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"Just Dancing"Written By: Clara Barton Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. The following
is an intellectual exercise with no intention of profit. That said,
these characterizations, words, and situations are mine. Please ask
before reprinting. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: language, smut, slight violence Pairings: 3xS, others Summary: Trowa has a mission, and it requires asking Sally Po to be his partner. Of course, this undercover op isn't the kind that sends them to a distant colony to track down weapons smugglers. It's the kind where he needs a girlfriend to take to an ex-lover's wedding.
"Just Dancing" Chapter 3 The hotel bar, despite - or perhaps because of its small size - was surprisingly well-stocked. Trowa ordered a martini and wondered just how many ways today would continue to go wrong. He had used the full-length antique mirror in the bedroom to attempt to put his hair to rights, with only minimal success, before changing into the gray trousers and dress shirt. Wufei had emailed him, had said the rehearsal dinner would be fairly casual. But Wufei's definition of 'fairly casual' was more in line with Quatre'sidea of casual than it was with either Trowa or Duo's. He could only hope he wasn't horribly over-dressed. Sally had stepped out of the bathroom just as Trowa was rolling up the sleeves on his shirt, and he had looked over to see her swathed in towels - one around her torso and another around her hair. She had looked him over, and Trowa had arched an eyebrow. "You look good," she concluded. "Thanks." He looked her over, and debated whether or not to offer a comment on her current attire. If this had been in any other circumstances than their current ones, he would have. As it was, he chose to keep his thoughts to himself. "I'll be down in the bar," he informed her. She nodded. "I won't be much longer." "We've got time." "Time that we need to use going over our cover," she pointed out. Trowa thought about how well that had just gone. He gave her a look. "I think we've already figured out how to have a realistic-looking fight. What else did you want to practice?" Her eyes narrowed. "You could do with some work on your apologies," she suggested. All things considered - that last night with Duo, when he had confronted Trowa about Moten and Trowa had tried to write it off, had said it meant nothing, and Duo had snarled that he really fucking sucked at apologies - she wasn't at all wrong. Still, in this situation, he wasn't even sure what he should be apologizing for . So, he decided to make his escape, leaving her to finish getting dressed and planting himself in the bar. Giving him plenty of time to mull over what else would be in store for him tonight. The rehearsal dinner was at a restaurant in town, just a short walk from their hotel, and Trowa was already dreading it. Had, in fact, been dreading it ever since he had said he would go. He wasn't entirely sure who had been invited to the rehearsal dinner - he wasn't even sure why he had been invited, considering that he wasn't in the wedding party, and he certainly couldn't count himself as a close friend anymore, after what he had done. Hilde, Trowa was confident, would be Duo's… Maid of Honor. He had no idea who would stand with Wufei. The man's closest friend was… Sally . She hadn't said anything, but Trowa couldn't imagine who else it could be. He was finishing his second martini when Sally walked into the bar. Trowa wasn't the only one who looked at her, and he could certainly understand how she had drawn so much attention by just walking into the room. Her legs, from the ankles of her flat sandals all the way up to mid-thigh, were completely exposed by the dress she was wearing. Trowa had to assume it was a dress. It looked like a violet men's dress-shirt, cinched at the waist with a thin black belt. She had left the top few buttons undone, exposing a thin sliver of golden skin that drew Trowa's gaze up to her face. Her blue eyes were rimmed in dark brown, her lids smudged with a faint, coppery glimmer that made her blue eyes seem even larger, more vivid and luminous than they normally were. Her hair was loose, falling around her shoulders in golden waves. She approached him, lips curving into a smirk at his continued attention. He stood as she neared. "Darling." He held a hand against her back as she maneuvered onto a barstool. Her lips twitched in amusement. "What is the lady having this evening?" The bartender walked over, smile casual and practiced. Sally glanced at Trowa's drink, and he held it out to her. She took a considering sip. "Mm. I'll have the same, but instead of the Plymouth, I'd like Gin Mare." The bartender nodded, and Sally gave Trowa his drink back. "You're the one who convinced me to stop drinking Tanqueray and use Plymouth for martinis in the first place," he had to say. She shrugged. "And it is undeniably