Author: CleverYoungThief
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Humor/Romance, Language, slight OOC (post-war Heero), negative slant on Relena from Duo and Heero's POV, but nothing that is serious mindless bashing (so if you're a die-hard fan of 1xR or Relena in general, don't read, I guess, but if you only sort of like her, you're probably okay.) Actually, I think anyone could read this and be okay. But I'm biased.
Pairing: 1+2
Archive: Gundam Wing Addiction
Disclaimer: Contrary to popular belief, I don't own any of the characters herein. Most political situations, people, and events in these stories are fictional, and don't belong to me, and are taken without permission because I'm too damned lazy to make up my own. The characters and events and stuff in here that ARE mine ARE mine, so don't take them, and if you do, I'll hunt you down and kill you with a spork.
Notes: I really actually like Relena, and I think I portrayed her fairly (it's just Duo and Heero's perspectives on her that are a little unfair) so 'Lena fans, don't take this personally. I just couldn't resist. And 1x2x1 fans will probably get a kick out of it. ^_~
Indecent Proposal
"I am not going. Five years after the war, she looked up the college we're attending. She's a stalker," Heero said with an air of finality, sitting at the table as if to close the subject.
"C'mon, Heero. Don't be like that," Duo groaned, cutting fruit for a salad. "She's not that bad, you're being a baby. You know she's not gonna leave us alone unless you do this. You think I want you to go to her? Just one dinner. And then she'll go back to wherever the hell she came from in the first place. And you don't have to worry about it anymore. Besides, you haven't seen her in years in person. Aren't you just a little curious?"
"Forget it. A stalker."
"For God's sake, Heero-"
"Perfectly normal-looking girl, mildly attractive, charming, and a politician. I am surprised she's not a closet serial killer. Haven't you noticed she holds all eye contact with me at least three seconds too long. Count them: one... two... three..."
Duo looked up from the pears he was chopping and gave Heero a look that quite frankly told the cobalt-eyed boy how stupid Duo thought he was acting, scared of a girl after being a terrorist/guerrilla soldier for ten years.
"... It's just Relena."
"... Hn."
Duo rolled his eyes, going back to the salad he was making.
No doubt about it, the two of them made an unlikely pair at best, though all pairs were unlikely enough: Heero, stoic and blue-eyed and frequently mute for quite extended periods of time (although they were getting shorter and shorter the more time he spent around Duo). For three endless months after the Waltz was over, his hair was dyed a painful platinum blond in order to escape the hordes of reporters that had constantly sought him out. No Jay Leno Show for this war hero, thanks anyway. Duo was lithe and pale and cheerful, already sure in advance that he was too easily recognizable to disguise, and never without a grin. They were a definite Mutt and Jeff.
But after the war, when they had cautiously moved in together under the pretense of platonic roommates, they were tender, walking on eggshells around each of their painful pasts, slowly sharing the rawness of freshly discovered wounds and the healing scars of the more recent ones.
Heero's shame when his skin was revealed was poignant; he had closed his eyes tightly and didn't speak a word as Duo explored it uncertainly for the first time, slender graceful hands running over horrendous scars. Heero winced as if each old injury was still agonizing to him.
For weeks, even months, they couldn't manage to do much but to hold each other or sleep together, sometimes warm and yielding and strangely tender, sensing the first feelings of safety and peace, but more often clenched and tense against self-consciousness and a subtle terror that came with the new boundaries of their relationship and the ever-nagging fear that the peace wouldn't last, that they would be thrown into battle again.
Duo remembered the first time they made love; in the fall, three months after the Waltz ended, a loft in New York City they were staying in until they could verify their applications to New Century University on L1, Duo on a PhD in astro-engineering, Heero on a PhD in computer programming. The bedroom they were staying in had a huge bed, bulky and cozy and safe. At night, all the stars shone into the giant bay window like pinpricks in the night sky, and they settled into each other's skin at last.
Heero's body was a revelation to Duo, strength that could bend steel bars, grounded, homelike, welcoming to Duo, a strangely familiar landscape that Duo had half-expected, even then, to seem alien and cold to him. He remembered tracing his old partner's surprisingly soft contours with his tongue and teeth, meeting Heero's dark blue eyes across the warm expanse of stomach and chest, and smiling gently.
Then there was Heero's tentative answering tongue, and the firm, confident hunger of Heero's callused hands, which surprised both of them, Heero more so even than Duo. Heero had not believed such tenderness would ever be possible to him. He had believed it lost in the wars. But it survived after all. It had been there all along, buried beneath the corpses of his enemies, the old scars and memories he had finally learned to lay to rest.
That night it rained hard, and they had pulled the covers over their head, listening to the soft lash of rain on the windows and roof as Duo laid his head across Heero's chest, their fingers intertwined.
