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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
- 6
- 7
- 8
A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 3

Part 2
　

Maybe if I had been a lot younger when my mother had said all that to me, or if I had been like one of those normal kids I went to school with, someone who lived under the assumption my parents loved me, had always loved me, and always would no matter what, I would have reacted differently than I did. Maybe I would have cried the rest of the night, barricaded myself in my room or ran away. But I didn't. My parents had hurt me before and said terrible things to me before, nothing as awful as what she had said to me then, but I had come to expect pain from them. I won't say I was used to it, because it hurt as badly as it ever had, but I was used to it happening.

So, instead of lashing out about being told I was an unwanted mistake and acting like a child about it, I chose the unhealthier option and acted like an adult, another thing I was used to by then. I cried for a little while in front of the freezer, thinking about Quatre and how at least there was one person in the world who saw me as something other than a burden that had been forced on them. Then I closed the freezer door and I buried all of my pain deep down inside where it could do the most damage.

I kept busy. It got close to the time when Dad would be coming home and Mom hadn't come back yet. I somehow knew she wouldn't be coming home that night. She does that from time to time even when she hasn't been fighting with anyone, just leaves the house and doesn't tell anyone where she's going. Sometimes it's only for a few hours, sometimes it's an entire day that she's gone. In that respect, my parents are alike. The only difference is that my dad disappears for longer, and more often.

I used to think that he just left on police business, and if he was gone for more than a day, he must be on a stakeout or something, but more often than not he comes home smelling of cigarettes and beer. My father doesn't smoke, but his cop buddies do and I can imagine them going to bars all night together. When I got old enough to understand such things, I began to wonder if my father is cheating on my mother. I'm not an idiot. I know my parents don't have sex, not for a lack of my father trying, and he frequently comes home late, smelling like perfume or just smelling different than he usually does.

My mother never asks him about it. She isn't stupid, either, and she smells it on him, too, but she never says anything about it and if it upsets her in anyway, she's never showed it. In turn, my father never seems all that concerned about where my mother disappears to every once in awhile. Sometimes to me, they seem like strangers that happen to share a house together. Although I had started to feel a lot like that, myself.

I decided to make dinner. If Mom didn't come back, it would be my responsibility and I would rather have it ready for when Dad came home. Having to order take out might send him from a neutral or good mood to an irritated one. If he was already in a bad mood, it wouldn't send him over the edge, but in the mood I was in, I didn't want to chance a bad run in with him. Besides, I had nothing better to do. I had homework, but not enough of it to keep me occupied the rest of the night, and I didn't want to start thinking and being alone in the house at that moment. I needed a distraction from my painful thoughts.

I opened the refrigerator door and saw in dismay just how little food we had. I was hoping to find some frozen dinners, pre-cooked meals, or even enough leftovers to make a stew with. Of course, there wasn't anything remotely like that in there and I didn't have the slightest clue what my mother had been planning to make. I considered just calling my father at work and asking him to pick up something on the way home, but I was sick of take out all the time and I didn't want to have to admit to him, or myself, that I couldn't find something to make one meal with in the entire house.
"You're so useless."

I let my stubbornness get the best of me, a trait I had no doubt I had inherited from my father, and I started to pull things out of the refrigerator; lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms, cheese, chopped onions, and carrots. There was barely anything to make a decent salad, but it would do. I rummaged through our cabinets and managed better; a package of bread crumbs, half a bottle of olive oil, powdered garlic, and an entire box of macaroni shells. How the pasta hadn't been eaten yet was a miracle. None of it was enough for a big meal, but there would be enough for two people. If my mother came home looking for food, she would have to figure something out for herself. Thinking that, for the first time since she had laid into me, I felt bitterness and anger at her instead of sadness and anger directed at myself.

Two months ago in Home Ec., we had learned how to make homemade mac and cheese and I still remembered enough to make do. I used the cheese we had and made a thick, rich cheese sauce to douse the noodles in after they had boiled. I had no idea what kind of cheese it was, there were a bunch of different ones wrapped up together, but when I melted it with some butter and mixed it with the one remaining egg we had and some flour, it smelled pretty good, so I guess it was the right kind of cheese. The garlic powder, rest of the butter I had melted, and the breadcrumbs would make due for a topping. Everything else I used for the salad, even cutting up the onion and two carrots. It wouldn't win any awards, but it was edible.

By the time my father stepped through the door, the mac and cheese was baking in the oven, and I had washed enough dishes that the kitchen looked clean, and I had even set the table. If Quatre had seen me at work, he would have laughed and said I was better at being an adult than most adults. That was probably true, but I had always sucked at being a kid and I never could back down from something I had started. Besides, I understood that while I might tell myself that I had made dinner to appease my father, I really hadn't done it for him. I had done it for myself, and I had to admit that a hot, home cooked meal, even if I had been the one bumbling through it, was the only bright spot on that whole beyond shitty day.

"Where's your mother?" my father asked me as he walked into the kitchen.

He had already taken off the suit jacket he was required to wear at work, it was slung over his arm, and he was working his tie loose, but his gun holster and badge were still on him. He hated that suit and it was always the first to come off when he got home, and the holster and badge would be the last, right before he changed his pants. I guess, if a normal, well adjusted person ever reads this, they would ask if I lived in fear of my father's gun, if I was terrified of him using it on me one day.

Truthfully, I have never thought about it that way. To me, my father's gun is a tool, an object he needs to do his job, no different than his badge. Yes, it's a weapon, but so are the knives in our kitchen. So are my father's hands. My father has never used his gun on me, not even in his worst furies, he hasn't even threatened me with it. He needs to keep it near him in case of emergencies, and keeps it in a drawer in his bedside table, but the drawer doesn't have a lock. My dad doesn't need a lock for his gun. I have attended enough anti-gun lectures at school, and just one lecture from my father about what would happen to me if I touched his gun.

