#this became like a 5+1 challenge but instead it's 30+1 🤭

[seaofolives]

🎭 #torokatober2024 day 31/31: memories 🎻

“Do you remember what it was like?” Trowa asks. “Before we met?”

He’d come home from the circus yesterday, and they’d spent all night in bed, up to this morning. Trowa is still on his back, Quatre on his knees; he’d been about to start the day when Trowa caught his hand and pulled him back.

“I do.” Quatre nods. “Why do you ask?”

Trowa shakes his head. “‘Cause I don’t anymore. When I think about how I started wearing my hair like this, I remember your fingers on my scalp as you shave my nape. And I don’t remember what my tent was like without your voice in it. Even all the wars I fought, I don’t remember them without hearing you calling to me. Is it like that for you?” It isn’t.

But Quatre knows what he means. “A little,” he says, smiling slightly. “I remember what it’s like to feel like a speck searching for a purpose in all this space dust. But…I don’t remember how I survived that. Until we met.” He tightens their hands together. “And I realized that I’m never truly alone, after all. Not with you living in the same universe as me. That’s how I know we’ll always meet again, whatever happens. And that all the pains of today…we’ll heal from them in the future.”

“The future…” Trowa whispers.

Quatre nods. “Do you never think about the future?”

Trowa shakes his head.

He sits up suddenly. After a pause, he says, “Left hand,” reaching up to his crown.

Quatre holds his breath, but offers it.

Trowa tugs a lock of hair free, and ties it up several times around Quatre’s fourth finger. “I never thought about the future. Not until we met.” Enclosing Quatre’s hand in-between his, he asks, “Quatre. Will you let me build that future with you?”

That breath Quatre has been holding goes out with a laugh. Trowa has always been full of surprises, ever since they met. “I…” Quatre shakes his head. “Wouldn’t even dream of that future…without you. Mister Triton Winner.”

Triton smiles brightly.

He pulls Quatre into a kiss, and several more after, each one a promise of more mornings shared, conversations in the grass, a hand to hold amid the darkest traumas.

“But,” Quatre gasps when they part, “if you want a different name, I can—”

“Quatre,” Triton looks into his eyes, “I’m building a future with you. I need your name in mine.” Well. Trowa...Triton has always been a sensible man.

Smiling, then, Quatre nods. And laughs with the man who’ll share his future.

find the list of prompts here!