if I couldn't admit to all that other stuff, I wanted to apologize for panicking and hurting his wrist. I opened my mouth to do just that, but swiftly closed it when I saw Trowa's expression suddenly change. His face just... twisted into this look of anger and hostility.

He went from looking betrayed and disbelieving to pissed off, frustrated and bitter. He glanced at me, directing that hateful look right at me and looked away from him so quickly that I doubted he had seen me looking him. Just like that, I felt this intense resentment for him fill me. He was mad at me? Why? Because I hadn't let him do what he wanted? Because I had spurned his advances? Because I had fought back when he had ignored my pleas? Wasn't I the one who was supposed to be angry at him? Wasn't he the one who should be apologizing me?

I waited, hoping that he would. In my head, he would apologize for pushing me, I would apologize for twisting his wrist and being too nervous to let him touch me like that, we would talk it out, figure out what the problem was with both of us, and then everything would be ok. But that wasn't what happened. Instead of apologizing, Trowa stood up and started to clean up the leftovers, the entire time wearing that pissy expression on his face. I could have apologized then, and maybe it would have taken some of the sting of rejection from him, but I didn't feel like saying sorry anymore.

With a hand that wasn't nearly as steady as I had wanted it to be, I zipped and buttoned my jeans and rose, helping Trowa clean up. I would glance at him once in awhile, trying to understand his anger. I felt mad at him for it, but I also felt afraid. Not of him, not now that he was no longer on top of me, unzipping my jeans and trying to touch me. I wasn't scared of his anger in the way that most people probably think.

My father was a professional at beating the shit out of me and in a sick way, it was my normal. Brian was bigger than me, but not as big as my dad, and I was willing to bet that he was a novice at hitting people. No, his anger frightened me because I didn't know what it meant for us. I knew what Trowa wanted from me and that he had been patiently waiting for our relationship to get to that point, only to find us stuck. And now I had soundly rejected him, if only for a moment. Was he so angry at me over it that he might want to break up?

Our relationship wasn't the best. In fact, if I had taken a moment to really look at it, I would have to admit that we were kind of fucked up. But I liked being with him, and it beat the hell out of being alone again. I needed him. I can admit that to myself now. I didn't want him to break up with me, but I had no idea what to do or say to keep that from happening. Should I just... let him touch me, let him do those things I was so scared of to keep him from walking away from me?

But he didn't break up with me then or even address what I had done and how it had angered him. The both of us just... swept the whole damn thing under the rug. We didn't quite forget about it, he held on to his anger the rest of the day and I held on to my hurt. I just moved on like I always do, pretending like none of it mattered. I folded up the tablecloth for him and he took it from me without sneering or yelling at me, so I guess that was something. Little by little, as he stashed the tablecloth back into the bag along with what little food we hadn't finished, that bitter rage on his face faded into something that was more like begrudging frustration. It was just as hard to take as his anger, but I hoped that meant he was getting over it. I wondered about that anger for a moment. I wondered what it was like to feel the things that he obviously did.

I wondered what lust felt like, to want a person, to want sex so badly that just being denied could actually made you mad about it. It made me glad that I had never felt anything even close to that my entire life, but only for a moment. It made me feel guilty, too. I felt like I had taken something away from him. I wondered, and not for the first time, just what the hell I was doing with this boy. What was the point of this relationship if I couldn't even lead it to its natural conclusion? Didn't all this just make me the ultimate cock tease, just stringing Trowa along, but never letting us get any further?

What right did I have to do that to him? Even though his lack of respect had hurt me and his desires had frightened me, I felt like I was the one entirely at fault. I thought about Quatre then, as the two of us walked back the way we had come. What would have happened if he had lived? What would he have done in my place? I tried to imagine him letting Trowa touch him like he had just touched me, but I couldn't do it.

In my head, Quatre would always be that thirteen year old boy. I couldn't imagine him at age fifteen or sixteen, and I sure as hell could not imagine him having sex or even contemplating having it. It made me feel like I was... perverting him, disrespecting him. What if he had lived and he had found out about this? Not my being with Trowa, but some other guy, what would he tell me to do? I couldn't imagine it, either. Even walking down that forest path, willing to see him like I often did when I was stressed, for once his image wouldn't come to me. Even my best friend wouldn't comfort me.

