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"Braid"Written By: Kaeru Shisho Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Gundam Wing
or its characters, nor do I make any monetary profit off this story. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: AU, male/male pairings, language Pairings: 1x2. 3x4. 5x6 Summary: The interlaced stories of the GW pilots
mirror their entwined friendships as they romance their way through
life. "Braid " Chapter 9
(o) Heero's POV What I had to say about the cabin could wait. I wanted to hear him talk about things important to him, and I didn't want to staunch the free flow of Duo's information stream. He took my hand and tugged. "How 'bout we talk in bed?" "Okay." I liked having him at my fingertips. The intimate setting would be good for open talk, too. "Nice room." "Thanks. It came furnished, but I bought the satin sheets just for you." So smooth and slick. "Feels like skin." I was under the covers first so I could watch him remove his clothing at my leisure. He shook his head and chuckled at my behavior. "Still good?" he asked. "You or talking in bed?" "Both." "All good." He slid between the sheets and cleared his throat while he thought of what story to tell me. He acted as if he was a little nervous but also a little excited. This was a new kind of fun- talking...about...stuff. "'Kay, we were with the others at one of our graduation parties, remember? Out at the Sanc badlands where we'd just finished up with the conservation corps? Yeah, back then when you and me weren't understanding things very well at the time. I had wanted it to be us sharing a room at that cool resort, enjoying the spa. And we weren't. Then that last day, I had a sudden vision of you lying beside me on that mattress in our cabin and that you were wearing a lazy smile of contentment, and nothing else. Your eyes were fantastic, that deep awesome blue that seemed to see everything as you studied my face." I gave him an encouraging smile. He went on. "Well, nothing happened." "Only in our heads, yours and mine." He smiled at my confession. "Later, though, you came by my house in Sanc, remember that?" "How could I forget?" "Yeah, heh, heh. You sat there in that chair watching me with those eyes. I felt so vulnerable, caught in your eyes like that, so open. I hadn't felt that way before," he sighed. "Feels like a long time ago, now." "A lot's happened," I said. "We're needing more now." "Different and yet you're looking at me in kinda the same way." Curious, I asked, "How?" He sat up with his back against the headboard. "Studying me and liking what you saw. It really made me feel important. Cherished. I mean, you'd been a virgin before sleeping with me that day, and I am still amazed that I was the one that you wanted." Oh yeah, a sappy line like that bought him a kiss from me. "I was quite a catch, wasn't I? Go on," I said silkily and smiled back at him. This was fun. I liked the way he spoke to me. It was the poet in him coming out. "The look in your eyes had been possessive, covetous even. And I liked being the object of that look much more than I could explain to you, or maybe even to myself. I just hoped you weren't sorry about what we'd done together. You said you were okay. I wished I'd just gone on and asked you to come home with me every day after that. What was the worst that could have happened? Eh! don't tell me! Hell, I know the answer to that, it wasn't as if it hadn't happened before. Eventually, you would have woken up in the morning and been furious with me, resentful or even...ashamed." "Angry over something, maybe, but never ashamed," I assured him. And then I proved how I felt so as not to have wasted any more of our precious, private time together on conversation. But I was glad we had that talk. I learned something. Duo had been as unsure of me as I had been of him back then, even though he seemed so confident! I hoped I could make him feel more certain of me now. The first kiss was a test, the second incorporated a few adjustments, and the third flowed seamlessly into the next ones. I loved how he felt against me and pulled him partly over my legs. "Hey, before we get too involved here—" What had I done wrong? "Don't worry!" he put in quickly. "I want to get down and dirty," and he ran a hand between my legs to tease, in case my imagination was faulty, "but first-" He reached over the bed and pulled a small book off the side table. "-I got my book of poetry here," he said hesitantly. "Let's see," I said, reaching eagerly for the notebook and wondering if he had written about me. When he showed me his little worn book, I wasn't surprised. I think that disappointed him, me not acting shocked at his talent all hidden away or thrilled that he was letting me read it. As I read them all, he watched me with