Logorrhea

Logorrhea

\"The truth, Quatre...is that I got her pregnant.\"

Quatre bit his lips shut and closed his eyes while he breathed in
deeply, to prevent man\'s worst enemy from making more of a fool of him.

Logorrhea.

The condition of being utterly unable to shut the fuck up.

Air, throught cleansing and crucial to brain function. He needed more
of it than he was getting.

His nostrils flared one last time before he sat back, eyes open and
lips unpursed, looking more composed than he felt. He folded his arms
across his chest and allowed a wry curl to warp his lips. More than ever,
he was glad for his glasses, which some choice friends had told him
amplified the power of his eyes. He concentrated on his anger and a feigned
sense of arrogance.

\"Well, that\'s great,\" he grinned in the most self-satisfied way that he
could muster, \"because I\'ve outgrown you.\"

\"Don\'t say that, Quatre,\" Tom pleaded. He had thought that he\'d finally
pulled one over his younger lover, but was surprised to find that his
sordid expression had backfired on him so badly.

\"What Tom? Don\'t say it because it\'s true?\" Quatre patronized him.

After seven years with the same man, Quatre had mastered most, if not
all, of his insecurities. Some of the most sore, he was currently
exploiting: the age gap, the class gap, and the yawning intelligence gap.
Quatre wasn\'t as well-read as Tom, but he could argue better. He could
argue about something that he knew absolutely nothing about and win.

Tom had pursued Quatre when he was still a student in highschool and a
year shy of consent. At first he had been rebuffed, but eventually won
the young man over by dazzling him with his wit and passion for
learning, which had been somewhat exaggerated for Quatre\'s sake.

How else could an average looking man pushing thirty snap up such an
attractive sixteen year old?

He hated to admit it, but, Quatre, now twenty-three years old, had
really and truthfully outgrown him.

In a few respects, he had expected Quatre to act like a sixteen year
old, brimming with hormones and faults. He\'d hoped for tears, for
apologies, and perhaps a little bit of a scene. He could handle all that, he
was a teacher. What he had trouble approaching in the face of imminent
destruction was composure.

Quatre\'s ego leapt at the sight of Tom\'s unease, and he began to feel
more cool under the blistering anger that he felt rise up in his skin at
the mere thought of betrayal. He was the type of man to perform
exceptionally well under pressure, while Tom was the type of man to do
admirably when he wasn\'t faced with more immediate fears of castration.

\"W-well, I\'m glad to see that you\'re taking the news so well...\" Tom
said lamely.

Quatre laughed a little, and feared for a heartbeat that it would take
on the ring of a sob, \"I don\'t think that you understand, Tom.\" He
lowered his voice to where it would be confined to the space between them,
\"I\'m young. I\'ll bounce back from this.\" His voice took on a sardonic
edge, \"What are you? You\'re old. And worse-you\'re predictable.\" He
glanced to either side as if checking to make sure that no one was listening
in, then focused his attention once more on Tom, \"What is going to
happen the next time some hot tail crosses your path? You\'ll be older.
You\'ll be balder. You will have a kid. Hell-you may even have a wife! And,
god knows, you\'ve no money to speak of either!\"

He stopped there. He didn\'t want to throw so much dirt at Tom that he
ended up in a hole.

Tom looked as low as he\'d ever been, and Quatre allowed himself a
moment to bask in his victory before getting up to leave. He hated stuffy
restaurants, and even more-so now that this particular stuffy restaurant
had Tom in it.

He tossed a few rumpled bills on the table and finished everything off
with, \"Thank you for a wonderful evening.\"

++

The moment he set foot outside the restaurant, nerves began to take
him.

\"Ugh...suck....\" he muttered and chose a direction to wander.
\"Hungry...\"

He\'d left his dinner half-finished at that frou-frou hut, a move that
Tom had probably not counted on. The idea had probably been something
along the lines of the reverse to that. Tom had probably conceived of a
plot to confess his infidelity, to declare the relationship over, and
then to leave Quatre to finish his dinner. Now, it was Tom stuck back at
the table to push the food around his own plate.

\"Fucker,\" Quatre spat, more incensed the more he thought about it.

He reached a shaky hand up and swiped away a few errant tears from his
lashes.

++

He spent the first few nights of their separation lodged at a friend\'s
house.

Their friend.