When my father beats me, it's out of pure, uncontrollable rage. He doesn't think, or at least he doesn't seem to, he just strikes me or grabs something nearby to hit me with. I can't see him taking a moment to walk into his bedroom to grab a weapon he doesn't even need to harm me. Mostly, I choose to believe he would never shoot me. Even after hearing from my mother that my father had wanted to abort me, I choose to believe that. But in those dark moments, usually after a beating, when I see the real violence in him, I would think 'if he kills me, it'll be with his fist.'

As he took off his tie and tossed it onto the same chair he carelessly draped his jacket, I noticed how tired he looked. He often came home looking like that, tired and frustrated and angry. That night, he just looked tired, not in any sort of mood where I would need to be wary of him.

"I don't know," I answered honestly, "she left awhile ago."

There had been no real anger in his voice when he had asked me where she was, like there often was, just mild irritation and he simply snorted derisively at my answer, like he didn't care but was still annoyed at her disappearance. He noticed the salad I had put on the table in two bowls and the smell of the cheese, raising an eyebrow at both.

"You do all this?" he gestured to the food.

I shrugged. That was about our recent level of communication when he wasn't yelling at me or wanting me to do something. I couldn't even tell what his reaction was, if he found it surprising or if he couldn't have cared less, he just accepted it and went into his bedroom to change. He re-emerged when the timer on the oven went off. I put one half of the meal on one plate for each of us when it had cooled enough and we ate together in relative silence, but the silence wasn't bad. Neither of us are very sociable people to begin with and he was tired from work and I was depressed.

Sometimes, I wonder if I hadn't inherited that anti social trait, if my life would be better than it is now. Maybe not the stuff at home. I can't see how being more talkative and being better at being around people would help my father stop beating me or my mother stop hating me, but school was a different story. If I were more sociable, would Relena have still picked on me? Would the rest of my classmates treated me like the plague? If I had any kind of social skills like most kids seemed to have, maybe I could have just shrugged off Relena's bullying and tried to make more friends instead of letting it get to me the way it had. Maybe I would have more friends now and maybe Relena would have lost interest in me. I don't know, but I still feel cheated... lacking, simply because I don't know how to connect with people my own age. When I think about that, it seems like such an incredibly miracle I had Quatre for a friend at all.

My father made a noise of approval when he started to eat the baked mac and cheese, which was rare for him. Normally, I would have felt pride and happiness knowing I had done something right, but I didn't feel anything. The food tasted good and I hadn't screwed anything up, but I might as well have been chewing on sawdust for all that I noticed.

I spent the majority of the meal chewing and glancing over the table at the man that was my father. I had known him for all thirteen years of my life, but right then he was a stranger to me. He was this person that occupied the same spaces I did, at the same food I did, and spoke to me on occasion, but at that moment, I felt no real connection to him. That feeling would end up vanishing, little by little, but right then it was there, prominent but as alien as my father had suddenly become to me.

Who was he? This man had brought me into the world. He had, if only for a short period of time, loved my mother and made me, and he had wanted to unmake me, but beyond that, I knew almost nothing about him. Did he still wish that he had managed to convince my mother to abort me like she did or had he changed his mind? Did this man, eating with me at our kitchen table, hate me like my mother did, or was there something inside of him something tiny, that loved me if only because I was his? Did he feel love for me when he saw the things, like not being talkative and being stubborn, that were like him, the same way I felt love for him sometimes?

I didn't know the answers to any of those questions, but the most terrible thing for me was that I couldn't remember the last time my father had told me that he loved me. I was certain that he had when I had been little, but I couldn't remember when. That seemed tragic to me, that I couldn't remember something important like that, because I needed to remember. I wanted to remember how he had looked when he had said it. I wanted to remember how he had sounded. Because I needed to believe that it was true.
*****
My mother reappeared at some point two days later. When I came home the next day, she had still been gone, longer than she had been before, although my father hadn't been overly concerned. I had begun to think something might have happened to her. She couldn't have had enough money on her to rent a room someplace, and she didn't have any friends that I knew of that she could stay with, so where could she be? It made me realize just what little I really know about my parents and their lives separate from me. But she showed up the next evening, before I could start to wonder if we should be looking for her and why she had decided to run away, if she was hurt or in trouble or if she had just decided to never come home again, but not before I had begun to believe she had run away not from home, but from me.

My mom didn't say a word about where she had gone or why. She didn't say anything about our fight, either, and I wasn't sure that I wanted her to. She just walked in right after Dad and I had finished dinner, poured herself some vodka, and disappeared into their bedroom without so much as looking at me. Three days after my mother had lashed out at me, I still hadn't told Quatre a word of it. I had thought that I would have. It seemed like too terrible of a thing to lock up inside of me, but that was exactly what I did. It was just like with finding out I wasn't straight. I was too embarrassed to admit those kinds of things to him. My only friend, the only person in the world who I knew actually cared for me, had problems of his own, I wasn't going to give him mine as well I told myself over and over.

I was thinking exactly that when Quatre and I were eating lunch together in the school cafeteria on that third day. While he was sneaking quick looks over at Trowa's table near ours, looking like he wanted to go over there and say something to him but too nervous to, I was thinking about my mother. We were both too consumed in our own problems to notice when Relena strode over to our table, not that it would have made a difference if we had. She snuck up behind Quatre and snatched his lunch bag while he was distracted, grabbing both of our attentions. She picked through his lunch almost gingerly, pulling out an apple, some pretzel sticks, a salad in a Tupperware bowl, and his usual thermos. She unscrewed the lid and took a sniff of what was inside, her face screwing up in fake disgust.