better. But this bar carries Gin Mare and I've always liked it. So, figured out how you want to apologize yet?" He still hadn't quite figured out what to apologize for . "I'm sorry." He meant it - he was . Sally didn't push him to expand on that, and he was grateful. Instead, she accepted her martini from the bartender and raised it to her lips in a salute that was almost not mocking. "See? You sound just like a man who's been in a relationship for six months." He rolled his eyes and tossed back the last of his drink. He waved away the bartender's move to bring him another. Sally shifted, moving to face him and tangling one of her legs with his. He arched an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged. "It's something I do. Something Wufei and Duo have seen me do." Which meant… Sally's private life wasn't as legendarily private as he had always assumed. It was just kept private from him , and work functions. Sally had added her own relationship history to the dossier, filling in the section of question marks that Trowa had initially put down. It wasn't nearly as varied or detailed as his own. She had been as succinct as if she was writing a mission debrief. Of the six relationships she had listed since the end of the Eve Wars, Trowa had been surprised to discover that three of them were with other Preventers agents. The other three had been civilians - one a diplomat from L4, one an economics professor at a Parisian university, and one a school teacher in Brussels. The relationships had varied in length - the shortest, with the school teacher, had lasted only four months, while the longest, with a Preventers agent assigned to Intelligence, had lasted almost three years. Trowa abruptly realized that that same agent, Nicol Campbell, had been one of Duo's friends. Had, in fact, come over to the cookouts Duo used to organize at the park closest to HQ. Cookouts that Sally had also attended. Trowa scanned his memory, but he couldn't think of a single moment shared between the two that hadn't simply seemed like two co-workers relaxing together. "Why did you never introduce me to your boyfriends?" She snorted, mid-sip, and then coughed. She set her drink down and gave him a hard look. "Are you serious?" "I thought you didn't want any of us to meet them. I didn't realize it was just me ." "Trowa, I did introduce you to one of my boyfriends, once." He had absolutely no recollection of Sally introducing him to any of those six men. She rolled her eyes. "You don't remember us going out to celebrate Cocky's death and the return of Trowa Barton?" He did remember that . Une hadn't yet sent Trowa to guilt Duo into joining the Preventers, and Wufei had been away on assignment - and besides, hadn't known who Jim O'Cochran was or even that Trowa was an active agent. So Sally had taken Trowa out drinking, his first legal drink she had joked as he passed his new, military issue official ID over for inspection. There had been a few other agents at the bar that night, the proximity to HQ making it a quick favorite within the fledgling agency. Including, now that Trowa thought about it, Diego Constance. The first man on her list. "I introduced you two, he got flirty with me, and you snapped at him that if I had any interest in dating a fellow agent there were far superior ones to choose from?" Trowa flushed. Diego had been all smirks and charm, casually running his fingertips over Sally's shoulders and teasing at her hair, and Trowa… Trowa hadn't put two and two together when Sally slapped at his hand and told him to behave. "I didn't realize," he muttered, feeling like a complete idiot. Sally's eyes narrowed as she considered him, but then she sighed. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Barton. You were a kid who had almost no experience with human interaction outside of war. It's not a big deal." He arched an eyebrow at her. "A big enough deal that you never told me you dated any of these guys." "Well, even back then you were a little intimidating, Barton. Diego and I ended things a week? Two weeks after that." Another thing to feel guilty about. Sally shoved him none-too-gently. "Get over yourself. Diego was okay, but if he was going to let some scrawny kid scare him, he isn't exactly the kind of guy I want to spend the rest of my life with. We had other problems." "I wasn't scrawny." "Yes, you were. You were doing your whole post-war depression diet thing where you just subsisted on toast, coffee and scrounged MREs. Une and I were this close to getting you into a program." He hadn't known that either. Duo had often accused Trowa of being a little self-centered, a little oblivious to the world around him unless he was directly invested in something. "Don't worry," Sally gave his shoulder a sympathetic pat and then ran her hand down to his bicep, giving it a firm squeeze. "No one thinks you're scrawny anymore." Trowa dug out enough money to cover their drinks and stood up. "We