Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Music's Calling ❯ Picture Day ( Chapter 2 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

When Duo left the bathroom in Trowa’s slightly too long sweats and the t-shirt that hugged his more bulky frame he headed straight for the living room where the music – which no longer seemed to be playing – had been located. However, while the radio didn’t seem to be on anymore, there was music; Duo could pick out the stirring sounds of a beautifully played violin mixed in with the exquisite counter point of Trowa’s flute as he got closer. It had him pausing in the hallway before he could fully see into the gigantic room that faced the ocean. Duo figured that Quatre was there, he was the only one he knew that could play the violin so well. And he was unaccountably angry at the thought that Quatre was there - he loved the Arabian, he was one of his best friends and he knew that he was even better friends with Trowa and that they often played music together. But telling himself this didn’t change his anger, that was what had him pausing, he really couldn’t understand why he was angry. Trowa certainly didn’t belong to him, he sometimes wished that he did, but the sometimes acrobat wasn’t his. He raised a hand to his forehead where Trowa’s lips had lain and ruefully shook his head. He knew that Trowa was at least bi like himself – he’d mentioned a boyfriend at one point - which is why he’d had no problem taunting the man when he was in the tub. But he’d always thought that Trowa had a thing for Quatre – that is until Quatre started dating Dorothy and told him that it was Trowa who’d finally convinced him to go for it. After that he’d thought that maybe he might have a chance with the Heavyarms pilot, but the man had had a girlfriend last he checked. Duo hadn’t realized he’d started pouting until his subconscious yelled at him. /Get a grip Maxwell!/ Shinigami snapping at him had him raising his eyes from their contemplative stare at the carpet and forcing himself to walk into the room.

Coming around the corner Duo paused in the act of opening his mouth and saying hi to Quatre, the man wasn’t there. Trowa was facing out the window, his back to Duo as he played his flute with a recording. It took Duo a couple of seconds to get over the mixed feelings about being mad at Quatre for being there and then being mad at Quatre for not being there before he recognized the song. He picked up where he thought Trowa might be at in the song and began singing, “How Bess, the landlord's daughter, the landlord's black-eyed daughter, had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there...”

Trowa startled and the sound of the flute cut off as Duo continued to sing the song with the violin recording. He found the brunette’s reflection in the window and smiled before resuming his antics with the flute. He loved the sound of Duo’s voice, it ghosted over and through him like the sun’s rays through a window pane. He shuddered slightly as he remembered the braided man giving him permission to look at him while he bathed. The song ended as the thought crossed his mind and he looked Duo over in the glass, “You want a hair brush?”

Duo’s hair hung in a damp tangled mass down his back, “That would be fantastic actually.” The ex-pilot grinned self-consciously at Trowa as the green eyed man put his flute away and turned the recording off. “This place is beautiful.”

Trowa looked over at Duo and smiled, “Thank you. I’ll be right back.” He left the room and headed back up the stairs to grab a hairbrush. Re-entering the room he saw that Duo had obviously wandered around, he was holding a picture frame from the fireplace mantle on one side of the big open room but was sitting on the couch on the opposite side. Trowa grinned, “You can’t ever be still for long can you?”

Duo jumped, not having heard the Silencer as he approached his position on the couch, he grinned sheepishly, “Nope.” He glanced at the brush in Trowa’s hand before looking down at the picture again. “When was this taken?”

Trowa glanced down at the picture and blushed; he’d forgotten he had that one out here. Quatre always teased him about it, knowing that Trowa had had a crush on the God of Death since he’d first met the boy. The picture was of Duo eating ice cream, he had mint dabbed on his nose and bubblegum smeared across his cheekbone. When Wufei had taken the photo initially it had had all three pilots in it – Duo, Trowa and Quatre – but Quatre had taken his copy and cropped himself and Trowa out and given the picture of Duo to Trowa as a birthday present a couple years ago. The mint on Duo’s nose had been from Trowa’s ice cream cone and the bubblegum streak from Quatre’s. Duo was eating chocolate – Wufei had had vanilla. In the full picture Quatre had vanilla on his cheek and chocolate on his chin, and Trowa had chocolate on his nose and bubblegum on his chin; Wufei had started it all by tapping Quatre with his but then backed away quickly and took out his camera. Trowa kept his copy of the whole picture in his wallet; it had been taken at their little get together for his retirement some three years ago. Heero hadn’t been able to make it, but they’d bought him a carton of his favorite blueberry ice cream for when he got back.

“You don’t remember that?” Trowa asked after a moment.

“Umm, not really. I eat ice cream a lot... and Wufei and Heero tend to get into ice cream fights a lot.” Duo scratched the back of his head in a nervous gesture, somehow he felt bad that he didn’t remember this.

“Well maybe this will help you out.” Trowa smiled and pulled out the picture from his wallet and handed it to Duo. He sat down on the couch next to the man, laying the brush across his lap.

Duo took the picture and looked at it for half a second before his eyes widened and he looked ready to bolt from the room. He remembered now, it was the first time he’d ever seen Trowa do anything goofy – when Trowa had leaned across the little table they were seated around and put his cold green ice cream on his nose Duo had almost gone into shock. The look on his own face in the picture though, after he’d got his revenge on both Trowa and Quatre was what had him wanting to run from the room. To anyone but him it probably looked like he was simply enjoying the rest of his ice cream after achieving victory, but Duo knew better, he was looking straight at Trowa with his heart in his eyes. It took him several moments before he could calm himself down, finally realizing that Trowa had probably had these pictures for years now and he’d never made anything out of it, so he probably didn’t know.

Trowa had been a bit startled by Duo’s reaction to the photo and watched tensely as the braided man slowly lost his panicked edge. “You okay Duo?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m fine. Sorry.” Duo looked over at him before handing back the small picture containing the three of them. He gestured to the frame in his hand, “How come this one’s cropped down to just me?”

Trowa chuckled, “You’d have to ask Quatre that one. He gave me that for my birthday a couple years ago. I’d told him I didn’t want anything extravagant or flashy; I wanted something that told me he understood me. I figured I’d get less hassle if I tagged on that last bit.” Trowa smiled ruefully reflecting on the pout Quatre had given him about his present not being expensive. Heck the blonde had pouted when Trowa had opened the gift, saying that he would have preferred to give him something more sophisticated, but Trowa had loved it, he’d sat there staring at it for ten minutes before Quatre had smacked him and taken the picture away and placed it on the mantle. Where it had stayed until Duo found it.

“You told him to give you something that proved he understood you and he gave you a doofy picture of me?” Duo was a bit confused on that score.

“Well yeah. That was the day I could let the Silencer go. I didn’t have to be a mercenary any more, I wasn’t a Gundam pilot, I wasn’t a Preventer, I wasn’t a keeper of the peace. While I could go back to the circus, and any time that they are in the area I do join the show, I didn’t have to be an actor anymore. I could finally figure out who ‘I’ am. The fact that I joined in on the ice cream fight was proof of that. However, you were the only person I attacked... I guess that’s why he cropped it.” Trowa shrugged helplessly, he knew he could lie with the best of them and his excuses would probably be something that Quatre would agree with, but he knew that wasn’t why Quatre had done it. The picture had honestly proved exactly how well Quatre did know him, and lying to Duo wasn’t as easy as all that. After all, while Trowa could lie with the best of them, Duo was the best lie detector in the solar system. Trowa had always admired him for that: Duo would never lie, but he never gave anything away either. Trowa wasn’t that good, but he could act. So he pulled on a mask, something he hadn’t done in a while, and turned to the man next to him whose eyes were still glued to the picture in his hands.