a dark look on his face. Created from his carefully chosen words, each gem of a poem produced powerful images and intense emotions. I found them to be compelling and told him so and why. We spent an entire evening analyzing Duo Maxwell through his poetry. He had to fix me dinner to keep me going. It was fun making him feel like the center of the universe; well, at least, my world for a while. "This part's terrific. How the wind makes you feel, but here..." I waited for him see what I was pointing at. "Here you get all sappy." "Sappy?" His serious expression disappeared in a wiser-than-thou smile, "It's a love poem, 'Ro. Ain'tcha ever felt that way before?" "Yeah, but..." "No 'but'. This is 'bout passion. I can hear it in your voice when you lecture. It's in the way you do your engineering stuff all focused and involved. And if you got passion, you got love. And if you got love, then you can be content. That's all I'm saying there." "Just content? But, don't you want more once you're in love? And you want the other person to love you back so you're all worried about that happening and there's all these expectations you have to live up to and-" "Now there you go gettin' all stirred up. Hell, 'Ro, you make life so difficult for yourself. None of that's gotta happen. You can just feel it and go with it. I tried to put that down in the poem. The wind filling me with love." "But the wind changes direction and blows away-?" He spanked me good-naturedly. "Stop bein' so ne-ga-tive!" "Ouch!" "And stop your whining," he chuckled and kissed me soundly. I must have looked stunned. "Good. Now be quiet a minute." He grinned at the stupid look on my face. "I think happy poems are hardest. Who feels like writing when their happy? Sad's easier and so's anger. Love's the hardest to express. Seems to be for me." "Yeah," I agreed whole heartedly. "So, when did you write this one?" "We were all at Quat's beach house." Duo smiled faintly at the memory of it, I supposed. "Yeah, we always had a nice time there. So, you were thinking about Quatre when you wrote this?" I ventured. "Not likely; it was probably about you, if it was sappy," he insisted. I knew he wasn't going to really tell me the source of his inspiration then. "Let's see...it made your skin... 'clammy'?" "Sometimes," he said slowly, his voice low and a smile spreading to his eyes. "Sometimes I'd be sweating. Sometimes a chill would settle upon me, then a flash of heat to sear my flesh away." "Damn, that sounds awful- not like love at all," I told him. "Oh yeah?" "Yeah." I smiled a slow, serene smile. "I think of love as stomach-churning confusion and a racing heartbeat." He made a face at me. "And that's better?" "No scorched flesh. Yes. You know, the more I learn about you, the better I know you, the more I like you." "Ummm, that sounds promising. Possibly...passionate...?" "Very possibly. I'd go as far as promising, particularly, passionate, but first-" "No 'firsts'," Duo growled. There was something odd, cautionary, about his tone of voice. What triggered that? Thought I'd made it clear how I felt about him, and his poem pretty much summed up how he felt about me, I was sure. "Why? Can't I say something more?" Why wasn't he saying more? He wasn't one to hold back entirely. So, I asked, "Aren't you going tell me how you can give me anything I want and make me all kinds of promises?" "What? How did you reach that conclusion? I mean, if that's what you want, wealth or security, then you should have settled for someone else. I may look like one of the idle rich, but I work 9 to 5 five days a week. No, if it's me you want, and then here I am, when you want. And if you don't, well, then there's nothing I can say to change that." For all his profession of love, he didn't sound all that thrilled at the prospect all of the sudden. Here we go again, the reality setting in on us. I had the intense desire to have Trowa or Wufei, even, walk up and interrupt the awkward conversation RIGHT NOW! "You don't sound too happy about it," I pointed out. "Should I be?" he asked daring me to admit my feelings for him. "I-I don't know...exactly..." I looked him straight in the eye. Now was the time to level with him. "This... passion unleashed inside me, let's say, that I needed...that I needed in order to feel complete and satisfied. I needed to be in love with my lover. I wanted it to be you, but you didn't seem to want me and I didn't want to share you with others. And then if it meant having to move to L2 to be near you? Tamping down my... passions... seemed my only choice." "But, Heero, you said-" "Oh, don't go throwing what I've said back at me. I've said a lot of stupid things over the years, all of them true at the time, maybe, but they don't hold true for me anymore. I... I..." Duo gripped my shoulders and leveled