PLACES
QUIET
By: Hilary Fox
Light
brushed the edges of the rosebushes, gilding their already-bright green leaves
with color and deepening the hue of their newborn blooms. It washed across the
wide lawn, creating shadows underneath arbors, reflecting off the water and
marble the few fountains that interspersed themselves throughout the flowerbeds.
A boy lay in one of the few places where the light could not reach him, in the
shelter of an ancient, twisted oak tree. He had himself braced against its thick
bole, and admired the riot of color unveiled by the summer day- the radiant
white belonging to the lilies, the deep purple blanket of the African violets,
the white and blood-red roses twining around a distant bower, the yellow-gold
sunflowers that dominated the small patch of variegated tulips with their
stripes of gold, pink, and orange… all of it beautiful, glowing with life.
The light illuminated all of it, made it beautiful… and made it possible.
Heat accompanied that light, but it was not unpleasant, but instead slowed the
frenetic pace of the world- the pace of the birds, insects, and humans alike-
and made thought and action pleasantly slow. That heat even managed to penetrate
just a little into the cool shade where the boy lay, enough so that he only
entertained the thought of getting up as a remote and unlikely possibility. He
stared out at the world with sleepy green eyes shaded by a fall of brown hair,
but his eyes missed nothing.
It’s so beautiful, thought Trowa Barton. And it’s so peaceful.
There was a silence in the air, something that removed this place from war, from
difficulty, from everything… from the noise that characterized other places.
A faint breeze parted the heavy, overhanging branches of the oak tree that rose
above him, revealing the flat metallic ceiling of the colony, the silver skin
that concealed the artificial lighting, the cooling and the heating vents, the
gravitational adjustment systems… and that separated them by a hairsbreadth
from the war raging beyond it.
And it’s all fake, he added cynically, thinking on these things. The
beauty, peace… all of it.
“Hey, Trowa?”
Startled from his thoughts, Trowa craned his head to gaze up at the boy who had
materialized next to him, a boy who didn’t really need the sun to make him
beautiful, and who was often- to Trowa’s mind- twice as lovely in the
near-dark clothed in moonlight and not much else.
“Yes, Quatre?” Trowa’s gaze followed Quatre’s downward progress as the
Arabian’s knees buckled and the boy collapsed beside him with an exhausted,
happy ‘whoooof.’ Quatre rolled over on his back, his light blond hair just
brushing the edge of Trowa’s hip.
“Tired?” Trowa asked, amused, automatically reaching out to run his fingers
through those flaxen strands. “You’ve done exactly half of nothing all
day.”
“I checked my email when I woke up this morning,” Quatre retorted
indignantly. “That’s more than what you’ve done.”
After thinking about that for a moment, Trowa had to concede the point, and did
so by quickly disengaging his hand from Quatre’s hair and redirecting it to
Quatre’s ribs. His lover shrieked in objection and twisted around trying to
escape, but ended up pressed against his tormentor’s leg, pleading for mercy.
Trowa called off the assault and leaned back, watching as Quatre desperately
tried to catch his breath. His face remained impassive, the fine features
unreadable, but his green eyes held a certain softness visible only to the boy
who glowered up at him.
It took Quatre a moment to catch his breath, but when he did, he managed to say,
“That was fighting dirty.”
“Wufei would be unhappy,” Trowa agreed, sliding down to stretch out next to
his lover and wrapping an arm around him. Quatre hitched himself up to pillow
his head on the taller pilot’s chest and draped his own arm over Trowa’s
abdomen.
Silence descended once more for a moment until Quatre hesitantly ventured to
break it.
“Do you think we could stay here for a while longer?”
Trowa turned to gaze into the large, guileless aqua eyes and read everything in
there… pain, love, desire, fear, trust, longing… everything Quatre ever felt
wrote itself in his eyes, and Trowa’s breath caught at thinking that some of
these things were for him… him, Trowa Barton.
“I mean,” Quatre continued, “do we have to go back to fighting? Can’t
they… can’t they all do without us just for a little while longer?”
“You know they can’t Quatre,” Trowa whispered, running a finger over
Quatre’s lips. The delicate flesh trembled against his touch and Quatre nodded
his agreement grudgingly.
“It’s… it’s just that I hate stealing time like this,” the Arabian
continued as if compelled to offer justification for his words. “People demand
things from us, disown us, cast us out but we still fight for them and feel
guilty when we try to catch just a day of peace… I mean, just one day!”
Quatre’s voice caught a little.
Trowa didn’t have the words to answer this- Quatre kept the words for both of
them, and so he answered in the only way he could, by pulling the other pilot up
to lie half atop him, so the pained turquoise eyes could gaze down into his own
green ones and read their answer there for themselves.
They lay like that for a while, silent, with the sun and light and heat and the
world and everything moving beyond them. And Quatre, having at last gained some
acceptance of his own, tucked his head into the shelter
of Trowa’s neck and closed his eyes.
As he lay there with the comforting weight of his love, Trowa listened to the
whisper of the wind through the trees and watched the birds flying amidst the
flowers, felt the peace that always came from being with Quatre, and realized
something.
It was real…
the peace,
the
light,
the
beauty,
Quatre…
all of it.
