Eye Apples

Part III

Wufei woke up close to ten, at first disoriented, then he realized that he was in Quatre\'s room. In Quatre\'s bed.

It was a very neat room lined with bookshelves and light fabric hangings that billowed in the wind that snuck in through the double doors leading to the balcony that overlooked the bit of beach that the mansion was situated on. Wufei didn\'t remember the doors being open the night before, but he could be wrong.

He, like Quatre had done earlier, got out of bed, took a quick shower, and got dressed (though he had to go over to his own room to do that). Then, he returned and folded up Quatre\'s bedding to run through the wash. While he was at it, he made sure to grab the outfit from the day before, as well.

It never failed to strike him when his eyes caught the key lines on that shirt: What a Wonderful World. So, he quickly stuffed it inside a fold in the comforter and toted the mass downstairs to the laundry room.

After all of that, he was famished, and headed to the kitchen where Duo was lying in wait for him.

The moment he crossed the threshold of the dining room, Duo was on him like ugly on an ape.

\"So, you did Quatre, last night?\" Duo asked, getting straight to the point. He\'d been wrong about Trowa, but about Wufei, he was positive that he\'d cornered the culprit.

He was ready to get defensive until he remembered that it was Duo that he was dealing with. \"Did I?\" he asked, nonchalant.

\"Don\'t play dumb with me, Chang. I heard you guys,\" Duo declared triumphantly.

Wufei raised a brow, \"Did you?\"

They were at the fridge, now, and Duo was dying to see Wufei squirm.

Had this been a few years earlier, it might have happened, but, Wufei was wise to his ways, now.

\"I wanna know all the details!\" Duo pleaded.

Wufei shut the fridge after lifting a bag of carrots and a bottle of milk. \"I\'m sure thau anu and Heero have performed plenty of debauched acts to be able to infer.\"

Seeing an opening, Duo grinned impishly, \"So, you used a crop, then?\"

Wufei placed a hand on the side of Duo\'s head and regarded him a moment before pushing him back with it, \"You\'re disgusting.\"

\"And cute! You forgot: cute!\" Duo called after Wufei\'s retreating back, still recovering his center of gravity.

++

Quatre really did have a conference call.

He finished up thirty minutesnoonnoon and just decided to stay lounging in the library.

He stretched out on a table and wondered whether he felt different (aside from the faint soreness) now that he wasn\'t a virgin.

For certain, there was a strange peace that had stolen over him since the night prior. Maybe he was meant to end up with Wufei and not Trowa at all. Maybe the friendship that he had thought was so perfect with Trowa, that only needed one more step to make it even more perfect, had been nothing but a farce, a deviation from his true path.

He wondered what Wufei thought of him, whether he felt the same.

Trowa was still attractive, but since his comments from the day before, he would always remain fundamentally flawed in Quatre\'s eyes. No matter how handsome he was, or how handsome he would become, there would always be something wrong about him.

Quatre closed his eyes.

He felt a little regret about it, but if that was the way it was going to be, there was no use in persisting against the inevitable. Someday, he would have been faced with the same revelation. Better sooner than later.

He could have languished seven more years on Trowa if this hadn\'t come out sooner.

++

It was like a labriynth, or a really trippy dream, trying to feel his way around Quatre\'s mansion. There were so many hidden corridors and stairs that, he imagined, a man could go mad trying to remember all of them.

Luckily, for Wufei, he had a pretty good idea of where he was going.

He was looking for Quatre, and when it came to Quatre, he became like a bloodhound; sniffing him out.

Wherever Quatre had been, Wufei could tell right off, if even by just the air. It always smelled faintly of oranges and honeysuckle, and left a tantalizing trail for Wufei to follow.

He was following aforementioned trail when he ran into Trowa, or rather, happened upon him.

This was unfortunate for him, and he planned to simply pass him up, but Trowa stopped him.

\"Is it true?\" Trowa asked, his tone lower than usual.

\"Don\'t beat around the bush, Trowa. Ask me straight out,\" Wufei told him.