his own killer stare at me, commanding, "Tell me." It took courage, a great deal of it, to say "I love you" out loud. I wanted very much for Duo to hear me tell him so now, so I pushed my fears aside. "I do... l-love you, but I want to go out to the badlands. I want to take you back to that place where you feel relaxed and tell you there so you'll believe me." Sloppily said, maybe, but I did say it. Not that Duo seemed impressed by my admission or of my courage. "Yeah? There?" "Our cabin place." "But it ain't there anymore, 'Ro. I told you how that burned down in the forest fire-" "I know, but we could re-build it together—have it built. We wouldn't have to do much at all." "That's good," he chuckled, "because we hardly have time together as it is." "It would need to be a little different. Running water from the spring hooked up inside, with a water heater and a tiny bathroom and trucked-in propane." Duo whistled. "Whew, baby. It would cost a lot." "Consider it a late birthday present from me to you," I smiled at his incredulous expression. "I have no birthday—'Ro?" "Just think about it, okay?" And that was the end of the conversation part of our evening together. I never knew how totally happy and... contented... I could be once I let myself fall in love with Duo Maxwell, and—most importantly- he loved me back. Somewhere in the middle of my L2 visit, Wufei called to tell me he was thinking of going to L5 to work on the reconstruction project. He was going to call Trowa and Quatre with the news as well. "It offers us all opportunities we couldn't get anywhere else." He sounded more excited about this than anything else I'd ever heard him rail on about. I finally got him to shut up by promising to look over all the links he'd sent me and to think seriously about an L5 move. Duo and I did our own research and wondered if a fresh new start on L5 might solve our problems. Had Wufei found us a miracle solution? At least it was a constructive action for a change and didn't involve building a cabin, which when we got right down to it, was a lot more physical work and expense than either of us looked forward to. And the weather wasn't great. We found lots of excuses to look further into our L5 options. (o) Wufei's POV The more I thought about Milliardo's remarkable announcement, or Relena's, since no word had yet come from Mill's mouth, the more I thought it absurd to even think it was true. Heero had said so and Quatre had told me so, too. Both friends had helped me get past my immediate panic (Trowa thought I'd had a nervous breakdown, but it wasn't), and the tour of L5 expanded my horizons and partially healed the pain I'd been suffering under for years having lost everything I'd been taught to fight for and live for in my colony's destruction. I had hope, new goals to aim for, and on the flight from L5 back to Sanc, I developed a plan. I contacted Heero to fine tune it, and the evening I landed I set it into play. First, I gathered the few supplies I'd be requiring, including borrowing a car from a co-researcher, and from there I drove to the back of the palace grounds, where a trucking road led to a loading area. I parked on a side street and walked to the security fencing where a small private copse gave me some cover. What I brought was a security line override setup. The electric fence was a "smart system" which could detect and differentiate between an animal electrocuting itself on the line and sparking it out and a real cut in the line—the kind I was about to make. I clamped my lines onto the fencing, turned on the carrier signal which would supersede the real one, and proceeded to cut an opening in the fence. I peeled it back and crawled inside. What I was aiming for were the small caretakers' cottages; one in particular belonged to the recently retired Pargon. Heero had passed on that information to me. Security guards must have been expensive to keep because they were few in number. The palace seemed to rely heavily on the "smart fence" to maintain the perimeter. I was glad that no one was walking the beat tonight anyway as I made my way to what I understood from Heero's directions would be Pargon's residence. I kept to the shadows, just in case. The man answered my knock. He was a little surprised to see me, I reminded him of my name, and he invited me in. We sat with tea and I told him a bit of my story. "So you believe Milliardo is being kept here against his will?" the old butler asked. "That isn't in keeping with the Miss Relena I know, but makes perfect sense bearing in mind the recent company that's moved in." He briefly explained the pressure group wanting to bring back the royal house in the Sanc Kingdom. "Of course, they are working against the current government, but it adds to the strength of their position if they can pull out