"Even your lunch is boring and bland, Winner," she sneered, "I almost feel bad for Maxwell. He might be worthless scum, but it must be terrible having such a flat, uninteresting friend like you. He and Trowa must be half asleep whenever they talk to you. Maybe that's why they're friendly towards you, for a sleep aid!"

I don't know who flushed darker, Quatre in humiliation or me in rage. I wanted to stand up for him, I wanted to so badly it burned in me, but I couldn't, not without consequences, and Relena knew I couldn't. I hated these games of hers. I hated that I couldn't even try to protect my friend. She made a small, pleased noise when she took out the last item in Quatre's lunch bag: a cupcake.

"What on earth are you doing with this?!" she demanded, sounding angry and affronted by Quatre's choice of dessert, but that gleeful, sadistic glint was in her eyes.

She carefully unwrapped the cupcake and ate it in dainty bites as Quatre watched, as unable to do anything about it as me. She then picked up his thermos again with disdain.

"Anyone who drinks this disgusting swill doesn't deserve a dessert as sweet and delicious as that," she poured the tea all over Quatre's food, destroying anything that hadn't been wrapped up or in a container. It splashed all over the table and was probably spilling over the edge and onto Quatre's pants, but he didn't move, he knew that would just piss her off, "What sort of loser kid drinks tea anyway? Did your grandmother make it for you?" she teased like it was the funniest thing ever, "Since we're friends, I bought you something much better."

She showed Quatre what her other hand had been hiding behind her back this entire time: a bottle of whole percent chocolate milk.

"Relena, don't," I finally protested, my worries about retaliation long forgotten. This was crossing the line, even for her.

I might as well have said nothing at all. She unscrewed the lid and shoved the lip into his mouth.

"Drink it, drink all of it," she demanded in an almost shriek. She made me think of a banshee or harpy, her pretty face turning ugly and monstrous.

I stood up from the table, watching in horror, my fists clenched and full of helplessness as my friend gulped down the drink. His face was pale and his eyes wide with fear as he did it, but there wasn't anything either of us could do.

Quatre was lactose intolerant. He wasn't so bad that he couldn't eat things you used milk to make like pastries or pancakes, but drinking milk made him terribly ill and cheese gave him stomachaches. All the milk he did use, like in his tea, was soy. I had known all that about just a week after I had made friends with him. Relena had known him longer than I had, and she had to know that. Why else would she make him drink milk? I saw red at that painful and terrible fact. She wanted to make him violently ill. But as angry as I was, I didn't try to stop her because I was afraid and I couldn't stand that. I was a weak coward who couldn't even protect the one thing I had, even when he was being hurt like this.

Relena made him drink the entire bottle and when he was done, he looked pale and green, already incredibly queasy. The mind is more powerful than the stomach, so even though Quatre's digestive system hadn't realized it was allergic to the drink, Quatre was well aware. He clutched at his stomach and I wondered if the milk was really giving him cramps so quickly. I moved to help him; I hadn't been able to stop Relena, but I could try to help my friend to a bathroom away from the cafeteria where everyone was starting at us, but Relena glared at me. She wasn't going to allow me to diminish Quatre's embarrassment, and I was sure that Zechs was around here somewhere.

All I could do was glare back at her, but it didn't matter anyway. Seconds later, Quatre pressed his hand to his mouth and then just as quickly drew it away as he vomited onto the tiled floor. From where I was, I could hear Quatre's strained sounds more than I could see it as he bent double, almost sticking his head between his legs. I never would have gotten him to a bathroom in time. The sudden smell of regurgitated milk and what little lunch he had eaten was incredibly strong and turned my own stomach.

Relena took one whiff of it and took a step back, her nose wrinkling in repulsion.

"Ugh! You're so disgusting, Quatre! I hope you're going to apologize to the poor janitor for that smell!" she pinched her nose shut.

I felt torn in half. A part of me, the stupid, stubborn part that could never figure out when it was beaten, wanted to bash Relena across the face with my lunch tray. The other part just wanted to help my friend, but I had no idea how. When he finally seemed to stop and lift his head, Quatre looked horribly pale, shaking and sick. I handed him one of my napkins, the only thing I could think to do, and gratefully cleaned off his face. He ignored Relena entirely and instead glanced around the cafeteria, looking for someone. I thought that he was looking Zechs with that scared look in his eyes, but then those blue-greens fell on Trowa and the fear turned to absolute horror.

Just like that, Quatre bolted from the cafeteria. I saw most of my classmates start to laugh, and I was sure Relena was laughing that ugly, satisfied laugh of hers, but I didn't even spare her a parting glance as I chased my best friend all the way into one of the boys' restrooms. He was already hunched over one of the toilets, puking again, although it didn't seem like much was coming up this time. I kneeled down on the floor with him and rubbed his back as he got it out of his system. His retching slowly turned into crying, at one point indistinguishable from each other, but I just kept rubbing his back, hoping it was helping in some way.

"Are you ok?" I asked stupidly, hoping it sounded more soothing than the ignorant question it sounded to me as Quatre's tears finally stopped.

"Really, I'm more embarrassed than anything," he confessed shyly, "My throat and stomach hurt and I still feel kind of sick, but it's not so bad."

He paused then, deep in thought, and he seemed to go paler, whatever he was thinking of disturbing him.

"I can get you a ginger ale," I suggested, "it might make you feel better."

He looked up at me with large, blue-green eyes and trembled a little. They were the frightened eyes of a child who didn't want to be separated from a parent in a strange place.

"N-no," he stammered, "I'll be fine. I just shouldn't eat anything too rich for the rest of the day."

That was what he said, but I heard what he didn't dare to say out loud. 'Don't leave me.' He didn't want me to leave him alone in the bathroom. I suppose that sounds strange and childish for a thirteen year old boy, but I understood it perfectly and I just nodded. I would stay with him all day if that was what he needed to feel better and in a way, I felt flattered that I was this source of strength for him. I could never understand why I was, what it was about me that he seemed to need, but I didn't need to understand it to give that to him.