Like before on our way into the woods, I matched Trowa's pace as we walked. But this time, it wasn't out of hope that he might hold or touch my hand, or even because I just enjoyed walking next to him. I didn't want to walk behind or ahead of him because I didn't want him to think that I was avoiding him or running away from him, even if that was kind of what I felt like doing. He walked measurably slower than he had before and with his normally long gait, it had to be a conscious thing, but I couldn't think of a reason why he wanted to draw out this walk. He wasn't like me, he didn't have reasons to want to delay going home.

I kept catching him glancing at me out of the corner of my eye, like there was something that he desperately wanted to say to me. I didn't make a single sound, waiting for him to spit it out, but he never did. I dared a glance of my own and found him staring at the ground, looking frustrated, pensive, and annoyed at something. I wanted to yell at him, to demand that he tell me what was bothering him so much so I could change it, but I was too afraid of what the answer might be. I looked away, but stopped walking when he reached a hand out and touched my hair.

I completely froze. Trowa had touched my hair before, usually when he was kissing me, but this was different. For a very brief moment, no more than a flash, I remembered how my father had looked when he had drunkenly touched my hair that one time. The look on his face had been exactly like (violently scratched out)

I threw that thought away in repulsion so strong, I felt sick. I almost missed it when Trowa's long fingers picked a piece of a vibrantly green leaf out of my hair that had gotten stuck there. The move tugged on my hair a bit sharply, but the very tiny spark of pain helped me forget the wayward thought I had had. I expected Trowa to let go of my hair then and start walking again, but his expression suddenly went all intense, not with passion but with more frustration and he surprised me by grabbing my ponytail, his grip tight but not painful, and examined it like he had never seen it before with this weird look like my hair annoyed him somehow. I still didn't dare move, unsure of what he was doing and what the shadows in his eyes meant.

"When exactly are you going to get this cut off?" he asked me snidely.

I stared up at him with wide eyes, shocked by the immense contempt in his tone, directed entirely at me.

"W-what?" I stammered.

He hated how long my hair was? He would tease me about it sometimes, pull on it and ask me if I was trying to be a hippy, and I had always assumed that he didn't like it, but I had never realized that he... that he loathed my hair like that, not with that meanness.

"Your hair," he said slowly with an unbearably cruel sneer that made me think of Zechs and my father, a look that did not belong on Trowa Barton's shy, kind, and handsome face, a slowness that made me feel stupid, like an especially dim witted child, "What are you waiting for, someone to do it for you? For it to grow all the way down to your knees? Just cut it off already. That stupid ponytail makes you look like a fucking girl."

His words were glass shards in my heart, somehow bigger and sharper than the ones my father had put there with those very same words. I felt a hurt that I didn't understand, a wound that mystified me, all because he hated my long hair... no, it wasn't that. It was because, whether he was aware of it or not, Trowa had injured me in two places where I had been vulnerable for a long time, thinking I was stupid and... and calling me a girl.

A thousand thoughts exploded from those wounds in my heart and into my head. Did I really look like a girl, like they all said? Was my hair really too long? Should I get rid of it like my father and my boyfriend wanted me to? Would Trowa break up with me because of how much my hair had... had brought out this ugly hate in him?

And there, in the middle of that swirl of pathetic questions and useless fears was a single thought. Of course Trowa hated my hair. Quatre's hair had been short. He probably hated that my hair is brown, too, and my eyes, because they aren't blue-green like Quatre's had been.

I felt this intense, painful anger flow into me, mingling with my hurt like pus in my blood. I hated him in that moment, really, truly hated him, and I can't honestly say why still. I've thought about it endlessly since then, but my emotions confuse me, just as they always have. Did I hate him for insulting me, for hating me for not being more like the person he really wanted? Or did I simply hate him because I liked him enough to want him to like me back, to actually be my boyfriend for real? Did I hate him for being incapable of loving me like everyone else or was the hate I was feeling all directed at myself for being incapable of being loved?