a legitimate heir to the throne." I couldn't have cared less about Sanc politics. I was going to L5 and taking Mill with me, if I could extract him. I didn't tell the old man about that. Pargon placed Relena and Sanc above all else. He did agree to look into Milliardo's location and return with the information or the man within the hour. "You may not be allowed to see the man," I warned him. "I haven't even tried the direct approach, since he hasn't responded to any cell calls." "I knew the prince for many years. I'll tell them I'd like to sway him to take the position his father vacated and become our next king. That's what they want, I suppose. I'm just an old man, what harm can it do to let me try?" Pargon winked and let his straight body relax. Using a walking stick and leaning into it, he suddenly appeared to age to the near invalid stage. It was a good trick. "That would fool me into thinking your helpless, old man," I said. He chuckled and gamboled out the door, snickering at his friskiness a little and then settling down to a labored gait as he headed to the grand palace. I sat out of sight and watched out the window for any sign of danger or Mill. Waiting was always difficult. Waiting for a sign to trigger immediate, accurate, and often death-defying action took great patience. I'd been trained to meditate to gain that power, but it was a trial just the same. It did not help that my heart thumped a tattoo on the inside of my ribcage. While I'd been able to keep my cool perfectly well up until this point, it had been as if I'd been playing a role like during the war. Waiting to find out if my lover would have me thrown into jail for breaking and entry or if he'd welcome me was about to short-circuit my nervous system. Drat love anyway! And then I saw them. It was Milliardo, tall and graceful, supporting Pargon on an arm, leaning his head to hear what the old man said, smiling. My heart leaped into my throat and I wiped my palms on my trousers. Mill looked so fine in his blue shirt and grey slacks. Casual but refined as usual. It wasn't until he entered the house that I could see the dark circles under his eyes and his downturned mouth. He hadn't shaved that day, the oddest thing about him I noticed. Our eyes met the moment I stepped into his view. "—and I think you must know my guest, Mr. Chang Wufei?" Pargon asked. "Darling!" he shouted and dove for me, wrapping me in those strong arms so hard it left me breathless. "You came; you came for me, my heart!" I doubt Pargon had been prepared for that greeting, but he had been an unshakable professional in the palace household all his life. He gathered himself and went to make us more tea and give us a moment of privacy. "Do you know that I heard your sister announce you'd agreed to ascend the throne, implying that we were over and I haven't been able to contact you or heard one word from you for days?!" My words like bullets were intended to hurt. I hurt and now that I could see he was all right, my temper broke free. "God, I am so... so very... so terribly sorry!" Of course he wasn't interested in becoming king, especially if it meant losing me in the process. His words worked as a balm to my frayed nerves, his kisses reassured me that he had nothing whatsoever to do with what had happened and that he would most certainly see to it that those responsible would pay dearly for aggravating me. "Well, all right. You're off the hook," I murmured between kisses. "You came for me. You believed in me, despite-" "-Actually, you have Heero and Quatre to thank for that. Heero... straightened me out about you when I was at my lowest and Quatre soothed my soul." "I'll make it all up to you, I promise," he whispered. "And to them as well." "Good. I'll hold you to that promise, but it will have to wait until later." "Later. Of course. We must leave here. What do you have in mind?" I outlined my thoughts about L5 and painted a pretty picture of what our life there could be. As sketchy as it was, it delighted him. "You should leave directly," Pargon recommended, setting out the tea. "I'll give you some time and cover. When your warders come questing for you, well, you know how an old man's memory can fail? I do recall how you mentioned enjoying the horses. Maybe you could be found at the stables?" "You are a clever liar," Mill complimented him. "As soon as I am out of the Sanc kingdom tonight, I'll notify the officials about what happened to me. I know the names of the faction leaders responsible for my capture and their plans to overthrow the republic. All very amateurish. Once Commander Une is informed, and I shall relish making that call, Preventers involvement will ensure this entire mess will be resolved quickly. She'll find it highly embarrassing that something of this magnitude was allowed to happen