Duo shaved Heero's hair for him the next morning, trimming away the last of the peroxide bleach he had mangled his hair with to avoid publicity, all the way back to its soft, dark earthy brown color. He remembered running his hands through it again and again, thrilled with the strange ease and beauty of it, of the two of them alone with no wars to fight, and he always remembered the way Heero had shivered when he did it.
Had it really been five years? It seemed less and longer to Duo, alternately.
Heero looked at him and sighed soundlessly, giving in to the one person who could always make him surrender. "All right. If it'll make you happy, and it gets rid of her, alright. But if she shows up after this, I'm going to shoot her."
"Fine."
"And then you."
"Fine... oh... hey!"
~*~
They scheduled dinner at a fancy restaurant on the ritzier side of L1, a French place called the Café de Lyon, and over escargot and crepes they caught up on each other's news. Relena, to Heero's surprise, treated his moving in with Duo with great respect and discretion. Surprise not because Relena was intentionally cruel, but because she usually didn't know when to keep her mouth shut about such things.
In uncomfortable Armani pants and a billowing ruffled silk shirt that looked like it belonged on a Southern plantation owner from the seventeen hundreds, he felt unwieldy and vulnerable to Relena's subtle attacks, like a blind man trying to make his way through a minefield. At least his hair had grown back into the unmanageable sienna mop it had been before he dyed and cut it; he could take Relena's insults, but not her ridicule. It was uncharacteristic for her to let anything so ludicrous as a bad haircut go unscathed.
But that was only the beginning of Relena's surprises. A few minutes after the main courses arrived (Heero had never seen so much food in his life) she did something completely unexpected.
She proposed.
"Nani?!" Heero replied, choking on his chicken a la orange and coughing loudly as it went down the wrong way. He had to grab his glass of wine to wash it down as the other patrons of the restaurant looked on in concern.
"Marry me," she repeated, enunciating clearly.
Heero stared at her as if she was a visitor from another planet, cocking his head in a manner that was distinctly canine. "Iie. I can not marry you, Relena. You are ridiculous, obsessed, and incapable of sustained intimacy. Not to mention a politician."
"But that's the human condition," Relena replied easily.
"No, you have cultivated a superficiality well beyond the norm." Heero glared at her warily from across his plate, trying to figure out what kind of game she was playing. Was she serious? Or was she teasing him? He could never figure her out.
"And sublimated it into the art of politics. I leave it all in the conferences, I promise. I'm articulate and deep and honest at home," she persisted. She flashed him a smile that was supposed to be charming, but it was only charming if you didn't know it was deliberate.
"You seem to forget that I lived with you briefly. Quite briefly, if I remember correctly. You threw me out, remember?"
Relena leaned forward suddenly and took his hand. He was too stunned to protest. "I'm serious, Heero. I've changed. I'm not an infatuated high-school girl anymore. I've grown. I'm ready to commit."
Heero laughed softly, shaking his head, then look back up at her, smiling a little. It was a gentle smile. "Relena, just listen to what you're saying. You've just been re-infatuated with me by being within a hundred miles of me. Leave L1. It'll pass. I promise."
"But Heero--"
"Look, Relena, this is all very flattering," Heero said, taking his hand back to attend to his meal. "Well, not flattering, actually. It's a little insulting, considering what you know about me. Though amusing in a dark way that would humor Duo, I guess. You've gotten to a point in your career where you feel the need for a marital fiasco to bring you back to the front pages in time for election? Or maybe you're just tired of going to parties alone."
"That's not fair, Heero." Hurt flashed in her deep sky blue eyes, and for a moment, Heero felt vaguely guilty. That was a little low. But of course, they always had a way of pushing each other's buttons. It was in their nature.
Heero laughed again, a sound that had never quite lost its chilling edge from the battles all those years ago. "I do appreciate the impulse, is what I'm trying to say, Relena. I really do. But there is no way in hell or heaven I would ever give an instant's serious thought to marrying you. I love Duo. And you know it. So why did you go through all this? Hopefully not just to ask me that."
"You need a wholesome female presence in your life, Heero." Relena's gaze was still, exhaustingly resolute.
Heero sighed softly. She was just so damned... persistent. It was how he had ending up living with her for a little while after the Eve Wars. He never really figured out how he had gotten there. He had just suddenly found himself on her estates, without ever having remembered why he was there at all. And he had been treated as an exotic pet, something to be shown off at parties and charity balls, a doll to be dressed in tuxedos and cufflinks.
"You would not be a wholesome female presence, Relena. You would destroy my will to live. I've just gotten over the whole self-destruction thing, and I'm afraid having to spend more than three hours in the same room with you would cause me to have a relapse."
"And Duo would be a wholesome female presence?"
Heero glared. Enough was enough. He could stand being insulted himself, but he would not have Duo insulted, especially when it was Duo who had talked him into meeting her in the first place. "Fuck off, Relena." He stood up to leave, brow furrowed angrily. Relena stood up with him and reached to keep him from going, grabbing the cuff of his shirt.
"I apologize, Heero. Really. Truly and sincerely. That was way, way over the line." He looked into her eyes and saw that she meant it.