should probably head to the restaurant." Sally rose as well, smoothing her dress down and holding out her hand. He looked down at it. "We practiced this," she reminded him. With a sigh, he slid his hand into hers. "I don't understand how you thought I was the kind of person who doesn't like to hold hands with my boyfriend," she muttered as they walked out of the hotel. She was right. Now that Trowa knew Sally had simply avoided bringing her boyfriends around him , and not kept her relationships completely private, it made sense that Sally was affectionate. Open, blunt, and uncaring of what others thought of her. She was exactly the type of person to not only hold hands in public but to lean against him, to whisper things into his ear as they leisurally strolled down the cobbled street towards the restaurant, so close that her lips seared his skin. The kind of person who would tilt her face up to him for a kiss, with no thought to anyone watching them, just because he made a corny joke about the sailors in the harbor. A smile was still curving her lips, her eyes dancing in the warm streetlights, the gentle lapping of the waves in the harbor and the moonlight dancing along the water the perfect recipe for disaster. "Quatre's across the street - he just recognized us," Sally said, her voice low enough to sound like an intimacy. Trowa didn't bother looking to confirm - he trusted Sally's instincts and observations implicitly. He leaned down, brushing his lips over hers and pulling her close, fitting her body against his and tangling his hand in the soft fabric of her dress. When he pulled away, he looked across the street and caught sight of Quatre, his friend's jaw making a good effort to touch his feet. Trowa wanted to laugh. But then Sally brushed over his mouth with her thumb. "Lipstick," she explained. He gave the digit a teasing nip. It was something he had done to Duo. Something Quatre had seen. Something Sally had seen. Her eyes crinkled, and she gave him a small smile. Her hand slipped down to find his again. "Are you ready?" He wasn't. Not at all. Not even with the martinis making the world pleasantly soft and the press of Sally's mouth still fresh against his own. He would never be ready to watch his ex-lover and his best friend realize that all they had ever needed to be happy was a life without him . -o- Wufei's greeting was enthusiastic, the smile on his face relaxed, broad, genuine . He looked relieved that Trowa had shown up, and he pulled Trowa into a hug that had Trowa immediately tensing, immediately looking for Duo. Duo and Sally were hugging. Grinning at each other. Two friends ready to celebrate a momentous occasion. And then Duo turned his face just enough to see Trowa, still in Wufei's arms. His grin tightened, his eyes narrowed, his shoulders stiffened. Duo was definitely not relieved that Trowa had decided to show up. Wufei pulled away, his hands lingering to squeeze Trowa's shoulders. "Thank you for being here." Trowa tried to swallow around the lump in his throat, around his guilt and pain. He managed to nod to Wufei before the man stepped away to embrace Sally. Duo took two steps towards Trowa, and then hesitated. "You sent me an invitation," Trowa said in a low voice. Duo snorted. " Wufei sent you an invitation." That hurt. The words and the expression on Duo's face. "Do you want me to leave?" Duo groaned and crossed his arms. Almost immediately, he dropped them back down to his sides. "No. Of course not. Wufei would be- No. It's easier if you stay. Just…" Duo sighed, and the look he gave Trowa was raw and vulnerable. Three years ago, that look would have had Trowa reaching out for Duo, grabbing his hand and dragging him somewhere private, somewhere just for the two of them, somewhere where nothing and no one else mattered. But this was now , and Trowa was the cause, not the solution, for that look. "I'm sorry." Duo swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing several times, but then he nodded and moved away, grinning again as he opened his arms to Quatre. Sally rejoined Trowa, arching an eyebrow at him in silent question. "I need to drink more," he muttered. She took his hand again, giving him a sympathetic squeeze that he absolutely didn't deserve. "Trowa... Sally !" Relena had spotted them, her gaze taking in their joined hands and the lack of space between them. She smirked, looking like a cat who had gotten the proverbial cream. "And just how long has this been going on?" "A few months," Sally shrugged. "Uh huh. So that's why you shot down my brother when you were in New York six weeks ago?" "It was one of many reasons, yes," Sally muttered with a roll of her eyes. "Too bad it wasn't the only one." Relena's smirk grew as she looked at Trowa. "I'm sure my brother would have been more than happy to share." That insinuation had Sally barking out a startled laugh and Trowa wishing he could just die . He had always wondered, had always been afraid , that Relena and Zechs had compared notes on their respective flings with him. Heero had teased Trowa mercilessly for years about it, stopping only when he had married Relena and Trowa had pointed out that Heero had slept with Trowa after Trowa had slept with Zechs. Heero hadn't liked the implication at all , and had never mentioned any of the incidents again. There was, however, no shaming Relena. She hooked her arm through Sally's open one, pulling her away from Trowa and towards the restaurant bar, the look in her eyes making it clear that she wanted - and would get - all of the intimate details of their relationship. Trowa was alone for all of thirty seconds before Heero joined him, pressing a gin and tonic into his hand before sipping from his own. "Thank you," Trowa sighed in relief. Heero nodded and, standing on the periphery beside Trowa, scanned the room full of their friends and colleagues. It looked as if Duo and Wufei had rented out the entire restaurant. Trowa recognized many of the people, but the ones he didn't recognize seemed to mostly speak French, and he assumed they were locals that Wufei and Duo had grown close to over the last half-year. He wasn't surprised that Une wasn't there, and he doubted that she had recieved an invitation. Not after everything. "Duo didn't know whether or not he could invite Cathy," Heero said to him. Trowa turned his head to look at Heero. He knew. Trowa had told him, two days after Duo moved out and when he realized that Duo absolutely meant it when he told Trowa to stay the fuck away from him. He had gone to Heero, had thought - had almost hoped - that Heero would beat the shit out of him. He hadn't. He had, instead, fixed Trowa a drink, sat him down on the couch in his studio apartment, and insisted Trowa tell him everything. Heero had agreed that Trowa was an idiot, an asshole, and probably a lost cause. But he hadn't hit him. And he hadn't turned his back on him. Trowa sighed. "She's happy for them. She always liked Wufei." And she had adored Duo, after working through her phase of disliking him because of the war, because Duo had been the one to remind Trowa who he was. "She said she was going to send them a gift." They sipped from their drinks in silence for several minutes. "You and Sally?" Trowa shrugged. "Yeah." "Does she know, what happened with Duo?" Trowa sighed. "Yeah. She does." Heero nodded. "Good." Because Trowa really wanted yet another person to know exactly what a piece of shit he was. He sighed and took a rather large, burning gulp of his drink. "Relena and I are staying at the farmhouse." Trowa wasn't sure what that had to do with anything, but he had learned to let Heero meander his way through conversations. "He misses you." Trowa snorted derisively. "Not- He misses you as a friend. He's happy with Wufei. They fit. They work ." Trowa knew. He had had two years of watching them together, as partners and lovers, before they had left Preventers. "I'm glad he's happy," Trowa said. He couldn't think of what else to say. And at least he meant this. As much as he hated that Duo and Wufei were getting married tomorrow, that Duo was welding the already firmly-shut door of their relationship closed, he wanted Duo to be happy. Still, as Duo and Wufei stood side by side, as Wufei slipped an arm around Duo's waist and pulled him close to plant a kiss on his forehead, Trowa wished he didn't have to see it. Didn't have to celebrate it. Quatre wandered over, hugging first Heero and then Trowa, his hands lingering as he pulled away, his eyes searching. "You look well," Quatre decided. They hadn't seen each other in months, not since Trowa had been sent to L4 to liaise with the local branch of Preventers after a riot, and they had gone out for lunch together. It had been just after Trowa had received the wedding invitation, and Quatre had been so anxious for him, so caring , that Trowa had almost confessed the whole sordid affair that had ruined his life. "Thank you. So do you." Quatre smirked and shrugged. He had grown a beard, last year - keeping it trimmed short, but it sculpted his face, cutting through the boyishly round cheeks and making him look more like the boardroom powerhouse that he really was. "Sally looks well, too," Quatre continued. Trowa rolled his eyes. At least Heero had been blunt. "She does," he agreed, looking over to the bar where she and Relena were laughing and gesturing - two-handed gestures that Trowa forced himself to not try to contextualize. "They're dating," Heero said with a sigh, cutting through what might have been twenty minutes of Quatre trying to unobtrusively find out what their relationship was. "Oh? It's not just kissing on the street, then? It's more serious than that?" Quatre teased both Trowa and Heero. Heero gave Trowa a look, and despite himself, Trowa felt heat creep over his cheeks. "No, it's not just kissing on the street. We kiss indoors, too." Heero smirked, and Quatre, derailed, offered