on her watch." Again, my interest was negligible in Preventers, politics, and current affairs. Give me my ancient studies any day! I drove him to his place to pack. "Everything of mine is in storage at the shuttle port," I told him. "You really were about to desert me!" he exclaimed. I believe he only just understood how deeply I'd been affected. The dolt! "I wasn't about to remain in Sanc considering the situation!" "No, indeed. Well, I won't need much on L5. Like a soldier, which I still am, actually, I travel light. Anything we need in the future can be sent for." Mill paused at the door. "I have a few details to clear up before we go." "The shuttle isn't until the morning. We have hours until then," I said. "Why don't you go home and wait there for me. I have my car. I'll pick you up." What he wanted was a little time to bang some heads together over the debacle and not have me be a party to it. "All right, I have this car to return to the colleague I borrowed it from. I can give my apartment one last goodbye inspection." Hardly an hour later, Milliardo swung by in a car, a rather ordinary sedan, white with one blue fender. I waited on the street, under a cover. I didn't want him coming to the door for me, drawing attention where none was wanted. Actually, I didn't want him to run into any of my associates in the rooming house and have to make small-talk. Very uncomfortable. They weren't friends. Friends were... there at the bad times as well as the good. The car pulled to the curb and stopped. A window rolled down. "Wufei! Is that you hiding under the awning like a stray cat?" Like I said, I hadn't expected him in that car. I was expecting a luxury vehicle. "I wasn't hiding! It's raining. That isn't your vehicle." All true. "No it isn't. I gave mine away. Won't be needing it where we are going." Milliardo laughed. "And you were hiding, but if you say you were not-" I snapped my seat belt closed. "I just did." "Hungry?" "Not particularly. Tea with Pargon was adequate." "You don't eat three meals a day then." "Rarely. I'm not a soldier anymore." "You never were." He winked at me and drove away. His growing smile stopped me from making a cutting comeback. "You were a warrior." That was better. At least he recognized the difference. "Yes, I was. And now—" "And now you are preparing for your doctorial orals. See! I have followed your career. I have been paying attention to what you have to say. Will they be able to fully accommodate you on L5?" "Yes I will be able to complete my degree." I closed my eyes unable to muster the excitement in anything beyond the getting there part. Getting back to L5, a changed place. "I'm very glad you are going with me," I said. "I wouldn't have it any other way." He smiled while keeping his eyes on the road. "By choice," he added. He took me for a drive, following a path he'd driven with me before. I couldn't see the sheep. It was dark. One last nostalgic glance for him. And then just as the eastern sky lightened, he turned onto the highway that would take us to the shu ttle port and our next adventure. (o) Trowa's POV Quatre's "space heart" was real. With it he could feel the emotions of others, of people he was close to. We learned of it, the other pilots and I, during the war. The first demonstration being when Heero nearly self-destructed. He developed his acuity to include a form of mental telepathy, for want of a better term, with me. I had for all practical purposes no control over it, but he had. I could send him thoughts, telepathic transmissions, if he was in a receiving mood, and he could "execute telesthesia" whether or not I was receptive, but very rarely did that. Too invasive of my privacy, he said, and he was right. He didn't abuse this power. He never abused any of his considerable power—not on me, not on the people reporting to him at WEI. Power to him meant responsibility. His. He also called his gifts simply "insight" and "keen intuition"—nothing special. Not power weapons. Right. The problem with having this extraordinary boyfriend was that all our friends would come to seek solace from him. He could fix broken hearts. He could help re-build lives. Well, he fixed me first, but that's not counting. I was the clown and the doctor, but he was the virtuoso wizard with a keen sense of intuition and insight. He helped Duo and Heero and Wufei, in that order, I think. Duo had been crying over a cabin that had burned down and Heero's stone-wall emotional barrier. Heero complained about Duo's multitude of affairs, real or imagined, I didn't know. Wufei had a nervous breakdown after breaking with Milliardo. But he was also, I discovered, a synesthetic. Probably passed in genes from his mother. It must have been screened from all his test-tube sisters, since none of them had it. His sensory pathways