Moments of Haven Part 27
Settling In

"Are we there yet?"

"'Lena, it's only been twenty minutes since we left HQ." Duo tossed the answer over his shoulder and into the back seat of their jeep without even opening his eyes or turning his head. If he had looked back, he would have seen what, on his own face, might have been a shit-eating grin. On the usually dignified face of the Vice Foreign Minister, however, it was merely mischievous.

"Are we there yet?" she repeated in exactly the same childishly peevish tone.

"Almost," Heero answered calmly, well used to playing this game with Duo. Relena had declared early on that this was her vacation, and that she had every intention of living it up and doing what she didn't normally get to do.

"That's what you said when we left the city," she pointed out.

"And the distance from here to there is significantly more 'almost there' than the distance from your offices to here."

"Hey," Duo piped up. "If she gets to be annoying like a kid, then do I get to, too?" Before Heero could even groan, he started his song. "Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall, aleph-null bottles of beer~!"

Leaning forward against her seatbelt, Relena's head popped up next to Heero's so she could ask a question without it being lost in the wind. "What's aleph-null?" she stage-whispered.

"You take one down, pass it around, aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall~!"

Heero finally took the moment to groan softly. "The number of elements in the set of integers." Relena's eyes widened as she realized the ramifications of that.

"Hey, at least it's the smallest infinity there is," Duo defended himself, pausing only for a moment in his tune. "Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall--"

"Infinity is infinity, Duo. Either way, you'll never get to the end."

"Aleph-null bottles of beer! Ya take one down, pass it around--"

"Didn't you want to get some sleep, Duo?"

"Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall! No, I said I was going to get some shut-eye, and indeed, my eyes are shut. See?" He turned his head towards Heero, but the driver of the vehicle did not deign to take his eyes off the road to verify the claim.

"You're not going to feel rested." He hadn't gotten much rest the night before. It had been spent on a plane on a rather red-eye flight, and Duo never did all that well stuck in a chair for a long flight unless he was the pilot.

"I don't need to rest. I can keep going til bedtime just fine. I just wanted to get rid of that annoying feeling in my eyelids. And it's not like I can sleep in this seat anyway, so--"

"So are you finally going to tell me where we're going?" Relena cut in smoothly.

"Somewhere we're almost there to," Heero answered unhelpfully.

"Heero!" She whapped him on his shoulder. "The only reason I even know what city we landed in is because of a street sign." Luckily, it had been a city whose name she knew. From the main Preventers HQ to this city, they had taken a small private craft and landed in a small airport, where they were met by a Preventer, who escorted them to the local HQ. There, she had had to spend almost an hour cooling her heels while Heero and Duo dispensed with whatever business they had there before they bundled her into this jeep and took off on the highway out of town and into this fairly quiet stretch of road, stopping only to hit a grocery market on their way out of the city. Somewhere along the way, a sign stood to mark where they had exited the city's boundaries.

"Aw, come on, Lena, we already told you what weather and atmosphere to dress for. What more do you need to know?"

"What time zone to reset my watch to? I had to figure that out on my own, too. It's not like I don't trust you guys, but if either of you were in my position, you'd never let something like this slide."

"Uh-oh," Duo said, poking Heero's side as if he needed to in order to get his attention. "Did you hear that? I think she's been spending too much time with us. Our paranoia is starting to rub off on her."

"Hn." Heero didn't consider it to be paranoia, just good precautionary measures, and that was why they had started to teach her what they would call basic survival skills. "We're training her to be that way, remember?"

"And she's going to be spending even more time with us now. What manner of creature do you think we'll be able to twist her into, Heero?"

"Three more miles," he answered instead, nodding slightly with his chin towards yet another sign on the highway.

Relena looked where he indicated. "Three more miles to... Springcreek Drive? Sounds charming." Indeed, a pleasant change from standard colony street naming schemes, which were generally laid out numerically or alphabetically. They crested the top of a low hill, and a town was revealed to her in all its suburban glory. "Is that where we're going?"

"Maybe," Duo replied cheerfully, despite the fact that there weren't really any other possibilities. "It's a surprise."

"'Welcome to Haven'!" she read off yet another passing sign. "Thank you!"

Relena stayed mostly silent for the rest of the trip, but when they finally pulled into the driveway of the small two-story house near the edge of town, she had to ask. "So, is this where we'll be staying?"