up an indignant huff. "Since when?" Trowa shrugged. They had set a date - two weeks after the bogus mission in Alaska. "Six, almost seven, months ago." Trowa could see Quatre trying to piece that information together. Heero's speculative look, however, was far more concerning. "Before you went to the Lunar Station to do training?" Shit . That had been five months ago, and Zechs had breezed through the Preventers station looking like a romantic hero and smirking at the sighs and longing glances his mere presence elicited. He and Trowa had gone out for drinks one night, had ended up in Zechs's hotel room, and Trowa had been very late for work the next day. And he had been stupid enough to tell Heero about it. "Not exclusively - not at the start," he scrambled to say. Heero was starting to scowl, though. Shit, shit, shit . "It was after that," he sighed. "After, I got back, told her everything ," he stressed the word, which made Quatre look confused and seemed to put Heero fractionally at ease, "and we decided to give our relationship a chance." Heero looked over at the bar, eyes taking in both his wife and Trowa's supposed girlfriend. "Good. She'll probably kill you if you fuck up. She's not like Duo." The words gave Trowa pause. Because Heero was right. Sally wasn't like Duo. In some ways, she was - ways like throwing themselves into a fight because it was the right thing to do and having no concern for their own personal safely, ways like having a sassy comeback for damn near everything, and ways like calling Trowa on his shit. But in other ways, they weren't alike. Duo ran from conflict in his personal life - he always had, and Trowa had always let him. Sally, Trowa was pretty sure, would take on any romantic struggles the same way as she did everything else - openly, and committing completely. Trowa realized that Wufei was the same, in that regard. He didn't let Duo take off when they fought, didn't wait days for him to drag himself back and work things out. Wufei went after Duo, Wufei made Duo face down his demons, and he did so while standing at his side. Trowa… Trowa hadn't. Trowa had been just as ready to run at any sign of the end as Duo had been. In some ways, they had both always had one foot out of the door, just waiting for the match to be struck before they took off. It was a sobering and depressing realization. "I'm sure I don't even want to know," Quatre muttered. Trowa sighed. He should have told Quatre. Should have told him years ago. But now was absolutely not the time. "You don't," he simply agreed instead. The clinking of cutlery on glass drew his attention. Howard was, for the first time Trowa had ever seen him, not wearing a Hawaiian print shirt. Instead, the gray haired man was wearing a suit . A cream linen suit and a pink dress shirt. It was surreal. "Alright, alright. Apparently, everyone is here, and everyone's already well on their way to getting hammered, so we should probably start this thing." He waved his hands. "So go find a seat, get settled in, and we can all get gooey and whatever about these two punks falling in love." There were some laughs from the guests as people moved to take their seats. Quatre gave his arm a squeeze and moved away, joining a dark haired woman at a table in the middle of the room and kissing her cheek. She was new. "Zorya. She works with Relena." Trowa arched an eyebrow at Heero, who shrugged. "She thinks they'll hit it off. They've been seeing each other off and on for three months." Relena and Sally walked over, Relena smirking still as she linked her hand with Heero's and they walked away to their table. Sally, on the other hand, looked a little shell-shocked. "Are you okay?" "I knew you had a reputation, Barton, but Jesus. I didn't realize you were an actual sex god." Trowa had to smirk as he put a hand against the small of her back and steered them towards a pair of open seats at a table near the back of the room. As far from Duo and Wufei as they could get. "How much of what I just heard was true, and how much did she exaggerate?" Trowa shrugged and wisely decided not to hold out Sally's chair for her, instead sitting down in his own while she arranged herself. "Relena? Probably not much. She's… very adventurous. And surprisingly bendy." "That is the Vice Foreign Minister you're talking about." Trowa smirked. "She wasn't at the time. Which is a shame, because her desk now is about three times bigger than the one she had then, and if I had been able to-" " Barton ." He smirked at her outrage and the flush on her cheeks. "You said yourself, I'm not the scrawny kid I used to be." "I am well aware. I didn't exactly need a dissertation on the subject on your sexual prowess to get that." He wondered just what Relena had said, wondered just which of the half-dozen hookups she had told Sally about, but his rather pleasant musings were cut short when Howard started to speak again. "Okay, so, these two kids - they're the closest