Trowa averted his eyes, quite obviously bothered, \"Did you have sex with Quatre?\"

Wufei folded his arms, feeling aloof, \"Yes, and I don\'t see how it concerns you.\"

Trowa looked stung for once. He was out of the loop. It wasn\'t unusual for him to be on the outside, but it was highly bizzare for him to not know things concerning Quatre before everyone else. Today, it seemed that everyone had beat him to it before he even had the vaguest idea of what \"it\" was.

\"Why?\" Trowa was forced to ask.

A small smile turned the corners of Wufei\'s lips. Trowa couldn\'t tell whether it was from smugness or shyness, either way, it irritated him.

\"Suppose for a moment that...in the way that Quatre felt that he loved you from the first moment he saw you, I have also loved Quatre in that way since the first time I saw him. I think that, in the same fashion that you could have changed your love from Heero to him, he will change his affections from you to me,\" Wufei explained the kindest way he knew how, and as consolation to Trowa\'s confused expression, he added, \"I was really hoping that you would love him back. Now, I\'m glad, in my own way, that you turned him down. As things are, now, I can pursue him without the pinions of conscience which would have otherwise hindered my efforts.\"

With that, Wufei stuffed his hands in his pockets, and sauntered off, but not before tossing his last dart at Trowa. While he passed him, he whispered meaningfully, \"Thank you.\"

++

After many twisting halls and hidden stairs, Wufei happened upon a plain set of double doors where Quatre\'s fragrance got stronger. From the looks of his surroundings, Wufei inferred that he\'d ended up in the some older part of the estate. He wasn\'t even positive whether it was a part of the main mansion.

Taking a breath of courage, Wufei pulled down the handle to one of the doors and quietly entered the room that he now realized was a library. There was a row of windows on the far wall that overlooked a sliver of beach and azure ocean.

Faintly, Wufei wondered which side of the island he was on, but, mostly, he was concerned with where Quatre could be. He ventured further into the library, taking small moments to examine the spines of some books that caught his eye.

At the very end of the room, Wufei found Quatre asleep on a table by a window.

He looked like a modern painting of Bouguereau greatnes, all the warm colors and soft lines. Wufei feared that if he touched him, he would suddenly become immaterial and vanish like a whispered dream.

Wufei kneeled by Quatre\'s sleeping visage, feeling a little worshipful, and watched his face.

If there were any myths about sleeping people and waking up that could ever prove to be true, staring would be one of them.

Quatre\'s brows drew together, and he allowed one eye to open a little. The other eye came open as well after he registered Wufei\'s face.

\"G\'morning,\" me mumbled.

\"Good afternoon,\" Wufei replied, reading Quatre\'s features as he took in his surroundings.

Quatre raised himself up a little and gave Wufei a penetrating look, \"This is a private library. How did you find me?\"

\"Psychic,\" Wufei offered half-heartedly.

Quatre looked amused for a few seconds before he finally drew himself all the way up and sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the table. \"Is there a tracker on my ass, or something?\" He patted the back of his jeans for emphasis.

Wufei smiled, though, still not quite sure whether he was out of the woods yet, as far as being on Quatre\'s good side was concerned. Sex didn\'t necessarily guarantee friendship, least of all, he imagined, in Quatre\'s case.

\"Is it hurting you?\" Wufei asked.

\"My ass?\" Quatre clarified.

\"No, the tracker,\" Wufei smirked.

Quatre couldn\'t help grinning at that. \"I didn\'t know you were such a comedian.\"

The smile left Wufei, and he said, seriously, \"I would like you to know.\"

Quatre\'s expression became serious as well, \"What else would you like me to know?\"

\"Actually,\" Wufei started, finding it hard to articulate his thoughts properly, \"I wanted to know something, first...If it won\'t trouble you too much.\"

\"What would that be?\" Quatre asked, amiably receptive.

\"Do you think,\" Wufei locked eyes with Quatre, \"that you could ever like me?\"

Quatre bit his lip to stifle a nervous laugh, then he nodded, \"Sure.\"

\"I\'ve been worried, that perhaps, I went too far, yesterday. I took advantage of you, when you, you deserved someone to listen to you, not to attack you,\" Wufei averted his eyes from Quatre\'s benevolent gaze.