Quatre couldn\'t think of a single friend exclusive to himself, and
thus, had to settle on Heath, the most dependable of their acquaintances.
He was a bachelor English teacher with an eye out for older women, not
younger men of Quatre\'s make.

It was in these turbulent days that Quatre resolved to make his own
friends, friends his own age, and to set his life in order. He surprised
himself to discover just how much of his life had been changed to
accomodate Tom\'s. He was amazed that he even had a personality of his own
with the degree that his life and Tom\'s life overlapped.

In the first day after his break with Tom, he visited every college and
university in the city and their message boards. He called every
roommate seeking ad that he qualified for and booked his second day of
bachelorship full of visits.
More work, less grief, became something of the equivalent to a
battle cry for him.

The last thing that his pride would stand for was to cry over a
\'philandering shithead\' like Tom.

He bought a notebook at a convenience store and wrote on the second
page in a bold sprawling script: Who I am.

The phrase brought him some comfort, and he decided to stick to it.

Who was he without Tom?

\"Quatre Raberba Winner.\"

Better than Tom.

++

It was towards the close of the day that Quatre found living conditions
and a roommate that he found agreeable.

\"When can I move in?\"

Duo blinked. They had been on a completely difference subject one
sentence back. \"Anytime, I guess.\"

\"Tomorrow, then,\" Quatre said.

\"Eager, aint\'cha?\" Duo teased in a friendly tone.

Without hesitation, Quatre replied seriously, \"Yes.\"

++

\"He\'s a severe little guy, that new roommate of mine,\" Duo spoke softly
into the reciever, lest Quatre overhear him from wherever he was in the
apartment. His ears were terribly sharp.

\"How so?\" Heero asked, mildly interested.

A spell of relief wriggled up Duo\'s spine. He had been afraid that he\'d
have to go on without Heero\'s prompting, and whenever he did that, he
always felt like a chatterbox. \"He operates on a routine, like
clockwork. I hear his alarm go off at five every morning, he hits the books,
then, at six, he goes for a jog, at seven, he takes a shower and whatever
hygeine, then at seven-thirty, he watches the news, and then at seven
forty-five he takes off for work. It\'s the same thing every morning. At
night he\'s no better. He gets home sometime before seven, goes for a
run around seven-thirty, rises off at eight-thirty, and hits the books
until bed. He\'s like a machine. I don\'t that I\'ve ever seen him eat.\"

\"Is that all?\" Heero had a routine of his own, and didn\'t feel that it
was anything that merited worry.

Duo frowned. He\'d expected Heero not to care, but it still disappointed
him, \"Well, and also, he\'s been collecting lucky bamboo plants like no
one\'s business. He\'s beginning to remind me of Leon from The
Professional. I\'ll ask him in the morning what he does for a living, then he\'ll
turn to me and say,\" he channeled Jean Reno, \"\'I am a cleaner.\'\"

\"If he were Leon, he wouldn\'t have to pay half the rent on your shitty
apartment.\"

\"You only say that because you don\'t live with him,\" Duo retorted
hotly.

\"I\'ve never met him,\" Heero replied placidly.

\"Are you free on Friday?\" Duo asked, an idea striking him.

\"Yeah, why?\"

\"Excellent!\" Duo exclaimed.

It had never occured to him to drag Quatre out before since his
neurotic roomie was always busy and they saw each other in passing all the
time, but if he asked with Heero on the phone as leverage, Quatre would
have to be more reluctant to decline. No one likes to look like an ass to
strangers.

\"I\'m gonna ask Quatre to go out with us on Friday,\" Duo declared as he
fairly skipped out of his room.

++

Quatre felt foxed.

He\'d tried in the days immediately following his break-up to mingle
with people his age, to do as they do, and felt every time like a fish out
of water. It had frightened him to realize that he felt too old for all
of it. Nothing that people his age did or said was serious enough for
him.

So this is me \'bouncing back\'? he thought to himself wryly.

It was after the final revelrie a week and a half after Tom that he
decided to immerse himself in work. He needed something to stop himself
from thinking about himself, and what better way to do that than rigorous
routine?

Now he was at some random club, out of routine, with his gabby
roommate, also out of routine, with a five-hundred page novel in his hand and a
nerdy reading light tucked in his pocket. It had become a habit for him
to carry around distractions: pencil and notepad, novels, study
materials, push-pens, etc. He hated the times when he found himself a million
miles away within himself and unable to recognize the structures of his
being that were. It was as if his life had ended at sixteen.