thing I'll ever have to family, and since this thing is traditionally put on by the parents, they let me host. Which means you can all drink up on my dime - and it also means you're going to have to indulge me while I talk about my two boys." Howard had always liked Duo, and whenever Duo and Trowa had met up with him, the man's affection for Duo had been obvious. Trowa hadn't realized he felt the same way about Wufei, but then, anyone that Duo loved, anyone that he decided to spend the rest of his life with, Howard was likely to care for as well. Howard started to tell stories about both Duo and Wufei. The Duo stories were among Trowa's favorites - Duo sneaking about a Sweeper ship and having the audacity to complain about the food; Duo helping Howard set up the Lunar chop-shop after the war and inadvertently starting a turf war with two local gangs. Trowa hadn't heard the Wufei stories before, and he knew, as soon as Howard started in on them, that it was because they had happened after Trowa had fucked everything up. The stories had everyone, except for Trowa, laughing, smiling and toasting the two red-faced men sitting together at the front of the room. Trowa could only stare at them, could only feel the three drinks he had had settle in his stomach, could feel all of his mistakes building up, trying to choke him. They looked so happy. They looked perfect together, and Trowa- "Hey." Sally leaned close, hand resting on the fist he had clenched against his thigh under the table. He looked over at her. She was concerned, her eyes wide and her brow furrowed, and she cared . And he absolutely didn't deserve it. "I'm going to get another drink. Can I get you something?" She frowned slightly, but shrugged one shoulder. "I'll have whatever you're having." Trowa rose from the table, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, and made his way over to the bar. He ordered two gin and tonics, asking for the Mare Gin when he saw it on the shelf. By the time he sat back down at their table and pressed Sally's glass into her hand, Howard had stopped waxing poetic and Hilde was standing up, holding a glass in one hand and regaling the guests with embarrassing stories of her own about the couple. It went like that for another ten minutes, Hilde sharing stories designed to embarrass both Duo and Wufei while entertaining everyone else, and Trowa steadily emptying his drink and wishing he could just walk out. What the hell had made him think it was a good idea to come to this in the first place? He never should have said yes when he received the invitation. He sure as hell shouldn't have assumed that Duo wanted him there. "Okay, now that we all need to wash our eyes out with soap, let's let Sally Po, Wufei's Best… Woman, say a few words." Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Trowa had been so entrenched in his own spiral of self-loathing that he hadn't even considered the fact that Sally would probably be called on to speak. Or that everyone would turn to look at them. Duo's face was pinched again, and Trowa could imagine that the fingers he had laced with Wufei's on their table had tightened considerably as Duo looked at him. Sally stood up, one hand on Trowa's shoulder as she got up from her chair. He expected her to move away, but instead she positioned herself almost directly behind him, leaving her hand in place. "Thanks, Howard. I'm afraid most of my stories about Duo and Wufei are classified." There were a few laughs, mostly from the Preventers agents - current and former - spread throughout the room. "But there's one story I want to share. Wufei swore me to secrecy, when this happened, but I asked him for permission to share this, and after promising not to make him sound like too much of an idiot, he gave in." More laughs, and Trowa could feel his own tension build. He didn't want to know. He really, really didn't- "Duo and Wufei had only been together for a few months when Valentine's Day rolled around." He couldn't sit here and listen to this. But everyone was looking at them - looking at Sally , who still had her hand on his shoulder. He didn't know if she was offering comfort or restraining him. At the moment, it didn't really matter. He stared at his nearly empty drink, but he didn't make a move to pick it up. Not with everyone looking. He forced himself to draw in a deep breath, reminded himself that he had stood in front of entire enemy armies and pretended not to care that he could die at any second. He could sit here, in a restaurant and surrounded by his friends, and listen to Sally tell some ridiculous, romantic story about Duo and Wufei. "Wufei isn't big on holidays - any holidays, but he especially hates anything that's been commercialized. Like Valentine's Day. But, one day in the breakroom, he thought he overheard Duo telling a mutual friend that he liked Valentine's Day. He thought he heard Duo tell this friend that he liked boxed chocolate and roses and