Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Coupe de foudre Arc ❯ A Couple of Cravings ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimers: Gundam Wing belongs to Sunrise, Shotsu Agency, Bandai, and other corporations, and has been used without permission, purely for entertainment purposes. Just having fun, folks - don't sue!

Warnings: angsty, shounen-ai, Trowa POV

Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk by Rufus Wainwright

A COUPLE OF CRAVINGS

Cigarettes and chocolate milk

These are just a couple of my cravings

Everything it seems I like's a little bit stronger

A little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me

If I should buy jellybeans

Have to eat them all in just one sitting

Everything it seems I like's a little bit sweeter,

A little bit fatter, a little bit harmful for me

And then there's those other things

Which for several reasons we won't mention

Everything about 'em is a little bit stranger, a little bit harder

A little bit deadly

I quit smoking when I became a Gundam pilot - I had a new identity, a new position and I wanted a clean sweep from the past. But I never really lost the craving. It is always there, at the back of my mind and sometimes I feel the pull of the addiction so strongly it clouds my conscious thought. I don't want to seem weak in front of the others, so I 'treat' myself by replacing one substance with another. One not harmful - seemingly innocent. Chocolate milk. I mean, who is going to question it? I pour a glass of the healthy liquid with the self indulgent twist of chocolate flavour and no one suspects it is really something else that I crave.

I see him over the rim of my glass, his blond head nodding gently as I swallow the semi-sweet brown milk. He is the one who reached in past all my barriers of isolation and taught me what was love, how to love. And he loves me, but there are parts of me he cannot reach as they are too painful for him and it is those parts that crave love the most. The parts that want a bit of pain, a flash of roughness that combines both pleasure and punishment. My darkness. And he does not know this, cannot know this, because this has never been a part of his life. He could comprehend it intellectually, if I ask him to, but he can never, ever really understand it. And I could never demand it of him.

It isn't very smart

Tends to make one part

So brokenhearted

Playing with prodigal sons

Takes a lot of sentimental valiums

Can't expect the world to be your Raggedy Andy

While running on empty you little old doll with a frown

I am not sure when my other addiction began. Most probably just by watching. How could I not? I have always been more of an observer rather than an active participant, even in my own life. Especially in my own life. How do you think we can do things like walk on a high-wire, meters above the ground? Or work with lions, tigers and sharp knives flying at you faster than the eye can see? There is almost a separation of self in these acts - like the risk belongs to someone else. You watch your own body do things from a perspective that seems to be a distance away from the self - in safety. So I watched him. A perfect contrast of svelte lightness and dark. Pure energy - graceful and lethal - all bound up in a slim black-clad figure punctuated by that glorious braid of reddish-gold. He seems to be in constant movement, but that too, is deceptive as I have seen him sit in utter stillness, face expressionless like that of a porcelain figurine -drained of life. It always vanishes in an instant, making me wonder if I truly saw that at all or just imagined it. Projecting my own emptiness on him.

I seldom speak to him. I fear my words or voice will betray me - to him and to the one I love. I do listen, however, to everything he says. And to what the others say about him. I collect these bits and file them away to feed my addiction during the times that my eyes are denied the caress of his presence. So I know about his past. His own darkness. I know about his lover. I have heard them both at night - he being the more quiet of the two, unlike what most would think. And I know he does things with his body and to his partner that I am not able to do with my own sweet love, or have him do to me. And a part of me, a growing part of me, wants that. From death's bright angel. I revel in midnight fantasies and it is starting to consume me, this craving for something I cannot have. Could never have. The consequences would be lethal to me. For as much as I have found love in my Arabian prince, he too has found love in his silent Japanese partner - and Shinigami's deadly lover does not share.

I find no contradiction in loving two very different people. Quatre perhaps taught me too well, how to love. I asked him once, how he could love 29 sisters - isn't that just too many? He answered me that love is not finite - is not given in a set amount. It grows in relation to need and opportunity. A parent doesn't lose the love of his/her partner and the other children when a new child is born to the family, the parent gains more love and the ability to love more. I think that happened to me.

But now, as I finish up the dregs at the bottom of the milky glass, I look over to the sweet compassion of the golden-haired youth I love and wonder if he is beginning to be my chocolate milk? I rise from the table and carefully rinse out the glass. Just as I am placing it into the dishwasher, I am grabbed and twirled around to face a bright pair of violet eyes and the playful threat 'that better not have been the last of the chocolate milk'. Then I know. My stomach and spine seem glued together in a constriction that prevents me from answering. I can feel my heart beat wildly as my breath catches for a moment then I hear myself panting in short, shallow bursts. He is still holding my shoulders, but now has his head tilted slightly, a look of concern deepening in his eyes. My previous voyeuristic and erotic thoughts crash into me all at once and I feel my knees begin to tremble.

Then Quatre catches me by the elbow. He asks if I am ok. I turn my head deliberately to him and nod in the affirmative. I hear him say something about too much sweetness first thing in the morning as he leads me away from the kitchen.

He is wrong. It is not too much sweetness. It is not enough cigarettes.

You got to keep in the game

While facing forward

I suggest a reading of 'A Lesson in Tightropes'

Or 'Surfing Your High Hopes' or 'Adios Kansas'

It isn't very smart

Tends to make one part

So brokenhearted

Still there's not a show on my back

Holes or a friendly intervention

I'm just a little bit heiress, a little bit Irish

A little bit Tower of Pisa

Whenever I see ya

So please be kind if I'm a mess

Cigarettes and chocolate milk

Cigarettes and chocolate milk