"Trowa saw me..." he murmured and I wasn't sure it that was supposed to be a question or not, his tone was too strange for me to decipher.

'Why does it matter?' I wanted to ask, but I couldn't. It obviously did matter to Quatre a lot, even if I couldn't understand it, and I didn't want to hurt him anymore than he was. How Trowa saw him was obviously important to him.

Like someone had thrown a light switch, Quatre's lost and embarrassed expression turned to one of anger and absolute hate. It startled me so much I almost flinched from him. I had never seen such a look on his face before. I had not thought him capable of hating anyone or anything enough to look like that. If it had been anyone else, or me, it would have been normal, but on someone as sweet and shy as Quatre, it was frightening.

"I hate her," he hissed, "She did that so Trowa would see me do something so disgusting," he started to cry again, but his tears were silent and angry as they tracked down his face, "I hate her so much."

My friend seemed unable to really process his anger, like he didn't know what to do with it, his hands shaking. I continued to rub on his back, reminding my own scared child in my head that Quatre was not my father, he wasn't going to hit me just because he was mad, there was no reason to be wary of him. I don't know how long we stayed in the restroom, but finally Quatre settled down enough to stop crying and stand up. I had grabbed his book bag before I had chased after him and he collected it from where I had dropped it in the corner of the bathroom.

We didn't talk about his rage or his shame, but I kept close to him as we left our little sanctuary. We walked maybe twenty feet before nearly walking right into Trowa. I will admit that I felt a strong bitterness as I saw him. He was the reason for my friend's pain. What had happened had been terrible enough, but Quatre felt the worst of it because of Trowa being there. Hell, according to Quatre, it was because of Trowa that Relena had done it at all. I know it isn't fair, but for a moment, I hated him for his mere presence. I knew it wasn't really his fault, that in a way he was a victim, too, that Relena was trying to keep Trowa and Quatre from being friends, but I still felt an anger at him.

"Quatre," Trowa said, obviously startled at seeing him.

My friend instantly looked at the ground, unable to meet his eyes. His pale complexion turned even whiter and he seemed mortified. He murmured Trowa's name, but that seemed like the only thing he was capable of at that moment.

"Are... are you ok?" the taller boy asked shyly, looking away from Quatre as well.

Quatre nodded, still incapable of looking Trowa in the eye.

"I'm fine," he muttered and then finally, shyly, looked up at him, "I'm so sorry... you had to see that... it must have been really disgusting."

"No!" Trowa burst out, "No, it wasn't disgusting. You just got sick, it's natural. I'm sorry that happened to you. I... I didn't know you were lactose intolerant... But I'm glad you're feeling better now."

As he looked up at him, Quatre blushed darkly at Trowa's words. I watched the two of them with that bewildered feeling again. I felt my anger at Trowa vanish just watching them together. It was obvious, at least to me, that the older boy liked my friend even if they never really seemed to hang out together. I wanted to feel bitter and point out to Trowa that if he wanted to be friends with Quatre so badly, why didn't he make Relena stop, but that would just make me a hypocrite. As the two of them talked, words that went right over my head, Trowa started to blush, too. I almost shook my head in exasperation. Quatre never blushed. Before he had started talking to Trowa like this, I had never seen him blush before. So why... what was it about Trowa that made him...

And suddenly it hit me. It hit me with all of the force of getting struck in the face with a metal beam. Quatre liked Trowa. That realization echoed in my head over and over again. My friend had a crush on this other boy. Just like that, I felt like a childish idiot. Maybe I had been unable to see it until I had my own sexual identity crisis, or maybe for all maturity, I really am just a child about things, but it had been staring me in the face all that time. The stuttering, the blushing, the awkward conversations, that little smile Quatre would get when he talked about Trowa or when he finally got over enough of his shyness to talk to the other teenager normally... they were the ways a boy would shyly talk to a girl he liked if he lacked confidence.

At the same time I felt like a blind moron for not realizing it before, I also felt this incredulity. My best friend was gay? It seemed impossible to me. Here I had been, worrying about my own sexuality, and it had never occurred to me that Quatre might be having similar issues. It had never occurred to me because it had seemed about as unlikely as snow in July. What were the fucking odds that I would make friends with a boy who might have the same sexuality issues as me? That just couldn't happen in real life... could it?

Back then, I had found that possibility that the both of us were gay to be ridiculous. Since then, I did some research on it. I couldn't look up homosexuality on the school computers, but in my attempts to I did come across an article. It really didn't have anything to do with homosexuality or help me to understand what was going on with me, but it did talk about how we can subconsciously make friends with people that have similarities with us, things that aren't obvious, but there's some kind of chemical connection happening. I don't know if I believe that, that Quatre and I became friends because of some chemical attraction, because we're both gay. I don't know what I think, if it's just some coincidence, or even as a child, I knew we were both different beyond just being social outcasts.

I would like to say that my epiphany gave me some kind of comfort, that figuring out that my friend had a crush on another boy was a solace towards my own problems, but it didn't. I felt just as lost as I had before. I still didn't know if I was gay or just... disinterested. I didn't know how Quatre would take it if I was the latter. I didn't even know if Quatre was aware of his feelings for Trowa or how he would react if I tried to ask him about it. The only thing my realization gave me was a sliver of hope that, if I tried to talk to him about my own issues, he might, might be more ok with it. As I watched the two of them together, both blushing and awkward, I made a choice. I decided to accept the idea that Quatre knew about his feelings, why else would he be so bothered knowing Trowa had seemed him throw up?