Now he was getting round-the-table introductions, the one to his right,
ofcourse, was Duo, then there was: Heero, Hilde, Dorothy, Relena,
Nicolas, and some other Joes.

\"And, this, everyone, is the imfamous Quatre,\" Duo said indicating the
one and only Quatre with a generous sweep and flourish of his hand.

Quatre struggled to keep his chin level and managed a \'hello.\'

The girls smiled and cooed at him in playful adoration.

Quatre was as far away from his comfort zone as he\'d ever been. He was
in someone else\'s slacks and sitting at a table among someone else\'s
friends. Duo had played dress-up with him earlier due to the troubling
reality that Quatre didn\'t own anything other than his alternate exercise
attire that didn\'t look like it belonged in Edwardian England.

Now Quatre looked more current in a zip-up blue shirt with a formal
collar that Duo had last-minute tailored to fit him. The slacks, Duo had
hemmed as well, since he was a good two to three inches leggier than
Quatre. He could hem anything, in part due to his studies into fashion,
and partly because of years of living poor.

Quatre had wanted to wear his own clothes, but Duo had insisted on the
change. The one thing that Duo couldn\'t make Quatre give up was the
necktie, and he decided that it gave a good effect despite his earlier
reservations.

After all the \'hello\'s\' were said, an air of expectancy settled upon
the group, and Quatre realized after a while that it must be him. He\'d
disturbed their balance.

\"Don\'t hold back here on my account,\" he told them with a dull smile.

One by one, people left the table. The longer that they lingered, the
more unremarkable Quatre seemed to become.

\"See? That\'s what I\'m talking about,\" Duo whispered to Heero when they
were out of earshot.

Heero shrugged, \"Maybe he just doesn\'t like you.\"

\"Oh, you liar!\" Duo laughed between them and led him into the crowd of
dancers.

++

Left to himself, Quatre grew disinterested in his book and set it
aside.

I\'m tired, he told himself. All the way down to the
marrow...What an old guy I\'ve become!

He watched other people his age dancing away from the tiny tables
clustered near the bar. They were joyful and unrestricted and he longed for
that. He wanted to be able to laugh at little things that might not
truly be funny and to know what to say to another twenty-three year old.
He knew what would be interesting to a forty-what year old, but his own
age group was beguiling and frightening.

The music is so loud!

Old.

What kind of dancing is that? Get a room!

Old.

So tired!

Old.

He looked at his hands, the youthful skin kept radiant thanks to the
strict self-care rules that Tom had enforced on Quatre when they were
still together.

His take-over had been gradual, but, eventually, Quatre took care of
his skin, exercised every day even though he hated it, and conducted
himself in the way that Tom found the most appealing.

Tom, though he dispensed this advice that became the rule, still looked
hopelessly average.

Quatre wondered what Tom\'s kid would look like.

A wave of sudden despair crashed over his head.

Don\'t cry, stupid, he chided himself. No one likes a
crybaby.

Three months had passed, and Quatre was still single. He checked
himself in the mirror every day and every day he didn\'t think that he looked
ugly. He had a sufferable personality. And, he was well read.

What was wrong with him?

Was he just used goods?

He looked at the rowdy crowd near the main set of speakers.

If I were a normal guy, I\'d be over there, he mused. But, then
again, I have no concept of what a normal guy like me should do. If I had
any good idea of it, I probably would have damn well done it.

He emerged from his thoughts at the wave of a hand out of the corner of
his eye to his left.

Did he dare?

He turned to get a better look at the person sending out salutations
and was struck dumb.

A concentrated warmth seeped out of his heart and raced through the
channels of his strong young arteries, bursting into capillary beds and
infusing him with a sensation of complete exposure, and he knew
instinctively what this alien sensation signified. Lust.

Never in his entire twenty-three years of life had he been subjected to
the tender mercies of lust, not even with Tom, and the feeling was
pleasant and sickening all in the same moment. His body felt foreign to
him, even as he held up a hand to wave back.

The man at the other table smiled, and it was beautiful. As beautiful
and as natural as anything Quatre had ever seen.

He couldn\'t help but smile back and hope.

Please talk to me...but, also...god, I wish that you would turn
away...

One of these prayers was answered.

