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“Oh, no,” he whispers, causing Quatre to immediately stop talking, concern crossing his features at his obvious distress.
“What’s wrong?” the blond man whispers, automatically reaching for his hands, cradling them carefully in his own. He takes a step closer to where he is leaning against the kitchen island. “Are you unhappy?”
He is decidedly not unhappy. Just hours ago he’d learned that he was Triton Bloom, that he was Cathy’s long-lost little brother. They had gone for the DNA testing this morning, after he’d finally consented when Cathy had shown him a tattered old picture of her father. Even he’d had to admit that the resemblance was uncanny. And so, as terrified as he was of letting her down if he was not her brother, he’d done the test.
And they’d gotten the best news possible.
Cathy had been positively ecstatic. The only reason she hadn’t accompanied him home was to give him the space to tell Quatre, who’d been left in the dark about the whole thing. She would be back in a few hours, back with her chest of things that she’d salvaged from her childhood. From their childhood, before they’d been separated.
Quatre was clearly so enthusiastically happy for him. He’d just walked straight into their apartment, found Quatre in the kitchen, where he was brewing his second, or maybe third, espresso of the morning, and blurted it out. “I’m Triton,” he’d said, and after a second of processing, the blond’s face had broken into an impossibly bright smile before he’d thrown his arms around him.
He still could scarcely believe it. He’d found home. He’d found who he was. Where he was supposed to be. So many of the missing pieces of his life had clicked into place with such clarity. It was perfect. He was positively elated. Except for…
“Say it again?” he asks. “My name.”
“Triton,” Quatre replies obediently, frowning slightly at his stricken expression. “Triton Bloom.”
He winces; he can’t control it. It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. When Cathy said it, it sounded reverent, like a prayer. But out of Quatre’s mouth, it was… “It’s awful,” he murmurs.
Quatre looks positively crestfallen, the joy practically bleeding out of him. “I thought you’d be glad to know -”
“No, it’s…I’m happy about that,” he stammers, uncharacteristically off balance. He supposed it was excusable, given that he was reframing his entire identity at the moment. “I just…” it feels a little stupid, a little juvenile. He doesn’t want to hurt Quatre’s feelings.
Quatre reaches up and cups his cheeks in his hands. “Then, what, habibi? What’s so awful?”
It hits him, then, when Quatre's soft, lilting voice slips into Arabic. It’s the consonants of his name, so hard and unrelenting. They don’t roll off of Quatre’s tongue like other words do. Like his assumed name did. It stutters, sounds too harsh, and he’s never liked it when Quatre’s voice sounds harsh. And now, his name, something he’s longed for his entire life…
“It sounds wrong when you say it,” he says finally. Quatre blinks at him, his brow furrowing just slightly in the middle with confusion. “With your accent. It sounds too…hard.”
“Oh,” the blond murmurs thoughtfully. “Triton,” he says softly, trying to soften the ‘t’ in the middle, and frowning, seemingly noticing what he has. “It is a bit awful, isn’t it?” He tries a few more times before Triton dips down to silence him with a kiss.
“Call me Trowa,” he murmurs when they pull apart, his lips skirting against Quatre’s. “For science,” he adds, making the blond laugh, diffusing some of the obvious anxiety Quatre is starting to feel.
“Trowa,” Quatre whispers, and it feels like it comes straight out of the blond’s mouth to wrap him in a warm embrace. He barely pronounces the ‘w’, rolls it in with the ‘o’ and the ‘a’. It’s warm and soft. Comfortable.
“Maybe I’ll have everyone else call me Triton. Everyone except you,” he says, before pressing another gentle kiss against his lips.
“I think that will get confusing, Triton,” Quatre replies, a little more successful this time at softening the consonants. “Maybe you'll get used to it? As a little quirk of mine,” he says, rising onto his toes to peck a kiss at the tip of Triton’s nose. “Or maybe I’ll get better at saying it.”
“You could hire a linguistics coach,” he murmurs, only half joking. “I hear you’ve got the money for it.”
“Whatever you want, habibi,” Quatre says with a laugh before Triton kisses him again. “It’s a small thing, really. All things considered.”
He shakes his head, then presses their foreheads together. “It’s really not,” he insists. “I love your voice.” He reaches up, cups Quatre’s face in his hand, and strokes his thumb along his cheekbone. “I didn’t care about being Trowa until I heard you say it.” He kisses the shorter man again. “I didn’t think of it as my name until I heard you say it.”
Quatre’s eyes are soft, the faint flush that always accompanies any statements of endearment from Triton stains his cheeks. “Not so small a thing, then,” he says in a small voice, his arms curling around Triton’s waist. “Triton,” he murmurs again, and for whatever reason it’s starting to sound better. Starting to sound right.