And I decided to confront him about it.
*****
Looking back at everything I've written, I guess that choice to talk to Quatre about his crush comes across as a pretty stupid idea. I stood a whole lot to lose if it went wrong, and little to gain if it went right. That was exactly what was on my mind when I finally said something to him about it after school the next day as I was walking him home. A smarter person would have just kept their trap shut about it and pretend like they hadn't realized anything. But as usual, I'm not smart, but I am stubborn. And my obsession with my sexuality had gotten worse since I had discovered I couldn't get aroused by girls.

It wasn't like I thought that if I could just figure out what I was, I could fix everything else that was shitty about my life. I just couldn't stop thinking about it and it was driving me half crazy. It was like there was this big chalkboard in my head listing all the things I could be. Straight was crossed out and next to 'gay' and 'asexual' there was this huge question mark and I was frantic to erase that. And it wasn't like I thought that Quatre could help me do that, but I wanted so badly to talk to someone about it. I just wasn't so sure that someone should be Quatre.

It was more than just trying to figure out my own problems. I didn't want to have this big secret between us. It was one thing not telling my best friend about my problems at home, and his problems at home as well. The way I saw it, this thing with Trowa shouldn't be a blind spot between us. Quatre thought he was hiding it from me, and he was wrong. I just wanted him to know that, and I wanted to find out exactly what those feelings were before I accidentally did something stupid about it.

I looked over at him as we walked. We had crossed paths with Trowa before we had left the school and they had chatted about some movie that was supposedly coming out that weekend that the both of them were fairly excited about. Quatre was still wearing this soft, tiny smile on his face that was kind of cute. I had felt oddly jealous as I had watched that smile as the two of them had talked. Jealousy and fear. Would I never feel the way that Quatre felt when he was with Trowa?

If only for that brief second, I wished with all my heart that I was gay. Better to like boys than to not like anyone, to never know what that kind of love feels like. It was a fleeting thought, but my feelings weren't so fleeting. I asked myself again what was wrong with me. I didn't know. I didn't know why I couldn't be attracted to other people, boy or girl, and I didn't know why this was such an obsession for me.

"So..." I paused, feeling a wave of fear and anxiety and wondering just what the hell I was doing, "Trowa seems nice," I said and immediately almost winced at how awkward that sounded.

Quatre, thankfully, didn't find anything odd about what I had said.

"He really is," he said enthusiastically, "He doesn't treat me like most upperclassmen do. He doesn't care that I'm younger or even about Relena and Zechs. He's quiet, but he actually has a really good sense of humor, too."

Quatre sounded so excited just talking about Trowa, I had to smile.

"You really like him," I summed up cautiously.

This time Quatre was the one to pause. He looked at me as though he were trying to assess something, probably trying to figure out how innocent that statement was. Again, I felt awkward. I didn't just want to blurt out 'I know you have a crush on him' but I didn't know how to ease into that, either.

"Y... yes," he said with some uncertainty, "I do like him. He could be a good friend."

I didn't buy that for a second, not with that cautious look he had and the slight blush on his fair face.

"Have you..." I squirmed, trying to find the right words to say even as this sounded incredibly dumb to me, "have you told him that you like him?"

He stopped walking entirely and looked at me with horror as it dawned on him that I wasn't talking about him wanting to be friends with Trowa.

"Duo," his voice shook as he spoke and he actually sounded slightly angry as well as flustered, "I'm not... I don't like Trowa like that! How can you think that?!"

I would have instantly backpedaled, making Quatre mad at me being the last thing I would ever want, but I heard the fear in his voice more than the anger.

"It's ok," I insisted, "It doesn't bother me or anything-"

"No," Quatre said forcefully, his hands curling into fists, "He's a friend, that's all, understand?!"

"Quatre, it's not a big deal," I protested, starting to feel alarmed at how scared he was. Had I made a mistake?

"I am not gay, Duo!" he actually snapped at me, his eyes filling with tears, "Don't you ever accuse me of... of that!"

"I've seen you with him," I pointed out, trying to talk him down from that frightening mix of terror and rage, something I had never ever seen in him before and never wanted to see again, and feeling so guilty, I wanted to just forget about this whole conversation, "You get so happy when you talk to him, and you're so awkward together. You're not like that with anyone else. Every time he compliments you, you blush, and when Relena tries to embarrass you in front of him, you get so upset, more upset than I've ever seen her make you. Do you really expect me to believe you're just friends with him?"

He went as white as a sheet, like all the blood had just been drained from him. Again, I felt a horrible guilt, realizing the fear and pain I was putting my friend through. I wondered if I was doing the right thing or if I was making a huge mistake. What if I had misread things and Quatre really wasn't gay? Or worse, what if I was right and he felt like I had betrayed him? What if this destroyed our friendship? I should just drop this, I thought, I should just laugh it off and never bring it up again, but I couldn't. I had opened my stupid mouth and I couldn't shut it.

"You're wrong!" he nearly screamed at me, "You're dead wrong, Duo! Don't you ever say things like that! There's no way I could like a boy like that!"

He was shaking and looked sick again. He was more frightened by what I had said than he was actually angry at me, but he was trying to pretend it was all anger. Was it really so terrible, what I was suggesting? To be gay... just accusing my best friend of that had made him act totally out of character like this. I looked down at the ground, feeling awkward and just about the worst friend there was.

"I guess I could be wrong," I admitted and when I saw him relax I felt a twisted storm of guilt and a fear as intense as his, but all I could be was honest, "but if I'm not... and I think I'm not... it really doesn't bother me. I'm not Zechs, Quatre, I'm not that ugly. Honestly, when I realized why you act differently around Trowa than you do around me, I felt kind of relieved," I rubbed nervously at the back of my head as Quatre stared at me in shock, "I know, I know, I'm an asshole for being relieved about something like this when it's hard and painful for you... but..." I swallowed roughly, "I... I don't know what I am. I don't know if I like boys or if I like nothing at all, but I know that I don't like girls. There's something... not normal about me, Zechs was right about that much, and I don't know what to do about it. I was too terrified to say anything to you about it until now," I laughed nervously, "I'm still kind of terrified, even if you have the same problem."