Quatre slid off of the table so that he was standing nearly level with Wufei. \"Wufei,\" he said quiet, but stern. \"If there has been any wrongdoing here, I would be as much at fault as you. I could have said, \'no.\' I could have fought you. And, don\'t give me that look, you know I could beat you. My point is: It was consentual and I hope you don\'t regret it, because I don\'t.\"

His last sentence was a little bit of a lie (but, he\'d take that to his grave). The adolescent in him had wanted it to be Trowa, but his better senses realized that Trowa was not a viable option.

\'The deed is done,\' someone famous had once said, and that was especially true in this case.

\"This is bound to sound really retarded, but,\" Wufei sniffed loudly, in resignation, and tried not to roll his eyes at himself as he finished what he\'d started, \"would you please date me?\"

Quatre\'s smile went crooked, \"Not when you say it with a face like that!\" He laughed and mussed Wufei\'s hair.

An annoyed expression overcame Wufei, \"I\'m being serious!\"

The smile faded a little from Quatre, but not completely, as he whispered, \"I know.\"

\"Well?\" Wufei implored, once again, docile.

Quatre nodded, \"Sure.\"

Wufei rested his forehea Qua Quatre\'s, and his hands on his shoulders feeling complete contentment.

Last night was a fluke, they\'d go slow, now, like a real couple, he decided.

Despite all outward appearances, Wufei was really a romantic at heart.

++

By the time that they left the libary, it was nearly five, and Quatre had somehow managed to weasel out of Wufei his admittance to knowing how to play the guqin. Wufei had always liked the sound of the instrument, but also, always rather preferred someone else to play it.

He liked many different Chinese instruments, and he always liked, even better, for other people to play them.

The sound that they produced always seemed, to him, tragically romantic.

To him, the appeal of if must have been similar to the way that Quatre liked late twentieth-century-ish Tejano rock.

Quatre said that there was always something supernatural and sentimental about it that made him yearn for an era long past.

They didn\'t hold hands, but they walked closely together with a common destination, the kitchen (unless someone else had already made dinner, then, the dining room).

Despite Quatre\'s honest and gentle manner, Wufei couldn\'t help but doubt that filling the slot that Trowa had so recently vacated would be so easy. He kept stealing looks at Quatre beside him and felt in some way that he had become even more unattainable since unofficially submitting to becoming Wufei\'s significant other. He didn\'t look particularly giddy or shy (which may have been due to, in some roundabout way, to the sex he and Wufei had indulged in the night previous), instead, he looked unnervingly serene and cool.

He met Wufei\'s eyes once and smiled briefly, satisfied but not beaming.

Wufei couldn\'t help but be happy, but he also couldn\'t help wondering whether he\'d made some sort of mistake.

Was this normal?

++

For dinner, Duo had tried to make \"something Asian,\" which, for him, meant that he cooked a big pot of rice, cut up some seaweed, and told everyone to \"go nuts.\"

No one was a stranger to plainness, but, it was still a little bothersome.

Always resourceful, Quatre dug up some condiments to add to the common good.

Rightfully, that should have been Heero\'s duty, since he had the most experience in the self-sustinence arena and what went well with seaweed and rice, but he was as impartial to Duo\'s cooking as he was to his own physical limitations. His way was to take what he was given and occasionally blurt out strange Duo-istic phrases in a monotonous tone at odd moments.

Where Heero faulted, as far as Asian cooking went, Wufei should have picked up the slack.

However, fate had the bad foresight to endow him with absolutely zero cooking sense at all.

When he was younger, and the pride of his clan, he never saw the inside of a kitchen. It was only after the L5 incident that he grudgingly took up the chore of self-reliance. The food that he made was often only tolerable to one palette: his; and unhappily, at that.

So, the real riddle lay in where Quatre, a \"pampered\" young socialite could make the most stomachable food out of all of his companions.

