Disclaimers and warnings in first part
After Trowa lied to him, Duo let the matter drop. It seemed that no matter what he said, the tall man was determined to leave. He decided it would be best to stop trying to convince Trowa to stay and enjoy the time they had together. It seemed Trowa thought the same, surprising him again when he suggested a picnic at lunchtime, after taking Duo through his own yard to identify some of the multiple flowers growing there.
Walking beside the quiet man, Duo wondered how his life had changed so much in such a short time. In less than two weeks he had gone from being satisfied and happy to depressed and unable to think of what to do next. His house was going to seem too big, too empty; his yard would be untended without Trowa there to do it. Even the intricate work he did in his workshop would seem boring without the other man there to talk to him. The thought of going to the store everyday no longer brought the excitement it did before, knowing no one would be at home when he got there, as Trowa had the last two weeks.
“Duo, are you okay?”
Trowa was looking at him with clear concern, stopping underneath a large tree in the town’s park, far away from the other people that played there. Subdued, Duo nodded, “I’m fine. Just thinking.”
“Can I ask what you were thinking about?” Trowa spread out the blanket he had found and gestured for Duo to sit while he pulled out food purchased from the diner. “It didn’t look like it was anything good.”
Choosing to be honest, Duo sat, looking around at the section of the park, “It’s going to be weird when you leave. I got used to you being there.”
“I’ve been here for less than two weeks, Duo. I’m sure you’ve had someone live with you for longer than that during the last six years.”
It was a request for information, something Trowa hadn’t asked about during his stay, likely not wanting to hear of Duo’s love life while he was aboard the Hydra. With a shrug, Duo opened the carton with his sandwich in it. “You might be surprised,” he evaded, tilting his head. “You probably shared your room with a few people in the last six years,” he turned the question around expertly.
The lift of Trowa’s eyebrows told Duo the evasion had been noted, but the tall man shook his head, uncapping his bottle of water. “There was never anyone I wanted to spend an extended amount of time with; I couldn’t imagine living in close quarters with anyone aboard the Hydra. Obviously, I didn’t do well living with you.”
Having given their past relationship a lot of thought over the last few days, Duo shook his head. “You did fine, Trowa. You were simply being you; I don’t know why I expected you to be different than you had always been before. It was like I thought you would suddenly be outspoken and effusive because we were living together. I shouldn’t have wanted you to be different; I had always liked who you were before.”
“I should have been better at telling you what I thought or felt, Duo. I should have been more vocal about what I wanted.”
“What did you want? I thought it was me, but then…you left. You were supposed to come back, and you didn’t. I get that you felt you had to, but what did you want before my being there smothered you?”
Trowa started, his eyes coming to Duo in shock, “That’s not the reason, Duo. You didn’t smother me. If anything, you were so understanding about everything it was strange. I took and took from you and you never asked for anything in return other than for me to share more of my likes and dislikes with you. We were together and I wanted to be with you all the time, even at work. I was so afraid I was losing myself…that I was going to become what you wanted and forget who I was, but you never wanted anything.”
Duo stared for a moment at the long explanation, then began laughing. “So the short answer is no? You didn’t live with anyone in the last six years?”
His face turning pink, Trowa smiled back, “Yes. The answer is no, I haven’t lived with anyone else.”
“If it makes you feel any better, neither have I. At first, it was because I was afraid something was wrong with me that had caused you to leave and then it was because I was afraid of being left alone again and finally I realized I didn’t want to live with anyone else. No one’s ever been able to fit into my life the way you did, then or now. No one else felt…right…when they came over. I couldn’t imagine anyone else living in my space.”
A few minutes passed while both men ate their sandwiches, with Duo reaching over to snag some of Trowa french fries and grinning when Trowa took some of his chips in return. Sandwich gone, Duo lay on one side, propping up on one elbow and holding his drink in his free hand. Eyes on the trees around them, their leaves blowing in the slight breeze, he sighed, “I don’t think either one of us really did anything wrong before, Trowa. Did you really have any idea what you wanted when we moved in together?”
“I knew I wanted to be with you. That never changed, not even when I left, Duo.”
He could have asked Trowa why he was leaving again, but he didn’t think the reply would be any different, so he didn’t. “We were both young and hadn’t really given any thought to what we wanted to do in the future,” he said softly, understanding it was true. “Back then I was so worried you were going to leave me that I would have done anything you asked me to do, no matter how stupid it was. If I had spoken up, actually told you how much I hated working at the Preventers instead of assuming you should have known things might have been better. If I hadn’t expected you to practically support me emotionally, things could have gone better. If we had really thought about what we wanted to do in the future, things could have been better. There were probably a hundred things we could have done differently, Trowa. Maybe we weren’t supposed to do anything different. Maybe we weren’t supposed to be together then.”
“Do you really believe that? We weren’t supposed to be together?”
“Maybe not then. Trowa, we were so young and we moved so fast. The war was suddenly over, giving us all this freedom neither of us had had before and we started spending more time together. Less than a year after the war we were sleeping together on a pretty regular basis and moved in together, like, three months after that. We were trying to cope with a new job, a new life, a new world where we didn’t have to wake up in the middle of the night and kill people. If we had taken more time before moving in together, it possibly could have been better.”
“If we had waited, would we still be together?”
With a smile, Duo glanced at Trowa, “Hell, who knows? Maybe, maybe not. We were young and focused on ourselves so much we ignored everyone and everything around us unless we were at work. After growing and maturing some, we know now that you can’t do that during a relationship and have it work. If we had waited until now, it could have lasted for years. I guess we’ll never get a chance to find out.”