I watched my friend with the same intensity he had been watching me with while I had been accusing him of liking Trowa, and while Quatre had regained some color back as I had confessed to him, I could feel myself becoming pale and shaky. I watched for any indication he might be disgusted about what I had just said, or judging me in some way, but he only looked shocked and pained.

"Duo, that's..." he looked as uncomfortable about this conversation as I felt and that gave me some hope that this wouldn't end too badly, that I hadn't made a colossal mistake, "You can't make that kind of assumption about yourself just because you didn't like kissing Relena," he said, that pained tone still there along with some familiarity. Had he gone through something similar?

"That's not the reason," I protested, "Well, it's part of it, but-"

"Hold on," he stopped me, looking around the street, "We shouldn't talk about this here."

I nodded. There was no one on the street that we were on, but it was a very public road and this wasn't the sort of thing I wanted anyone but us hearing. It made me feel better just knowing that Quatre was willing to have this conversation with me and hadn't walked away at that point.

"C'mon," he took my hand and tugged me along.

Despite everything, that one little action made me stupidly happy. I had made him so upset earlier, but he was acting like it had never happened. He was more concerned about having this talk with me than the accusations I had made. Best of all, he didn't hate me yet. I let him lead me through the bushes on the side of the road and into a small wooded area that was pretty secluded. I could still see the street from where we were, but unless we started shouting, no one would hear us.

"You said this isn't about Relena," Quatre said as I leaned against a tree, "but you said yourself that you didn't like her kissing you. After everything she's done to you, even if you liked girls, I doubt you'd enjoy that. So what is this about?"

I felt my insides squirming again. It was one thing to decide to talk to Quatre about my problems, it was a whole other issue finding the courage to do so after all of my fears and anxieties.

"I don't want you to hate me," I murmured, "That's why I haven't told you. I was afraid you would be disgusted, or think I was a freak and not want to be friends anymore."

Quatre's entire face softened, losing his guarded expression. That pained look he had had grew and for one panicked moment, I thought he was going to hug me. I don't think I would have been able to handle that. As things were, I felt like I was on the very edge between having some tentative control over my emotions and breaking down into a crying fit. For what seemed like the thousandth time, I felt doubt and wished I had never brought this up. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to feel this fear and self-disgust anymore, but it wasn't going to go away by just not talking about it, either.

"Duo," he said slowly, not like he was talking to a child, but weighing his words carefully, "How would you feel if I told you I was gay?"

I chewed on my lip as I considered what he was saying. My immediate reaction was to shout that I didn't care about stuff like that, but I saw how serious my friend was, and I knew this wasn't something I could brush off. How did I feel about Quatre possibly being gay, beyond wanting him to help with my own problems or even him might having a crush on Trowa? After finding out about that, I hadn't given it a whole lot of serious thought. But then again, I had never really given much thought to Quatre's sexuality at all, just my own.

I had never pictured him one day going out with some girl. Had that been because I hadn't wanted to think about something... someone taking my friend away from me, or was I even more childish than that?

I didn't know anything about Quatre's parents beyond the fact that they were more concerned with their careers than their children. I didn't know if they were like my father and looked down at homosexuals with disgust and that was a reason for Quatre's fears, or if he was just scared about anyone finding out about his feelings for Trowa. I didn't blame him for that fear, I had felt similar terror towards my own sexuality. I might be ignorant about things, but I understood enough about the world to know being gay was far from a glamorous thing, especially in a small, conservative town like ours.

But how did I feel about Quatre's sexuality? Looking at him and thinking about him loving another boy, I didn't feel any sort of disgust towards him. I wasn't religious, but even if I was, I don't think I could have looked down at him. Maybe it was because I was going through the same problems, but I think it was because, when I looked at him, I didn't see a fag like I'm sure our classmates would, I just saw my best friend. I think that's truly what being gay is. It isn't the only thing that defines a person, although people treat it that way. And it isn't something disgusting.

Being gay was just a part of Quatre, a piece of who he was, and I couldn't think of taking that piece out of him any more than any other piece, like his love of math or his kindness. Most of all, I just didn't see how him being gay made him bad or any different, like someone who liked spicy foods when others didn't. Quatre was my best friend, and if he wanted to love someone of the same gender, how did that change things? I thought of my doubts about my parents' love for me and wondered how love could be bad. Wasn't it the thing everyone wanted, to be loved? In comparison to all the bad things, like my father's abuse and Quatre's parents' neglect, how was love, even if it was different, be bad?

These were adult thoughts for someone my age, I guess, but it was exactly how I felt, and even just realizing them helped me a lot in how I felt about my own sexual identity crisis. In the grand scheme of things, did it really matter that I didn't like girls? Liking them wouldn't change much, as far as I saw it. I was poor, strange, bullied, and had very little redeeming qualities, let alone interesting ones. I don't know what Relena had seen in me to want to kiss me, but I wasn't handsome like Zechs and Trowa were and I wasn't athletic. What sort of person, female or otherwise, would want to date me? Relena was twisted, so her liking me didn't really help.

Being straight wasn't going to stop Relena and Zechs from bullying me. They were still going to pick on me and call me fag even if I had a girlfriend. It wouldn't make me any wealthier or any less of a social outcast. And if I was either gay or asexual, how would it make my life any worse? My parents already hated me. If Relena and Zechs found out about it, their abuse would get worse, but it was already bad to begin withy. My life wasn't going to change a whole lot as long as no one found out about it. How hard could it be to keep it a secret? If I was gay, I hadn't found anyone I liked so far and no one had truly figured it out yet.