I pulled my ponytail from his grip brutally, not caring at the pain and glared at him, letting the pain and anger I was feeling out onto my face for once and not caring if he thought me pathetic and weak for it.

"Fuck you," I hissed at him and walked briskly past him, leaving him behind.

Before I put him fully to my back, I saw him go pale and his eyes go wide. Whether it was in the face of my words, my anger at him, or the evidence that he had hurt me and I had let him see that for the first time, I didn't know. He didn't call to me or chase after me and I don't know if that made the whole thing worse or better.

I clung to my anger all the way home, my fear of my father the only thing keeping me from slamming the front door behind me. I walked through the kitchen only to realize that he wasn't home and actually thought about going back to slam the door to see if it would make me feel better, but I knew that it wouldn't.

I found myself in the bathroom without making any conscious thought that I was going to go in there, and stared at myself in the mirror. I hated what I saw and that revulsion shocked me. I hated my skin, it was too pale and smooth. I hated my body, it was too lanky and thin. I hated my nose because it was just like my father's. I hated my eyes because they were my mother's eyes. My hands were too slender, too small while my fingers were too long. My shoulders weren't wide enough. I didn't have enough body hair. I wasn't masculine enough, wasn't tall enough or big enough. But most of all, I hated my hair. I hated the color of it. It wasn't a beautiful, shimmering blonde, it was brown, and didn't that just say it all? My hair was dirty. It was too long and ugly and girly.

Looking at myself in the mirror, I wanted to rip off my face and shave off my hair. I wanted to pull out my eyes and break my fingers off. I wanted to tear myself apart until there was noting left. Before I had even realized it was happening, my anger was just gone and in its place was this deep, dark depression. I have never liked my looks. Every time Quatre had said that I was handsome, I had scoffed at him, but I had never hated myself before, at least not for the way I look. I had wanted to blame it on Trowa and what he had said, but that's neither fair nor true. His verbally attacking my hair had forced me to look at myself and realize it, but I knew that that hatred wasn't something new.

I pulled off my hair tie and let my hair fall down. It was almost perfectly straight, not a single curl to be seen, and the tips fell maybe an inch shy of my waist. Trowa was right, I thought in self-disgust and misery. I looked like a fucking girl. My hand shaking a little, I opened the top drawer next to the sink and found a pair of scissors.

I caught my reflection again and the sadness in my eyes felt like a punch to the gut. I could do it, I realized with a pain that confused me. For Trowa, I could cut it off. I could make myself look a little bit more like Quatre and make him happy, make him like me. I could erase this small, stupid part of myself easily. It was just hair, nothing important, nothing that anyone even liked.

I gathered my hair up in my left hand and pulled it away from my neck. I opened the scissors and put my hair between them, drawing the handles close until the blades were resting on my hair. Something inside of me quaked and I could feel myself getting angry again, this time at my hesitance and how much this was affecting me. What the fuck? Since when had my ponytail started to mean anything to me? And even if it had, why did it matter? When did anything I want, or anything that was ever a part of me, matter?

'It's just hair, it's just hair, I can do this,' I told myself.

I didn't stop to think about why I suddenly wanted to cut my hair off or why I wanted to do it for the boy that I was so angry at for hurting me. I never stopped to ask myself what the hell was wrong with me.

"Don't do it," Quatre said.

I lowered the scissors and looked over at him. He, or at least the Quatre that my mind painted there, was sitting on the edge of the sink, looking at me with familiar, sad eyes.

"Why not?" I snapped back and was shocked at how angry my voice came out, considering that I was just talking to myself and the empty air, "Why not just cut it all off? It's just stupid hair."

Quatre rested his chin on his hand and studied me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable. It was enough to make me worry about my sanity. I mean, I knew Quatre wasn't real, so why did I have these conversations with him like I was actually talking to him?

"Because it's a part of you. You've had that ponytail for so long now," he argued.