"You spend your life trying to irritate me into assassinating you," Heero replied softly, but he hesitated as he looked into her eyes, seeing a lonely desperation there that no amount of celebrity status and power and fortune and fame could cure. He finally sat back down. He settled back in his seat and silently watched Relena eat for a few moments.
She did have a way about her, Heero thought unwillingly. A certain presence, one part arrogance and one part charisma. A way that was once enough to earn his undying loyalty. She was as resilient as a cockroach, that was for sure.
Heero would have bet Relena, with all her talent and charisma, radical ideas and combative stance on pacifism, would have faded out of the political limelight or been shot by someone other than himself by now, but she hadn't. She seemed to thrive on conflict.
She should date Dorothy, he thought, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. They'd be perfect for each other.
Cockroaches thrived too, of course; it didn't mean he would marry one.
"In fact, Duo and I are quite content with each other," Heero said, placing his words carefully as their second bottle of wine arrived.
"Of course you are." Relena's voice was neutral and light when she replied.
Heero's eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly. "You doubt it? Duo is the most beneficial human being I know, the warmest, the sanest--"
"Did I say anything to the contrary?" she asked innocently, raising her eyebrows in mock surprise.
Heero scowled. "You didn't have to say anything. Your whole being is to the contrary."
Relena smiled, not her politician's smile, but the crooked genuine semi-sarcastic one that had once made Heero think he loved her, a very long time ago. "We used to be two of a kind, as I recall. Courageous and fiercely idealistic."
"You were like a childhood disease for me, Relena. I'm glad I had it back then, so I don't have to have it now. Blind loyalty is so much more foolish-looking as an adult."
Relena shrugged and ate. The mere fact that she wasn't hysterical at his deadpan insults showed him her newfound maturity adequately. He was quite impressed, actually.
"I never would have pegged you for a gay, I guess, is what I'm trying to say," she said now, pausing after she swallowed her food to look up at him. "No offense."
So much for maturity.
"No, of course, no offense."
"I mean, if memory serves--"
Heero laughed. "Don't flatter yourself, Relena. You're the reason I converted to guys in the first place." Heero sipped his wine. "No offense."
Relena shrugged it off again, in a newfound nonchalance that was maddening to him. "However you've come to rationalize it to yourself, Heero. Your extremity gives you away. You were just reaching out for the first person you could connect with emotionally that you had ties to during the wars. It isn't love, it's security."
"If you think I'm going to sit here and listen to this just for some free wine and calves' brains --"
"I'm not stopping you from going," she said pointedly.
"You just did."
Relena sighed, as if frustrated with him. Heero glared back; the familiar sense of emotional violation that came with any prolonged exposure to Relena had set in completely now. He wanted only to go home and sit quietly with Duo, away from Relena's misguided attempts at helping him-however good-natured they might or might not be-and her backhanded political talk. He set down his napkin and rose.
Relena didn't move this time, but followed him with her deep blue eyes. He often felt like they were a mirror of his own, a lighter reflection untainted or marred by the war. "Would you be more interested in me if I was a man, Heero?" she asked, finally, a faint ghost of that crooked smile on her face again.
Heero smirked back at her, real amusement coming into his eyes. "Relena," he said, making each word clear and deliberate, "I would not be interested in you if you and I were the last two human beings alive on earth and our copulation would determine the fate of the entire human species."
The corner of Relena's mouth twitched a little in a mischievous smirk. "I think I'll take that as a 'maybe'."
"Goodnight, Relena."
She broke out into a full grin now, shaking her head as if she had finally pegged him a lost cause for good. "Goodnight, Heero."
He walked out on her good-natured laughter with a smile on his face, knowing that Relena was left with the sense that she had just given her best effort to "rehabilitate" him. Maybe-he thought-she would wait another five years before her next attempt.
Heero was left, for his part, rather nauseous. After he got home, he spent most of the rest of the night draped over the edge of the toilet throwing up. Maybe it was the escargot; actually, in retrospect, he thought it was probably the calves' brains: Relena hadn't told him what they were until he had already eaten three-fourths of them. And he, of course, being the stubborn ass he was, finished them without a single comment.
And he had always thought he could stomach anything.
Duo was sweet and honorable and apologetic for making him go to the dinner and a most genuine smartass in general, as he always was in such cases. He sympathized and joked and mopped around the edges and wiped him down and handed him toothpaste and his toothbrush when he needed it.
He laid his cheek against Heero's head gently after the worst of the spasms had passed. "You okay, buddy?"
"How could you love me when I'm like this?" Heero replied hoarsely, lying his cheek against the cold seat of the toilet.
"Heero," Duo said with a smile, holding a cool wet rag to the back of his Japanese partner's neck and kissing Heero's cheek, "I can love anyone who can become so violently disgusted from an encounter with Relena Peacecraft."
OWARI
Back to CleverYoungThief's Fanfictions Page