"Yup," Duo answered cheerfully, bouncing out of the vehicle first so that he could open Relena's door for her with a flourish.

She accepted the courtesy gracefully. "Is this is a Preventers' safehouse?" she asked curiously, wandering up the walk behind Duo, who went on ahead to unlock the door while Heero grabbed some bags out of the back of the jeep and followed them.

"Nope," Duo replied, fishing through his keychain for the right key.

"You're going to make me guess, aren't you? Alright then. Is it... owned by Quatre, or perhaps someone else you trust?"

"Hmmmm, yeah, I guess." He got the door unlocked and opened it, eyes sweeping briefly over the small entrance area to survey the rest of what was visible from the door, namely the living room. Everything looked undisturbed from when they had left it, and he stepped aside to let Relena in. "Welcome to your home for the next couple of weeks."

Her gaze traveled over the furnishings as well before she moved into the living room to get out of Heero's way. "It looks-- wait, isn't that Blackie sitting on the sofa?"

"Yup." Duo took the bags from Heero so that he could go back outside and get the rest of the stuff out of the jeep.

"But then, that means that this... this is your home?" she asked excitedly.

"Yup."

"Oh, I've always wanted to see where you two lived!" Relena cried in delight, looking more carefully at the interior now that she knew to whom it all belonged.

"I gonna go help Heero," Duo said shortly. "Be back in sec. Make yourself at home. Oh, and take off your shoes!" he called over his shoulder as he walked out the door.

Heero raised an eyebrow at him when they met by the car, handing him some bags full of groceries while he grabbed himself the hardware.

"So far, so good," Duo grinned, hefting the bags.

"You were expecting otherwise?"

"Well, I dunno. Maybe she was expecting Tahiti, or somewhere cool."

"She wanted a vacation, Duo," Heero reminded him, pushing the door closed with a bump of his hip. "Peace. Quiet. Private."

"Yeah, well maybe that meant a secluded island paradise or something."

Heero took a step or two ahead of him and turned back to catch his eye. "You know it's going to be okay, Duo."

"Well, yeah," he admittedly reluctantly. "But, I mean, it's just our home, you know--"

"And you know her better than that, right? She's not all pink and pearls."

"Of course not...." He sighed into his bangs. "I'm just being silly, aren't I?" The careful neutrality of Heero's face said yes. Duo took a deep breath and let it out slowly before squaring his shoulders and putting on a smile. "Well, it's our house anyway, and we can always kick her out if she doesn't like it!" And they marched back inside.

"Well?" Duo called out cheerfully to Relena, who was seated on the sofa. "Whaddya think? What you expected?"

"This is a lovely house the two of you have here," she answered pleasantly. "It's... well, I really don't know what I was expecting. It's surprisingly... oh, is there a good word for this? Bright, warm, and cozy. Only at the same time, I don't find that surprising at all. I know that if you two lived anywhere together, it would somehow look like this. Maybe it's just different seeing it in reality. I'm not used to seeing you two in a home setting."

"Yeah, well how often are you in a home setting, Relena?" he retorted. "There's a reason for this little vacation, ya know."

"I know. Several reasons, in fact." She smiled. "And I thanked you before for letting me impose upon your time for still longer than I already have. But now there's even more for me to be thanking you for. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your allowing me into your home and--"

"Enough of that," Duo said impatiently. "We'll see if you still want to thank us after your stay here. Now, I think it's time for the obligatory tour."

After the obligatory tour of the downstairs, accompanied by the appropriate compliments and humility, they headed upstairs with the luggage, and they were halfway up the staircase when Duo came to a halt. Heero stopped behind him, and Relena nearly ran into Heero. "You know what?" Duo asked. "Where is Lena going to sleep?" Heero looked at him silently.

The sound of Relena's light laughter filled the stairwell. "You only just thought about that?"

"She can sleep in my bed," Heero suggested before Duo could answer. Unfortunately, that just redirected the braided teen's attention to him with a steadily growing smirk, especially when he noticed Relena standing behind Heero with a slightly startled look on her face. "I'll take the sofa," Heero finished quite clearly, his expression reprimanding Duo to get his mind out of the gutter.

"Absolutely not." Their eye contact broke as they both turned to face Relena. "I am a guest here. I will not put you out of your bed."

"You're not sleeping on the sofa, Lena," Duo countered reasonably. "You're a guest here."

"I'm not made of glass, Duo. I can handle sleeping on a sofa."