"So what?" I shot at him, "My father hates it, Trowa hates it. I don't even care about it that much, so what's the point in keeping it?"

"I like it, I've always liked it. Besides, your father has been telling you to get a hair cut for years now, but you've never even really thought about doing it. So why are you really doing this? Why now?"

His eyes were too piercing and I had to look away from him for a moment. He... I was right, I realized. All these years, my father had been badgering and verbally abusing me to cut my ponytail off, so why now? Had what Trowa said been any worse than what my father said?

"It makes me look like a girl," I said softly, "It makes me look like..."

'A faggot,' I would have said, but I didn't need to and I didn't want to say that word out loud. It wasn't even my thought really, it was my father's and Zechs'. Because being a faggot wasn't being gay, it wasn't just liking another boy. Being a faggot was just like being a girl, but worse, it was wanting to be a girl when you weren't. Boys that liked dolls and cooking and were good at cleaning or sewing were fags.

A boy with long hair that wasn't in a rock band or had some other macho quality to redeem him was surely a fag. No better than a girl... I didn't hate girls and I didn't believe that liking things that people like Zechs thought were feminine was bad, but I wasn't a girl and every time my father or his stupid partner or Zechs or Relena called me one, it made me feel like... like I wasn't even a person. Does that make any sense at all?

Quatre huffed in frustration, blowing his bangs out of his face. It was the same exact thing he had done when he was alive and we would argue about something. He suddenly felt too real to me, too much like this was really my best friend that I was talking to and not a figment of my overactive imagination. It hurt too much and I willed him away, but he refused to go like a particularly stubborn itch.

"You don't look like a girl at all," he said with a tone so soft and so sad that I wanted to cry and throw my arms around him, "and you won't look like a girl no matter what you do with your hair, You know that. I've told you that before."

I blinked at him for a moment before I suddenly remembered that we had had this conversation already, almost word for word. I hadn't almost cut my hair off back then, but I had been upset because my father had been drunk and called me a cunt for my hair. Quatre had asked me if I would really cut my ponytail off because of my father. I had resoundly told him 'no, fuck him,' and Quatre had flashed me this weird little smile, like he had been proud of me or something.

Quatre... this Quatre, not the real one, wasn't really my subconscious. I didn't believe that I don't look like a girl, that I'm not a fag in the way that my father means that word and I don't feel any kind of confidence in my looks and sexuality, but that never comes out in the way that I see Quatre. These conversations 'we' have don't come out of me trying to talk to myself. I see Quatre because I want to see him, and when I talk to him, it's my memory of him that's talking to me. I guess that's why I do it, because it comforts me and sometimes I can trick myself that it's really him that I'm talking to. Because while I feel nothing but doubt about the things that my father and Trowa had said to me, Quatre wouldn't. He would tell me that I'm handsome, that he likes my hair and to not dare cut it off because of someone else.

"Trowa-" I tried to argue with all my fears and my hurt and worries, but my voice sounded so weak.

It's hard to argue with yourself when you are telling yourself exactly what you want to hear.

"Duo," Quatre's tone was somewhere between exasperated and affectionate and sad again, "it's your hair, not his. If you want to keep it, then keep it. He had no right to say that to you. It's your choice, not his. He doesn't own you."

His words struck some kind of strange blow in me. Trowa didn't own me. Was that what he had been acting like? And had I responded to that? Did I want him to own me, or was I just so lonely that I would let him treat me like that just to keep him from abandoning me? Everyone turns their backs on me, but he hadn't. Not yet, anyway. Was I trying to stop that from happening, or was I so weak that I could just... surrender to what he wanted without a thought? I had said fuck you to my father, so why was it so hard for me to say fuck you to Trowa as well?

Thinking about it just made my head hurt. I felt like I was uncovering some incredibly ugly part of myself that had been hiding all this time. Quatre had always said I was a strong person and I had never been able to show him just how wrong he was. That the person who had just run home and almost cut their hair off because their boyfriend told them they should was the real me was pathetic and frightening. I didn't want to get rid of my pony tail. Maybe it really was just hair, and it would grow back, but Quatre was right. It was my hair and I liked having that stupid ponytail.

