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"Flicker Fade"Written By: Miss Murdered Disclaimer: I don't own the GW characters - am just borrowing to torment for my amusement Rating: NC 17 Warnings: m/m sex, character death (Howard –
I love this guy and I kill him!), some angst, bad language Pairings: 2x3 Summary: Howard's funeral reunites
the former Gundam pilots in Hawaii. But the reunion is complicated
by the fact Trowa and Duo haven't seen each other for years and the
feelings they once had for each other have never quite faded. "Flicker Fade"
Chapter Four You're Playing a Role The store was playing some cheesy music that Trowa guessed was meant to sound "tropical" whatever that meant. It wasn't authentic but then the store was some tourist trap, t-shirts with slogans like "my friend went to Hawaii and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" and small porcelain dolphins, pretend watercolours and post cards. It was not somewhere Trowa would be in if not for necessity. As he had to buy a damn shirt for this funeral. He'd been worried when Duo had told him it would be a hoax, some asshole move but then Trowa knew what Howard had meant to Duo but also the kind of man Howard had been. Loud. Brash. And in his later years drunk and high so the idea of the shirts and board shorts suited the occasion. And he'd confirmed with Heero who had joined him on his shopping trip, amused by Trowa's grumpy mood. "Not get enough sleep last night?" Heero asked and Trowa looked up from a rack of shirts with parrots on, sending a glare in his direction. "We didn't have sex," he replied defensively. "I didn't ask anything," Heero said and he folded his arms across his chest and leaned against a shelving unit with ornamental turtles on, avoiding putting too much weight so that they didn't all come crashing down. "You implied it." Heero shrugged, his face neutral. "But you were with him?" "Why do you care?" "You're both miserable without each other." "We're both miserable with each other," Trowa countered. Heero only grunted and made a move to look at some ceramic star fish as Trowa turned to a hideous rack of shirts. Unlike Heero's who had been pre-warned, Trowa was just going to have to rely on a cheap tourist store and so was looking for one that either wasn't too big, too brightly coloured or didn't featured fish, parrots or flamingos. Heero had a subtle blue shirt with a white and pale blue leaf pattern and Trowa finally found something that wasn't too garish - dark green with yellow and red flowers. It wasn't really bright yellow and red so he could live with it, paying for it and walking with Heero back to their hotel. "You saw him last night," Heero stated and Trowa nodded. "Yeah." Heero grunted and left it there - one thing Trowa had always appreciated about his friendship with Heero Yuy was him understanding the value of silence and not pushing him. Unlike Duo did - Duo who always pushed and scratched and clawed and got under his skin. Sometimes Trowa wondered if Heero would've been a better partner but then Heero wasn't interested in relationships and he didn't like complicating friendships with sex. He was sure Heero didn't live like a monk but he'd never seen Heero with anyone - Trowa supposed Heero had fought for so long to achieve his own identity that he'd not want to put that under pressure in a relationship. Trowa shrugged, he never really knew. Nor did he care. Heero's life was Heero's. But he did care when Heero was pushing him back towards Duo. "We talked. Made out." Heero snorted obviously amused. "Making out... is what teenagers do." "We were piloting Gundams when we were teenagers." "True." After that point they remained silent, the walk back subdued and Trowa wasn't sure whether it was the finality of the day finally sinking in - the fact that they were in Hawaii for a funeral and it was Howard's as by the time they were back at the resort, they parted ways and Trowa went to change before he would drive with Heero in the rental car to the docks. Of course, if Howard had demanded Hawaiian shirts and board shorts then he also demanded his funeral take place on the deck of a Sweeper ship and his ashes be poured into the ocean. It made sense and Trowa got out his shirt, replacing his simple grey tee with the brightly patterned item, wrinkling his nose in visible disgust at what he was being made to wear. He took a moment to see his reflection, the tiredness behind his eyes and then he picked up aviator shades, securing them on his nose and leaving his hotel room. He idly thought about a drink in the hotel bar but instead just grabbed a water from the vending machine and walked around the marble lobby, taking in the surroundings and feeling the air conditioning until Heero appeared. He heard his name and turned when it wasn't Heero but Duo in a bright red shirt and black board shorts, his hands in the pockets and some battered checkerboard Vans on his feet. "Hey," Trowa answered, taking in Duo's appearance, it seemed he'd opted for sunglasses too, perched in the top pocket of his red shirt. "You get some sleep?" "Yeah... You?" Trowa nodded as he had. After jerking off thinking about