"So can I," Heero interjected. "You take the bed."

"Oh, but how often would I be able to say that I slept on a sofa?"

"Why is that something you want to be able to say?" Duo asked.

"Because no one would ever allow me to. No one but you two, maybe?" She batted her eyelashes at them in an exaggerated fashion.

"Are you trying to get us into trouble, young lady?"

"I'm here to do things that I don't normally get to do. That includes sleeping on a sofa."

"You're also here to be a normal girl," Duo argued. "That means you take a bed." Heero rolled his eyes ever so slightly and slid past Duo to reach the upstairs level. It was getting a little claustrophobic being sandwiched between the two of them in the stairway. Duo successfully got the last word for a few seconds by following Heero and leaving Relena behind on the stairs.

"Well, I can always sleep with Heero in his bed," she suggested brightly, taking the last few steps and looking around the top floor.

"Relena!" Duo sounded almost scandalized. He paused in the repartee briefly to identify the doors for her, and to toss his bags into his room to the right.

Relena looked into Duo's bedroom for a few contemplative moments before turning around and following them in the other direction. "I'm alone in the home of two gorgeous young men. I don't want to leave here without saying that I slept with at least one of you. How could I ever face Doro--" She broke off suddenly and laughed.

Duo turned. "What?"

She pointed in through the open bathroom door. "Are those rubber duckies on your shower curtain?"

"Yeah. I got to pick them out."

"I could tell." She laughed again at trying to picture Heero and rubber duckies together. Relena caught a few glimpses of Heero's room before they passed it and caught up with Heero at the end of the hall, carrying a heavy bag he had brought upstairs with him and about to unlock the closet there. "Is there something ferocious you're keeping in there, or is there some other reason to have the lock on this side of the door?" Indeed, it was not the sort of lock that one needed to use a key with. Rather, it was the sort of doorknob that one might see in a bathroom or bedroom, with a little thing to turn to lock it.

Heero's hand paused at the words, but Duo answered the question. "Well, what's in there is something ferocious, I suppose. And I suppose that if we don't tell you, then you'll just get curious one day and take a peek, won't you?"

"Maybe. So tell me."

Duo sighed, knowing she might not approve. "Okay. But then don't you go poking your nose in there, okay?" He waited for her nod, then guided her gently around the corner so that Heero could continue what he was doing without her looking. "That's where we store the weapons."

"You have an armory in your house?" she asked, slightly incredulous.

"It's nothing so spectacular as all that. You know, just our stuff." The sound of a door opening came around the corner, and then a zipper was pulled, and things were being put away. "Most of the special stuff we use when we're with you, we borrow from HQ. That's why we had to stop and drop off some stuff in the city. But we've got stuff of our own. And it's not like we're not licensed or anything. So--"

Relena reached out to touch his arm. "It's okay, Duo. I understand. You need to protect people. You can't always do that with pretty words and winsome smiles."

Duo's lips quirked up in relief. They had never really pressed the issue with her, choosing instead to keep a good many safety precautions hidden, both from her and the people scrutinizing her actions. Weapons and peace ministers did not mix. On the other hand, the two of them could look pretty damn dangerous without a weapon on them. "Heh. You've come a ways, haven't you, princess?"

She smiled softly in return. "I haven't given up my ideals yet, Duo. But I'd be a fool not to have realized a few things about reality. I still think that words and smiles are a viable solution -- a long-term solution that might take a long time to work its way into the hearts of men. But for matters of pressing urgency? I admit, your way of doing things may be more effective then."

"But just a quick fix?"

"Perhaps. The sort of thing that may work for the short-term, but can easily fall apart later, with sometimes disastrous results." She shook her head. "But enough about politics and ideals and violence. I should be glad you've locked them all away, and not sleeping with guns beneath your pillows."

"Yup." He broke out into a full-fledged grin, the moment of seriousness having passed. "Though we're paranoid enough that the door's not locked with a key, just that turny thing. Because you know that right when we need to get into there in a hurry, we won't be able to find the key."

"Then why lock it at all?"

"Well, it should take at least a little work to get in there. The closet's already in the corner of the house. The lock is more like so you don't just accidentally open up the door thinking that it's the bathroom or something. Because sometimes we've got Ami -- the kid two doors down -- or someone over, and we don't want her stumbling in there. Or maybe if I finally managed to make Heero snap, he can lock me away forever, where no one will ever find my body."