The man got up from his table and made the short trip over to where
Quatre sat so afraid that he could barely move.

\"Are you stranded, too?\" the stranger asked. His voice was smooth and
soft in its richness. Quatre fell in lust with his voice as well. This
man could have babbled nonsensical phrases in made-up languages and
Quatre could easily envision himself hanging on every word.

The word \'desperate\' crossed his mind once or twice.

Was it his loneliness, his loins, or his heart that was getting caught
up in this exchange?

\"Yeah,\" he replied finally and scoured his mind for something more
intelligent to follow up with.

You graduated in the top five percent of your highschool class. You
graduated with honors from a university. You are a top editor for one
of the nation\'s largest publishing companies. Brain!-why aren\'t you
working? he berated himself.

\"May I sit here?\" the stranger asked, indicating a seat straight across
from Quatre.

Quatre forced a smile, \"Sure.\" He felt like sinking under the table.

The stranger took a seat and brushed a few stray shadow black strands
of hair from his face before taking up speech once more, \"It\'s a
pleasure to make your acquaintance-\" He paused to allow Quatre to introduce
himself.

\"Quatre.\"

\"Quatre, then,\" the stranger smiled again. \"My name is Wufei.\"

\"Pleased to meet you, Wufei,\" Quatre replied careful to pronounce the
name as he had heard it.

++

He and Wufei began to talk, starting on tame topics like: the occasion
of the night for each respectfully, what either did for a living
(Wufei, as it surprisingly turned out, was an assitant district attorney who
hoped to someday become a federal prosecutor), and other humdrum topics
of that nature. It was after a while of testing the waters that they
wandered into more controversial subjects like: state and federal policy,
the way to address contested historical events, and other things of
that sort which usually make-or-break friendships. Many times they found
their views overlapping, so that one would have to play the devil\'s
advocate to keep the discussion interesting.

Quatre admired Wufei\'s gestures which struck him as particularly
graceful and animated, like a ballet.

Wufei\'s hands were masculine and long-fingered, a trait that Quatre
envied who had, unfortunately, inherited his mother\'s hands, small and
feminine. He could have made lists, many many lists, of everything that he
admired about Wufei and wished that he himself possessed. However, it
was Wufei\'s ambition that most dampened Quatre\'s ego.

He could remember a time a long way back when he had dreamed of
directing the moral consciousness of the world through his art. His art or his
writing. He had practiced both interchangeably when he was younger, and
had a flair for illuminating social issues through them.

That was before he met Tom.

Tom had told him that art was a beggar\'s road and steered him towards
gainful employment among the discontented masses. Now, Quatre edited the
work of other writers whose novels exploited the social dilemmas that
he had once wanted to address himself. Perhaps that was why he was such
a tough editor.

He resented their success.

After a time, he voiced his concerns about himself, \"Talking to you...\"
He paused a moment on the wording, but decided to be frank about it.
Wufei\'s good humour seemed to agree more with bluntness. \"Talking to
you,\" he stopped again and checked his voice which had begun to falter,
\"makes me hate myself.\"

At first, it seemed as though Wufei was unmoved by this piteous
declaration and the renegade tears that followed soon after, but in actuality
it was first, a surprise to him that the comment ever came up, and
second, he had long grown accustomed to emotional outbursts due to his work
as an A.D.A.. Gently, he reached across the space between them and
placed his hand over Quatre\'s in one of the few comforting gestures that he
still knew.

++

Somewhere out in the surging crowd, Duo was being nosy.

He tapped Heero on the shoulder and pointed excitedly, \"Look at that!
Look at that!\"

Heero followed the line of his outstretched arm and nodded at what he
saw. \"Oh.\"

Duo rolled his eyes, \"That\'s the most expressive that I\'ve seen that
guy in forever! And, he\'s with someone!\" He tried vainly to make Heero
understand what a breakthrough this was, but his friend had a skull so
thick sometimes that he wondered why he ever tried to share a moment with
him at all. \"I give up.\" He took Heero by the arm, \"Let\'s go,\" and cut
into the crowd.

++

Had he stuck around a few moments more, he would have been privy to an
interesting sight.

Wufei decided that he hadn\'t made his intentions quite clear and
decided in his dry manner to make them expressly unmistakable. He rose out of
his seat and leaned over the table, and in a single unhurried movement
pressed a chaste kiss to Quatre\'s forehead. An experimental peck to
gauge his reaction, though he\'d already guessed it.