None of these thoughts gave me any relief or happiness. I didn't want to live my life alone, hiding away a part of me like it was a filthy secret, but I didn't know what I wanted. To date a boy, fall in love, live together like a married couple would, only to be harassed and hated for it didn't appeal to me anymore than never finding out how love feels did. I might not look down at Quatre for his sexuality, but I didn't expect anyone but him to do the same for me. I still felt scared and confused about all of this, but I also felt like, in realizing my acceptance of Quatre's sexual identity, I might be able to accept mine, too, even if it was far off in the future.

"I already said it doesn't bother me," I said with a shrug, "and that's the truth. You're my best friend, and you're the same person you've always been to me. It's not like you've changed, I was just too dumb to realize something about you. Even if I did like girls, I would never look down on you for liking boys."

He looked down at his feet, thinking about something for a long time before he looked up at me again.

"I do like Trowa," he admitted softly, as though he couldn't possibly say such a thing any louder than that, "I like him a lot. When I first met him, I was just a lame underclassmen and he was just this eighth grader that was popular and good at basketball, and really, really handsome. I've... worried about how I feel around other boys for awhile now. It wasn't just that I didn't like girls, I liked boys before I didn't like girls, but Trowa was the first person to make me really realize it wasn't a fluke. I've never been attracted to anyone like I am with him," he smiled and it was such a brilliant, lovely smile, it almost took my breath out of my lungs, the sort of smile you see on people when they talk about their girlfriends and boyfriends, a type of smile that, as cliche as it sounds, really does light up the room.

"Then we started talking to each other. I don't know how it happened and I don't remember who talked to who first, but I didn't just think he was cute and handsome, he was nice. He knew that Zechs was bullying me, but he still talked to me and he's never been mean to me. He's smart and funny when he opens up. Being around him makes me happy, Duo, so... stupidly happy. It's like how I feel when I hang out with you, but different. I want things I've never wanted before and he makes me feel better about all the crap in my life. But it's like you say, when Relena and Zechs embarrass me in front of him, it's hurts more than anything else they've ever done to me."

I didn't know how to comfort him as he confessed that, looking devastated and sad, no doubt remembering vomiting in front of Trowa, and that pained me. I felt envious of everything Quatre was saying to me. I wanted to know what it felt like, to have one, single person that could make you feel like that. But it was like everything else in my life, everything I saw that everyone else had and I never would. At the same time, I certainly didn't envy Quatre's pain. If this was what being gay truly was, maybe it would be better to be asexual, maybe better to never fall in love at all.

I didn't ask him if he had told Trowa about how he felt, or asked him out or any of that because they were all stupid questions. Of course he hadn't. Trowa was nice and he wasn't an asshole like Zechs, but that didn't mean that he would understand, or that he would accept Quatre, let alone if he felt the same. I wanted to believe that he did, that Trowa's shyness was the same as Quatre's, but I was biased. I felt like I should give him some sort of advice, to help him deal with his problem, but I felt incredibly ill equipped to tell him anything. Maybe if I had, I could have helped him, but even now I don't have a clue what was the right thing to say to him. In the end, he helped me a whole hell of a lot more than I could help him.

"I don't want this for you," he murmured suddenly, his blue green eyes were stormy as he looked at me, his pale face pinched with the same pain I had felt listening to him talk about Trowa, "I'd never want you to... to be like this, even if it made me feel better to have someone I can talk to about how I feel."

"It's lonely," I said, remembering how I had felt after my mother had told me I was unwanted, how I had wanted to talk to someone about it and about my confusion concerning my sexuality, but too afraid to say anything even to Quatre and how isolated and alone I had felt.

I hit the nail right on the head with those two small words. He stared at me in absolute shock, like he couldn't believe that I was real before his expression melted away into this incredibly powerful emotion. I realized that he felt the same exact thing I had felt, that isolation and absolute loneliness, all those fears and believing that no one would understand. In that moment, I felt a deep connection to him, more intense than I had ever felt with him before and looking at his face, I knew he felt it, too.

"It isn't just because of Relena?" he asked again, his voice weak and unsteady.

I shook my head.

"It was partly because of that," I confessed, "but even before that, I thought it was kind of weird that I don't like any of the girls in our school. I had thought that, at my age, even if I didn't want to date any of them, I should feel some attraction. When Relena kissed me, I didn't feel anything at all. It just repulsed me. I thought... I had hoped it was because I hate her, but I wasn't sure that was the real reason. But..." I squirmed, not wanting to tell him what had happened when I had taken those magazine spreads home, "when I looked at those naked pictures Zechs put in my locker... I didn't feel anything at all."

"That doesn't mean that you're gay," Quatre pointed out, but he sounded like he only half believed that.

"Maybe," I could admit that much at least.

I had been incredibly stressed when I had tried to masturbate to those pictures. I had tried so hard to find something arousing in them, even though it was my first time actually looking at a naked woman, but in reality I had been probably more focused on my fears of failure than actually enjoying what I was looking at. But how could I possibly relate to my best friend those fears, the desperation that I had looked at those pictures, and this feeling, so deeply rooted inside of me, that it had nothing to do with my fear or my age or anything else? That somewhere inside of me, the realization that I didn't like girls seemed right, as messed up as that was?

"I don't know if I'm gay," I murmured, "but I know I'm not straight. It just... doesn't feel right to me."

He nodded and that one, singular motion of his head almost drove me to tears. How was it possible that someone like me could end up so lucky to be friends with someone who could understand me like this, that wasn't judging me, but could actually sympathize with me?