“It’s getting there,” Triton tells him, and Quatre smiles.
“I’ll practice. I’ll reintroduce you to everyone we know,” he says, one hand sneaking up under Triton’s shirt to caress the bare skin of his back. “This is Triton, my…” and he stumbles, as always. They’ve never really put a label on what they were to each other. Boyfriend was too trivial-sounding considering all that they’ve been through. Soulmate, while more accurate, felt too intense. “My…husband,” Quatre whispers, so soft that he almost misses it in his own musing.
“Your husband?” he asks, and Quatre, seemingly realizing what he’s said, pales and starts to pull away from him. Triton grabs his hands and keeps him close. “Is…is that what you want?”
They’d talked about it, just once. Quatre had asked what he thought about it, after Duo and Hilde had gotten married, and Triton had scoffed at the notion of a piece of paper dictating what they were to one another. He’d known it was the wrong thing to say; Quatre’s face had tightened to keep him from seeing how it hurt his feelings, and they’d never broached the topic again. He’d always meant to. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life with Quatre, or that he wasn’t planning to. He just hadn’t sent the point of the pomp and circumstance of it all. At least, he hadn’t until he realized what it meant to Quatre. He was, loathe as he often was to admit it, a hopeless romantic, longing for a loving, stable home.
He reaches up to hold Quatre’s face in both of his hands, forcing him to meet his gaze. “Is that what you want?” he asks again, though he already knows the answer. He’s known for a long time.
“Yea,” Quatre murmurs, flush staining his cheeks again. “Yeah, it is.”
“And is this your proposal?” he teases, unable to help the smile that pulls at his lips. It’s rare to see Quatre so flustered, to be able to surprise him. And he’s done it twice now, in one day.
Quatre laughs, soft and breathy, in slight disbelief. “Yeah, I guess it is,” he murmurs, before he shakes his head, his face morphing into some form of panic. “Oh, no, allaena. No, I don’t even have a ring. I wasn’t…I’m not prepared…”
Triton hums thoughtfully and notes the sheen of tears in Quatre’s eyes. He’s a little embarrassed now, worried that he’s asking for too much. “Come here,” he says gently, tugging Quatre toward their bedroom.
“Oh, Triton,” he murmurs, the name softening even more with use. With practiced ease. “Just…forget about it, okay? I know how you feel about it, and I…”
“Do you?” he interrupts, releasing Quatre’s hands and stepping into his closet, opening the drawer where he’d tucked all the odds and ends from his time with the circus, rummaging until he finds it. “Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”
“What’s that?” Quatre asks, his voice scarcely above a whisper, eyes flicking down to the box in his hands.
“I think I can fix your preparedness issue,” he says, dropping smoothly onto his knee.
He knows that Quatre probably dreamed of (and already planned) a more elaborate and romantic proposal than in his closet on a random Tuesday, but Triton wasn’t one to waste an opportunity. He opens the box, revealing a shining silver ring, with inlays of black and red, feeling quite satisfied with himself when Quatre’s breath catches in his throat. It’s made of gundanium, pieces that he’d salvaged after they’d destroyed Sandrock and Heavyarms. There’s a matching one for Triton when the time comes, but he’ll tell him all that later.
Quatre’s still frozen at the door of his closet, eyes flicking between the ring and Triton’s face as he processes the situation. He’s quite chuffed with himself at being able to reduce the normally articulate man to a spectacular impression of a gaping fish. Thrice in one day now, which he thinks might be some sort of record. But after a few agonizingly long seconds, he starts to get nervous…he knows Quatre won’t say no but his silence is becoming slightly concerning. Maybe he did succeed in breaking his brain.
“Do you want to-” he starts, eyes still intent on Quatre’s face.
Quatre blinks, snapping out of his apparent trance. “Yes!” he says suddenly, breathlessly dropping to his knees to hold Triton’s face in his hands and kiss him firmly on the mouth, effectively silencing him. “You…of course, Triton.”
And it's there, the softness. His name spoken with such unbridled love and affection sounds just as wonderful to him as his old name did. Suddenly it all feels perfect. He knows who he is. He has a name. He has a sister. He has Quatre. And maybe he had all of those things before, but now it feels more real. It feels like it’s really his. After a lifetime he'd spent molding himself into whomever he needed to be to fulfill his objective, where now he could just be himself. There are happy tears in Quatre’s eyes as he slides the ring onto his shaking finger, and Triton lets out a small sigh of relief when it fits perfectly. Then he’s grabbing the smaller man and pulling him close, pressing kisses against his wet cheeks, and his mouth as Quatre dissolves into some hybrid of laughing and crying.
“ я тебе люблю,” he murmurs. “I’ve always loved you.”