Duo. Which he didn't think Duo needed to know - not after everything and not with what today was. "Took a while." Duo was rocking back on his heels, his hands in his pockets, an old nervous gesture that Trowa had seen a lot of times. Always around him. Always when Duo was about to spoil for a fight to fuck up their relationship or when he was ready to leave and abandon him. Push him away. Make it easier for Trowa to just walk away. "You okay?" He stopped his rocking then and shrugged his shoulders. "Gotta be, right? Old dudes counting on me." It was then Heero appeared and it seemed he'd either prearranged to meet Wufei and Quatre or some serendipity had happened as they all walked towards them, Wufei's shirt white with blue flowers, Quatre's yellow with white - all of them looking weird in such bright colours. Trowa saw Howard's reasoning for his request then - the only funerals Trowa had attended were the Preventer ones - burying partners and work friends into the ground. And it was always a sea of black, the Preventer dress uniform black, the family and mourners dressed in black, everything... Just dull and listless and depressing. No colour apart from wreaths and flowers and the ESUN flag in blue. But at Howard's everyone would be brightly coloured, a sea of different patterned shirts and Trowa saw why he wanted that. Not sombre black. No visual mourning. It was a celebration rather than some show of grief and Trowa got that. He really did. It didn't mean when he went he wanted anything more than his body being thrown into the sea or jettisoned into space or whatever but still, he saw the strange beauty of the hideous Hawaiian shirts. "You going with 'Ro?" Duo asked and Trowa nodded and instinctively he reached to touch Duo's shoulder in some gesture of comfort. Duo looked up, a strange expression in blue eyes and Trowa let go then. As really, what should he say? "Good luck with the eulogy", "hope this isn't hard for you" - it was trite and meaningless and Trowa was not going to do that. He had always been sparse with his words and he was not going to waste them on some clichéd crap he did not believe. The other's arrived at that very point and Duo made a show of being fine, the "show" that Trowa had seen before, a big smile, a friendly wave, and then his voice cheerful and hiding anything that could be buried underneath. "I've gotta go get Lydia... so see you all there." And with that, he was gone, the four of them watching him go with an over-compensating spring in his step. There were shared glances but no one said anything, the nods and gestures enough for them to confirm they were heading out and Heero handed his ticket to the valet to get their car pulled back around, Trowa fiddling with his sunglasses as they waited for the rental to make its appearance, getting in and driving away from the resort and to the dock. Trowa pushed the button, the windows rolling down and he let the breeze rustle at his hair, tease through the strands, as he thought about the rest of the day. They'd attend this funeral, then there was some kind of wake which Trowa was unsure whether would be conventional and then they'd be back at the hotel and Trowa should probably just go. He should probably just travel back to Europe, to the temporary home he had in a Preventer owned apartment block in Brussels and wait for an undercover op and forget that Duo was ever in his damn life. But why did that still hurt? Fuck. He needed to forget about everything - all the break ups and make up sex, all the stupid reunions, all the times they gave up on each other. Trowa knew they would never make it work and so he just needed to return to the life he had. And forget. The drive was quiet and Trowa turned on a radio station, sick of the silence as he tried to ease his racing thoughts and Heero glanced over then, his focus previously on the road and the tourist traffic. "He's hiding how much it hurts." Trowa sighed. "I know... I can't do anything about that. I never could." They arrived at the dock soon afterwards, the Sweeper ship a mass of grey steel and people beginning to board it. They followed suit, joining the men in bright shirts, the women in dresses with flowers in their hair and Trowa looked around for familiar faces, seeing them and being somewhat surprised. He'd not really expected Zechs Merquise. Or Noin and Sally Po but Trowa figured a lot of people had their memories of Howard. It was like some war time reunion and despite the many years, he still could sense Heero tense slightly when he saw the tall blond as though it was an ingrained response. The deck of the ship had plastic chairs lined up, covered in flowers and the whole place looked so different to Trowa's past attendances of funerals he almost forget that's what he was here for. But as they found seats, as they found Wufei and Quatre, the four of them sitting together, Trowa kept standing and looked back to see Duo with the woman who must've been Lydia and he remembered why. And even though Duo was talking to people, Lydia holding onto his arm, smiling at people, Trowa guessed what was behind those sunglasses and he knew Duo was hiding how he felt. Like he always did. |