"No," Heero said, closing the closet door, locking it, and rejoining them. "That's what the lock on your door is for."

"Your door?" Relena asked, stepping around Duo and staring at the doorknob of his bedroom. "Now why is there a lock on the outside of your door, too?"

Duo scowled comically. "Because Heero has a very messed up sense of humor."

"I prefer 'highly developed'."

"The doorknob came in this two-pack, you see, so Heero, never one to waste anything, decided that since my old doorknob was sticking a little, he would replace it. Don't ask me why he decided to put it in backwards, though. There are some things even I don't get. He seemed to find it terribly amusing, though."

"Then why haven't you fixed it yet?" Relena asked curiously.

"It's not like I couldn't pick my way out of my room in a couple of seconds," he confided in a loud whisper. "So I leave it that way just to spite him, because he no doubt expected me to fix it. So by not fixing it, I get the last laugh, see?"

The expression on Heero's face clearly said, 'Yeah, right.'

Duo ignored it. "So anyway, how are we going to work this?"

"I sleep on the sofa." Heero stated it as if there were never any doubt.

"Absolutely not," Relena repeated herself. "Now that I've seen the furnishings at our disposal, I have a plan that will land us all in beds. You've got a queen-sized mattress, Duo, so obviously I can sleep in Heero's bed, and you two can share yours."

"I can sleep on the sofa."

"Don't be ridiculous, Heero. You two have shared before, when there weren't three-bed suites, so surely there shouldn't be any problem now, right?" She looked defiantly at Heero while Duo snickered at the twin stubborn expressions on their faces. "The only other fair solution is for us all to rotate between the two beds and the sofa."

"Come on, Heero," he said with a put-upon resignation, tugging at his partner's sleeve. "You be nice to the lady, now. We can always work something different out later."

There were a few more seconds of loaded silence before Heero finally grunted his grudging consent and went to move his bags to Duo's room.

*****

The doorbell rang, disrupting their conversation downstairs in the living room, and Duo got up to answer it. "Suzuhara-san!"

"Duo," she greeted pleasantly enough around the potted hibiscus she was holding in one hand, and the bamboo in the other. "I saw your jeep in the driveway."

"Oh, let me take Henry and Kain off your hands." He took them from her, inviting her in with a brief jerk of his head before cooing at the plants on his way to setting them down in their normal places in front of the living room window and patting them on their leafy crowns. "How are you guys doing? Didya miss us? Suzuhara-san treat you well?" Relena looked at him oddly, but no one else seemed to consider his behavior out of the ordinary.

Suzuhara-san was slipping out of her shoes before following after him. "I'm glad to see you two are back safe and sound. How was your trip?" When the other two stood to greet her, then she noticed the stranger in their midst. "And-- oh my."

"Suzuhara-san," Heero said with a slight incline of his head. His words only barely distracted her from the young lady.

"Suzuhara-san, we'd like you to meet a friend of ours," Duo cut in. "Lena. Lena Darlian. She'll be staying with us for a little while. Lena, Mutsuko Suzuhara, our neighbor two houses down."

"Lena Darlian," she repeated slowly, her tone indicating that she knew perfectly well who it was that was standing in front of her. Knowing that her boys were with the young Vice Foreign Minister, she had made it a point to follow their movements as published in the media.

"Suzuhara-san," Relena said, copying the form of address the others were accustomed to using. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Not at all," she responded automatically, already knowing that she liked the girl not just from the work she had done, but also from the way the boys talked about her. "The honor is mine. So... are you here just to visit?"

"A small vacation, I'm afraid."

"And you're staying with the boys?" Relena nodded. "Well, if they ever turn out to be too much for you, by all means, please feel free to drop by my home."

"Just what are you trying to imply, Suzuhara-san?" Duo asked indignantly.

"Only that it may become tiresome for a young lady to stay with two young men accustomed to living by themselves for such a long time, even if they have only the best of intentions, and especially after so long a time already spent in their constant company. If you ever need some girl-talk, I'm here for you, my dear."

Relena smiled. "Thank you. I'll remember that."

"Geez." Duo rolled his eyes at their mother-figure. "Looks like she's adopted another one."

OWARI

 

To The Next Chapter

To The Previous Chapter

Back to Jei's Fanfictions Page

Back to Guests Fanfictions Page

Back to Main Page