"I didn't know what I was going to do," I heard myself say, like I was having some kind of out of body experience or someone had given me a truth serum, "I don't even know if I'm gay or if I'm never going to like anyone, regardless of gender, I still don't know what I'm going to do about it, or if Zechs and Relena or my father find out about it-"

"Duo," Quatre interrupted me with a soft smile, that same smile he always used to comfort me when I was upset and it wasn't until I saw it and realized my hands had started shaking that I understood how upset I was. He took a step towards me and grasped my hand in his, stopping it from trembling, "Believe me, I know how difficult it is, but I promise you, it'll turn out ok."

And just like that, for the first time since I had opened my locker to Zechs's latest prank, I thought it just might be. When Quatre told me, with a tone that said, regardless of his words, that he had been and was in the same dark place that I was in, that it was going to be ok, I believed him. I shouldn't have. I had always trusted him. After all the beatings my father had given me, after all of the harsh, terrible things my mother had said to me, after all of Relena and Zechs's bullying, and after all of the willfully oblivious people in my life, I still trusted so blindly.

I trusted him to tell me the truth after four years of friendship. So as mature as I saw myself, I never realized that he had been lying to me.
*****
I guess what I just wrote sounds pretty terrible. It probably sounds like Quatre was totally bullshitting me, deceiving me. It wasn't like that, at least I refuse to believe he had said those things to hurt me in some way. Knowing him, the way Quatre had probably seen it was that I was suffering, in the same way he had no doubt suffered when he had first figured out he wasn't... quite normal, and no one had comforted him. Things weren't going to be alright because they had never become alright for him, but if he could make me believe that they would be, what was the harm?

It wasn't all Quatre's fault, either. I let him lie to me. I knew fully well that Quatre's acceptance of his homosexuality hadn't gotten better. When I had confronted him about it, he had been terrified, and when he talked about his crush on Trowa, he sounded so pained and sad. What, exactly, had gotten better for him? But I let him lie to me and I let myself believe the lie because it made me feel better, that idea that, eventually, all the shit that I was worrying about would amount to no big deal, even if the realist in me knew better.

If it weren't for those words and Quatre's support, I don't know what I would have done about the things I had learned about myself, but I do know he helped me more than anyone else ever could. Over the next two days, we met in secluded places, but never the same place, Quatre bringing food from home, and we just sat and talked. He listened to me talk about how scared I was, how desperate to be normal and how much I wanted to find someone like Trowa, to know what it was like to have a crush on someone, that I wanted to figure out who and what I really was and how frustrating not having any answers was. I didn't tell him about my mother had said and that I felt almost frantic to prove to myself that the reason why I wasn't attracted to anyone wasn't because love was something I would never experience in my life.

Quatre listened and then told me about his own experiences, which I will admit were more vast than my own. He told me about his suspicions of being... different for the last year and a half. Like me, he had worried that he didn't seem to connect with girls or feel any attraction to them, but unlike me, he had started to realize that all the things normal boys went through at our age, starting to notice girls not as cootie factories but as something interesting and attractive, he was going through with boys. He was noticing boys, looking at hem with interest.

While our male classmates were becoming transfixed and obsessed with soft hands and breasts, my best friend had started to think about bigger, rougher hands and wide shoulders. It wasn't anything overtly sexual. Given a few more years and I'm sure it would have become that, but it was just a notice, a fascination for him at that age. A fascination that drove home to me how strange I was, that I couldn't find one thing about just one other person that made me feel that way.

When it had dawned on him what these interests meant, he had become terrified, Quatre told me. As it turned out, his father was rather traditional and old-fashioned, and would no doubt greet Quatre's new found sexuality with the same intense level of disgust and disdain as my father would rage and repulsion. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but that was the picture Quatre painted for me in both the quavering tone his voice adopted as he spoke of the possibility of his parents finding out, and the almost obsessed fervor he spoke with when talking about hiding all this from them. I understood what lay between the lines of that confession perfectly. His parents already barely spoke to him, he would never give them a reason to stop loving him entirely. In that moment, even before my best friend had abandoned me, I felt how cruel the world really was. Quatre and I were freaks. Normal kids are told that their parents will love them no matter what, that they just need to be themselves and they'll be accepted. None of that was true. Maybe most parents do love their kids, but not all of them do, like my parents. And maybe some parents love their kids no matter what, but a lot of them only love them if they fit into their idea of what their kid should be, like Quatre's.

The cruelty of it was that Quatre hadn't done anything wrong. In all aspects, he was the sort of kid that fathers like his, fathers that wanted the 'perfect child', prayed for and craved. Quatre was bright, interested in his education, well behaved and well mannered, and if his father paid more than two minutes attention to him, he would realize just how lucky he was to have him instead of a son like Zechs Dorlian. In all aspects, Quatre was everything his father had wanted, except for his sexuality, something he could never change.

It seemed like such a small thing to me, that that was the one thing that would take his parents' love from him. If it ever turned out that Trowa liked him, too, or he found some other boy that he liked and liked him back, he would have to make a choice between a boyfriend and his parents. I had no idea what he would choose if that happened. It was terrible, but I actually hoped Trowa didn't like Quatre and he wouldn't find anyone to date until he was much older and ready to deal with that choice. The way things were going for me, I would never need to make that choice, but if it were me in his shoes... I wanted to think I would choose the person I loved over my parents. Any kind of love had to be better than the kind Quatre's had for him, and it was certainly better than how my parents treated me, but even as I thought that, I felt doubt. Even after learning that my parents wished I had never been born, I still felt love for them and I still wanted them to love me. I wasn't even sure, if I did at some point in my life want to date someone, if I could throw away that possibility so surely. And that just made me feel pathetic.

End Part 2
Author's Note: Before anyone bitches at me about this, I am well aware that asexuality does not mean not being in any romantic relationships, it simply means not having any desire or put any importance towards sex. Bare in mind that this entire story is from Duo's point of view and he has a lot of misconceptions about things.

　
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A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)