In his youth, he fled from home, then happened upon the Magnuacs, and the Magnuacs took him in and assimilated him into their ranks for a time. While there, he had kitchen duty when the day called for it, and had to make food that wouldn\'t up and kill his caretakers. Over the course of a few years, he got skilled enough at it, and had even developed a certain satisfaction in it.

He was setting down the last plate when his cellphone rang.

Dutifully, he answered it, and excused himself from the room.

Duo was already serving himself by that time, and said loud enough for Quatre to hear, \"I\'m gonna chuck that thing into the deepest deep! Not even the likes of Blackbeard or Jack Sparrow will be able to retrieve it from there!\"

Quatre shut a door noisily down the hall to show that he either didn\'t care, or that Duo would have an awfully hard time getting his paws on his cellphone, granted that he tried.

Duo let out a pouting sigh, \"He seems a little short today.\"

Wufei half expected Heero to make some literal comment on Quatre\'s height, but he seemed to catch on quick enough to save himself the bewildered embarrassment.

\"He\'s a very busy man,\" Wufei stated quietly.

He raised a brow at the smirk that alighted Duo\'s face just then, \"Yeah, you\'d know, wouldn\'t you \'Fei?\"

Wufei\'s jaw twitched at that, \"Congratulations, Maxwell, I believe that you have reached a new low.\"

\"It\'s true, though. Right, Trowa?\" Duo smiled, not-entirely innocently at him.

Trowa seemed genuinely bothered by the comment, though he hid it well, trying to look indifferent. \"I suppose...\"

Wufei watched him a moment more, and wondered whether Duo wouldn\'t just happen to be trying his damndest to stir up some shit between him and Trowa. He was a die-hard fan of melodrama, and what would be better than to witness first-hand a love triangle of his own design? What a let down it would be for him if he were to ever discover Trowa\'s unexpressed admiration for Heero (and not Quatre).

Duo talked about anything that he could for the next half of the meal, trying to fill up the empty air over everyone\'s heads. Drawn out silence bothered him. It wasn\'t that he simply liked to hear himself talk, but, the more that he got others to talk and relate to him, the easier it was for him to pick at them. He liked to map people out and push their buttons, which, actually, required a lot more intelligence than many people would give him credit for.

At present, he had Trowa and Wufei focused in his crosshairs, their years of absence had added to their complexity, and Duo\'s immense enjoyment.

Quatre returned so quietly that no one noticed until he asked Wufei to pass him the rice.

W was was extremely pleased to have Quatre sitting next to him. It seemed to illustrate true preference (since Trowa also had an empty seat next to him).

What also became clear quite quickly to Wufei, and maybe to Trowa, was the way that Quatre rather tactfully disengaged himself from any conversation that Duo tried to initiate with him, and, instead, seemed to shrink next to Wufei. He seemed distanced and unlike himself, though he masked it well with smiles a plenty and a few well placed words. His visible internalizing bothered Wufei a little bit, until it seemed that Quatre had caught onto his discontent and smothered it with food from his own plate, a culinarily intimate gesture, as if to reassure him.

His ego adequately stroked, Wufei glanced at Trowa to read his reaction. Trowa was watching Heero, but, there was something desperate and insincere about it. It was like he was forcing himself to do it.

Just because he liked to see Trowa uncomfortable didn\'t mean that he didn\'t have a conscience.

Wufei turned to face Quatre, and spoke in a hushed tone, \"You\'re not very hungry are you?\"

Quatre set down his utensils, with which he\'d been idly pushing some scattered lumps of food around on his plate, and smiled sheepishly at Wufei, \"Not really.\"

\"Want to run away, together?\" Wufei suggested, biting his inner lip to keep from smiling too stupidly at the cheesiness of his choice in wording.

A crooked smile etched itself across Quatre\'s face, \"Lets go.\"

Wufei got up first, followed shortly by Quatre.

They took care of their dishes, linked hands, and scooted out the back door.

TBC

note(s):
1. chapter posted in honor of Sari reading my fic :)
2. THANK YOU FOR ALL THE REVIEWS *dies happy*