I almost jumped when Quatre reached across to me and lightly touched a strand of hair that had gotten loose from the hair tie I wore.

"Trowa's right, though," he said and my fucked up mind painted that light touch in my senses, a touch from something less than a ghost, "it has gotten a bit long, don't you think?"

I pulled my hair over my shoulder to get a good look at it in the mirror. Quatre... my figment was right and so was Trowa. While not down to my waist, my ponytail was at chest level and had been getting heavy recently. It was just a bit longer than I wanted it to be, but I hadn't done anything about it.

"Yeah," I agreed, "I guess it has."

"If you're going to keep it that long, you should find a better way to keep it than in a pony tail," Quatre urged.

"What else is there besides a pony tail?" I asked him, even though I felt kind of stupid doing it.

I knew that he was right, keeping my thick hair in the pony tail was a pain, it snarled really easily. I would either have to keep shortening my hair or find a better way to keep it out of the way. Quatre got this far off look, like he was thinking of my question even when I already knew the answer.

"Jane braided her hair when it got too long," he offered.

It took me a few moments to remember which one of his sisters Jane was, but eventually she came to me. She had been the second youngest of Quatre's brood of sisters. I had met her once, although I can't remember when that had been anymore. Like all of the Winner siblings, she had been thin, pale, and very blonde, her eyes a light, crystal blue. She had stubbornly grown out her hair and at the time that I had met her, it had been down to her waist in a neat braid. I wondered if she still had that braid, wherever his family had moved to.

"I don't know how to French braid," I said in a frustration that had me wrinkling my nose, "and a braid's even worse than a pony tail."

Quatre huffed.

"I told you, your hair doesn't make you look like a girl. Who cares if you braid it? Your hair won't be in the way all the time, and you won't have to cut it," he glanced at the tips of my hair, "Although you should really take care of the split ends soon. And you don't have to learn how to French braid, you can just do a normal one. Why don't you try it?"

"Ok, ok," I muttered like he was being pushy and shook my head.

I took a deep breath, knowing that my imaginary friend was right about the split ends, too. If I fucked it up, well, I already got bullied, so what did it matter? And it was just a trim, not like loping the whole mess of it off. I put the scissors down and leaned down to wet my pony tail in the sink. I put my hair between my fingers until I had only about two to three inches of the tips then just cut them off. My hair fell in the sink and I was a bit impressed that I had both managed not to struggle with the decision to cut off that bit of it like I had with wanting to cut the whole thing off, like cleaving off some dead weight, and that I hadn't made a mess of it. I had to even it off here and there, but it didn't look bad.

That minor task down, I set to try to braiding the brown and red and gold strands. It was a hell of a lot harder than I had thought it would be and several times I had to stop and start over again. But the braiding itself wasn't all that complicated and I understood the basics of how to make a braid, my fingers were just unused to it and were clumsy. After the fifth try, I had a neat braid that wasn't that bad looking.

I glanced over to where Quatre had been sitting, but he was gone again. For that moment, I felt like a small weight had been lifted from my heart. I flicked my wet hair back over my shoulder and my newly cut hair fell between my shoulder blades, the tip of the braid resting against my butt. I found that I already liked the braid a lot more than I had my pony tail. I was shocked at how good it felt, feeling that familiar weight against my back and I wondered again how I could have almost cut it off.

I could hear my younger voice in my head, telling Quatre to fuck my father and I felt a bit spiteful, looking at my reflection then. Fuck Trowa, I thought to myself, not even needing Quatre to tell me that. If he didn't like my hair, he could find someone else to play boyfriends with. I cleaned up the hair from the sink, flushing it down the toilet and got ready for work, feeling like I had cut a lot more than just hair from me.
　

End Part 2
Author's Note: Sorry about the delay in this part, I was having some problems with the narrative in some parts and I moved back in with my parents six days ago, so it took me a bit to get everything unpacked and set up.
- 15
- 16
- 17
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)