combined in unusual ways making him, in one more way, a most unusual man. He could feel the pain of others. Really and truly. He saw colors in the music he played or heard. Specific colors to all music. Numbers had personalities. No wonder "zero" was a concept of his. It had a condescending character and the color pink associated with it! What has all this about Quatre have to do with anything? Well, we were still on L4, looking over our options, mine, mostly, trying to find a relatively painless way to blend our lives together. There were so few openings for interns trying to complete medical training. I could feel time slip away, moving, retreating like the shifting dunes of L4. As time ran out, I was close to giving up on any scheme working out for us. One day he shot out of bed announcing, "We're going to L5!" He had flair for the dramatic, something I wished I'd had when I'd performed in the circus. "We are? Tell me more?" I could play along. I'd learned to. "I worked it out after reading a note from Wufei," he claimed. Oh, that and gathering in some kind of "emotional net" he had floating out on the universe's ether—part of his space heart ability. He tried to explain this and then just laughed at my confused expression. "Look!" He scrolled past the L5 listings, real, concrete things I could wrap my head around. "Medical doctors and geniuses with business acumen are in short supply." "Geniuses? Imagine that," I mused sarcastically, not ready to believe in miracles. "There's more. You can complete your MD in a single year, finishing your internship and residency requirements there. All you need is approval from the medical staff and doctors in charge!" We'd be together. "Wufei and Milliardo have decided to go—both of them, together!" he cried out, excited and very, very happy. "Heero and Duo are seriously looking into their own possibilities. Oh, Trowa! We can't ignore this!" Everything would come together for us, if-? "Quatre, honestly, can you leave L4?" "It just feels right, the entire thing, don't you see?" he asked. What I saw was that he felt the planets were all aligning correctly. His whole face beamed with joy, the kind that had been missing for quite a while, so I knew this was a special decision he'd made. Made. Needing my okay still? His anxious eyes searched mine. So, it seemed, my approval, my agreeing to go along on this wild ride was required, desired at any rate. "Quat. We've been talking about it and how difficult it would be for you to join me on earth, and now you're taking us both to L5?" "Earth is so... confining. WEI has subsidiaries there that restrict what I can do, even if I'm not a part of it. I could never really feel free from the stranglehold it has on me. It is absent on L5. If I sold my shares in Winner Corp, it would fund our move there and leave me with enough to start a business of my own." "On L5?" I was still assimilating this news. "On L5," he repeated with a nod. "Sell out of your family's business! Quat, I couldn't let you do that. What if things didn't work out for us on L5? You'd regret—" "Nothing. I'd regret nothing, Trowa." He covered my face with kisses. He silenced me. He reassured me. "My sisters will be more than happy to carve up the company between them. I won't be missed, believe me—at least, not by them. And this is really just the perfect opportunity to break out and do something I want. Do you understand?" "I understand freedom." "Freedom. Yes! That's it! Our future looks rosy for us, Trowa. Rose and all the colors of the rainbow." I knew he really did see it that way, too, a Technicolor rainbow of happiness and hope—with a wonder-filled universe of countless possibilities in store for us. "If I can get the transfer—" "Oh, you will!" He was so very sure. "L5 will want you so much, the Sanc staff on earth won't be able to say no." So, we joined our friends on another great adventure, because everything happened like Quatre said, like he wanted, and like was best for us all, as it turned out. Me especially, I think. (o) Milliardo's POV When it comes to our love affair, I believe Wufei has said it all, leaving me with the last word. Contentment - (o) In closing And that's enough expressed on that matter. Let it be said that Heero and I ended up on L5 with the others. Within a year we were all hunky dory and lived, so far, happily ever after. Oh, and, if I read between the lines carefully enough, I figure Heero slept with everyone but Quatre. Now I'm wondering. I'd better keep a close eye on both guys. I'll leave it at that since I said at the beginning that it had a happy ending, and I don't lie. - Duo Maxwell. The End. {A/N: Synesthesia is a real neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. I have a friend who paints the colors he hears. Do you have extraordinary friends, too?} |