grand romantic gestures." Trowa, having known Duo for almost half their lives, knew that none of that was true. Duo hated holidays almost as much as Wufei did - and he vehemently hated Valentine's Day. The one year that Trowa had suggested they go out for dinner to mark the date, Duo had suggested that Trowa go have dinner by himself because he wasn't about to parade around and buy into the 'love makes you happy' bullshit that the holiday symbolized. He also knew that Duo didn't care for chocolate and was, in fact, allergic to roses. "Let me just say, for the record, that Duo was not telling the mutual friend any of that. Duo was telling the friend that he planned on confiscating all of the boxed chocolates and roses from the recruits who were dumb enough to bring them into the office, and that he was looking forward to throwing them in a dumpster and setting them on fire. That is the only thing Duo enjoys about Valentine's Day." Trowa had helped Duo confiscate the loot one year, had stood with him in the freezing wind while all of the red, white and pink paper hearts went up in flames and Duo stared at the fire expressionlessly. More laughs from the crowd. Duo looked right at Trowa, and he wondered if Duo was remembering that same time, wondered if he was remembering that they went back to Trowa's office afterwards and fucked on the floor before lying there side by side and looking up at the ceiling tiles. Duo had told Trowa about his first time, then, had pushed away Trowa's hand when he reached for him. Trowa had told Duo about his own first time, far more pleasant than Duo's, and there hadn't been much else to say after that. He wondered if Duo had told Wufei that story. Wondered if Wufei had known how to react, had known what to do. "So, Wufei overheard this conversation and rushes to the gym to ask for my advice. Of course. Because I'm a girl ," Sally said in an imitation of Wufei's most clipped and impatient tone. It was a fair impression, and people laughed again. "I told him I was pretty sure Duo didn't like Valentine's Day at all , but he insisted that Duo loved it, and he begged for my help in setting up a grand romantic gesture for Duo. So, that night, we broke into Duo's office - your security code was really cute, by the way - and filled his office with red roses, dozens of them, and petals all over his desk. And Wufei managed to find a giant box of chocolates in the shape of a heart that he put in Duo's chair. We even put up heart-shaped streamers and blew up thirty- five heart-shaped balloons. And then we left it for Duo to find the next day." Trowa realized he knew this story at the same moment that a lot of other people in the room realized they knew it too. Except, none of them had ever heard that part before. They only knew what happened next. "So, Valentine's Day morning. Duo comes in, already in a foul mood for all of the reasons, and he opens his office to find Wufei's grand romantic gesture. And he shouts at the top of his lungs ' Who the fuck did this shit? I'm going to murder you, asshole .' Everyone on the floor heard him." Trowa had actually stopped working, had reacted immediately to Duo's outrage and rushed from his office to find out what had happened. He, along with a half-dozen other agents, had crowded into the door of Duo's office to survey the damage. Duo had stalked around this office, shoving balloons aside and swiping rose petals from his desk before turning to glare at everyone. He had sat down in his chair, muttering about pulling up security vids, and then frozen as his ass came in contact with the box of chocolates. "Anyway," Sally concluded, "Wufei and I agreed not to tell Duo that we were the culprits. And, over the years, Wufei has gotten much better with his grand romantic gestures. And realized he shouldn't ask me for advice - except when he bought the farmhouse. You're welcome, by the way, Duo." Duo turned to Wufei. "I can't believe you did that," he muttered, his voice just barely loud enough to carry across the room. Almost everyone laughed. Wufei's cheeks were pink, and he sighed and looked on the verge of defending himself and his foolish actions. "Thank you." Duo leaned over and kissed Wufei, lips curled into a satisfied smirk as they pressed against Wufei's. It was a long, lingering kiss that had the guests cheering, had a few agents catcalling them, and had Trowa feeling nauseous. He had somehow managed to avoid ever actually seeing them kiss before now. Sally sat back down, her hand shifting from Trowa's shoulder down to his wrist. "Okay?" she asked him in a low voice. Trowa nodded dully. He was absolutely not okay, and it was clear Sally knew he was lying. She gripped his hand with her own, and Trowa couldn't bring himself to pull away from her. Finally, Duo and Wufei ended the kiss. Wufei was looking a little shell-shocked, even as Duo grinned at him, and Trowa was fairly confident he had never seen either man look happier. ~ * ~ |