Quatre went quite still, and, as expected, closed his eyes.

He was a gentle young man with gentle young tendencies. To Wufei, he
had appeared particularly susceptible to patriarchal forms of affection,
and lo-, he was correct.

He pulled back with a languid grace and looked Quatre straight in the
eyes which regarded him with what he judged to be longing. Perfect. He
lowered his focus to the delicate bud of Quatre\'s lips and pursued them.

He stole his breath away.

And Tom, in time, floated away as well.

++

Months later and decades younger, Quatre was returning to his and
Wufei\'s shared apartment after a morning run.

Usually Wufei liked to join him, but he had left much earlier for work
at the urgent summons of senior A.D.A. Robert Hunnington. It was
alright with Quatre.

Things like this happened from time to time.

He turned the corner onto his street when he was stopped by the
familliar silhouette of a man he\'d once spent seven years of his life on. The
man was pacing around the front of Quatre\'s building with an expectant
air about him.

Nosy guy, Quatre thought peevishly, and decided that there was
no getting around him.

He walked slowly towards him and even hailed him from some paces off,
\"Hullo Tom. What are you doing here?\"

Tom started at the sound of his voice and turned to face him guiltily.
He had a duffel bag hanging loosely from the fingers of his left hand
and Quatre wondered at it a moment before losing most of his interest.

\"So, this is where you live,\" Tom began lamely.

Quatre felt touchy and cut in, \"So, you\'ve noticed.\"

Tom laughed nervously, \"I, actually, I looked you up.\"

\"I know,\" Quatre replied, feeling aloof. \"But, why go to all the
trouble?\"

\"I think that I owe you an apology,\" Tom started again.

Quatre felt a pinch of pity but didn\'t bother about it much, \"No. I owe
you a \'thank you.\'\"

Tom winced, \"So, I guess there\'s \'someone else.\'\"

\"There\'s someone,\" Quatre replied vaguely.

\"I suppose...you have outgrown me,\" Tom admitted.

Quatre nodded, \"I have. But, have you outgrown me?\"

Tom shifted on his feet indecisively, and then replied, \"Probably not.
I have a kid, now. But I still...\" he sucked in air through his teeth
irritably, \"still find myself staring at teenagers.\"

\"Then, you\'d better take care around me,\" Quatre warned teasingly,
\"my guy\'s a District Attorney.\"

Tom shied from the threat. \"Well, anyway, the reason why I came here is
to give you this-\"

He set the duffel on the ground and unzipped it.

Quatre watched with a mild interest, but felt his eyes go wide as he
saw what came out of the bag.

A violin case.

His violin case.

\"I thought that was lost,\" he whispered. He stuck out his hand, \"Give
it here.\"

Tom handed him the case with a barely disguised sigh of relief. \"I
found it the other day. I\'m moving into the missus\'s house, and it was just
lying around in storage.\"

Quatre opened the lid a crack and had to hold back tears at the sight.
His violin was nestled snugly in the felt just as he\'d left it over
seven years before. He couldn\'t remember why he\'d let Tom talk him into
tossing such a treasured thing into storage, but he swore even as he
buckled the fasteners shut that it would never happen again.

\"Thank you, Tom,\" he muttered.

\"Well, that\'s that,\" Tom said and stood about as if he expected more to
happen.

Quatre filled the space with something that he\'d been meaning to tell
him if they ever met again, \"Treat the mother of your child better than
you treated me. That kid, too. You owe them that much.\"

Tom nodded and asked the question that had been nagging him since he
first conceived the notion of \'someone else,\' \"This guy, you\'re seeing.
Is he really all that great?\"

Quatre nodded with conviction, \"He\'s the absolute best.\"

Dejected, Tom nodded again. \"Better than me, eh?\"

Quatre nodded.

Tom sighed, \"I see.\"

He took up the duffel again and started down the street.

Quatre called after him, \"Which is it?\"

Tom looked back with strained pride, \"It\'s a girl.\"

Then, he started off again.


END

note(s):
1. I wrote this when I was really tired. It\'s way past my bedtime right now ;>> if I ever want to wake up in the morning. I told Sari that I\'d finish this fic, today, and VOILA, I kept my word.
2. I liberally interpreted the term \'logorrhea\' for this fic
3. Please R&R