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"Quan Xin"Written By: Honor Disclaimers: My toys! I won’t share! Warnings: a little violence, language, twisted
humor, messed up timeline (I’m acting as if the war actually
lasted two years instead of one, and it’s a EWWT—‘Endless
Waltz, what’s that?’) switching point of views (sorry, it’s
necessary) Pairings: 1x5x1, 3x4, 2xH Rating: PG-13 Archived: Gundam Wing Diaries; honordemandoren.livejournal.com
Betas: Velvet and Caitilin Author’s Notes: This was done because…wait,
I will think of a good reason…hm… *emphasized* //vidphone, telephone// "Quan Xin" Chapter Four: Let the Games Begin "Whatever our creed, we feel that no good deed
can by any possibility go unrewarded, no evil deed unpunished."
(Heero's POV) //…I think he’s enjoying that.// //I would be,// Noin snickered from behind the scenes. This was the third time that I’ve watched this part of the tape. Most of it had been humiliating. I was definitely going to pay Relena back for this. But this first five minutes was very interesting to me. Wufei and I, at the beginning of the war, had barely been able to stand each other. He was such a mixture of raw anger and emotion, most of it affecting his judgment. There had been several times I wanted to pound some sense into him. Later, as time went on and we went on missions together, we started to become friends. I wasn’t as close to him as I was with Duo, or Trowa, but he was still someone that I would stand back to back with in battle without batting an eyelash. Never in a thousand years would I have guessed he was attracted to me. Dating or anything of the sort had just never been a topic that either of us discussed. It was something I could talk to Duo about, or Quatre, sometimes even Trowa but not Wufei. I had no idea that he was open to the idea of…guys. After all, he had been married and even if it had been rocky I knew that he loved her. The way he spoke of Meiran was a silent testament to that. The idea that he could look at me and see something besides a friend was a little…I couldn’t think of an adequate word to describe what I was feeling. Absently I stopped the disc where it was, staring at the frozen picture of me kissing the dragon. The picture in front of me was very appealing. I had fantasized about kissing him, although it had never entered my mind that he would let me do it in real life. The question was, had he put up with me because I was drugged at the time and not responsible for my actions? Or was it something…more? + Relena walked wearily to her room, tired after a long day of debates and luncheons and meetings. The day had been especially trying because of Wufei. He hadn’t let her get anywhere near Heero all day. Every time she had tried to talk to him, Wufei had always been right there in front of her, scowling darkly. And she knew better than to cross that scowl. He had no problem with lecturing her in public. The one and only time during the war he had been forced to rescue her made that amply clear. She stopped in front of her door, pausing with her hand on the handle. Something would have to be done about Wufei. Everything she had tried so far had only made him more determined to stand in her way. Perhaps it was time she thought of a strategy to get rid of him completely. The door closed behind her with a quiet snick and she breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, she could have some peace to think abou— “Ouch!” Relena’s eyes flew wide, head snapping in every direction to detect the source of that voice. It had been high-pitched, almost child like. Not seeing anyone, she shrugged it off and took another step into her room. “OWWW!” She jerked to a halt, once more frantically searching the room. No one was there. What on earth was going on?! After a moment, when nothing else happened, she took another cautious step into the room. “ITAIIIIII!!!” The voices were coming from the floor! In a daze she lifted her foot and sat it back down again. “Owie!” Chang. Relena’s eyes narrowed, tensing. This must be Chang’s doing. Only he would do something this childish. Well, voices from the floor were easy enough to ignore, until she could call security and have them remove…whatever it was that was causing this. Ignoring the rest of the cries of pain, she crossed over to her bed and sat down to remove her shoes. “ACK! Get off you cavewoman! You’re smothering me!!” Relena snapped back to her feet, spinning to stare incredulously at her bed. He had rigged that too?! “I cannot believe this,” she grumbled murderously under her breath. With a huff she went to sit at her vanity table instead. The sound of choking came from the chair as soon as she sat down. “Can’t…breathe…” She rolled her eyes. Apparently, *everything* was rigged. Well, this could be ignored until she was comfortable, then she would call someone. Kicking her shoes off, she turned to brush out her hair— *Crack!* Relena growled as the mirror cracked in front of her eyes. “It’s the Swamp Witch!” the mirror cried plaintively. “Don’t look at me, I might crack up even more!” Now this was going too far. Obscure voices were one thing, damaging her mirror (because of her ‘ugliness’ no less) was downright insulting. “When I get my hands on you Chang…” With a determined stride—accompanied by yips of pain, plaintive crying, and curses—she walked to the phone and punched in the security phone number. //You rang.// Relena blinked at the flat voice on the other end, carefully setting the phone back on the hook. Apparently Chang had tampered with *that* as well. Well, she didn’t have to stay in her room. She could go get help herself. Crossing back to the door, she twisted the knob and pulled. The door was locked tight, not budging. “I was running for the door” the doorknob sang sadly, “I had to find the passage back to the place I was before. Relax said the nightman/ We are programmed to receive/ You can check out any time you like/ But you can never leave. Welcome to the Hotel California~!” Inspiration struck and she yanked her cellphone out of her pocket. There was no way that he could have tampered with that! She hit the speed dial for security. When she got her hands on him…! “Hel—” //Suicide Hotline, please hold…// “OOOHHHHHHH!!” Snapping the phone shut she threw it at the bed. The pink phone hit the headboard, bounced twice on the mattress, then disappeared over the side. As she watched, a thick tongue reached out, snatched the phone, then disappeared back under the mattress. *gulp* *swallow* *crunch* “Ahhh…delicious! Reminds me of mother’s cooking…” With a scream of rage she whirled around and raced back to the windows. She would call for help that way! Tearing the drapes open, she stared at the windows in horror. Someone had painted them black with a large, smiling happy face in the middle of it. The window had been nailed shut to the frame. Had they thought of everything?! “LET ME OUT!!!” + (Wufei’s POV) Quatre, Trowa, Heero, Duo and I were watching all of this from the security cameras. Our harmless prank was having an even better effect than we had envisioned. Relena was actually having hysterics. “Man, Q, that sound laser grid thingy is really cool.” Duo was beaming at the monitors, obviously dreaming up ways to use the device again. Maybe pulling Duo into this had been a bad idea… Although he had been the one to sabotage the mirror so it would crack—ah well. “I know. When I went into my Ideas Lab and specified what I wanted, I got the funniest looks.” Quatre chuckled to himself, eyes sparkling in memory. “They admitted to me afterwards, though, that it was a lot of fun to do. Maybe I should start a line of practical jokes equipment.” “I’ll be your first customer,” Duo promised gleefully. Trowa shook his head. “Don’t even think about it, Duo. Should we let Relena out?” All five of us looked at each other. “Nah.” +
“So, how did it go?” Duo slid an arm around her waist, still grinning like a lunatic. “She freaked. Completely freaked. It was beautiful, Hil, I’m sorry you missed it.” “You *did* record it, right?” Her arm went around his waist in return. They did look good together, I had to admit. It was obvious from the way they looked at each other that they were perfectly happy with their lover. I envied them for that. In response, Heero handed her a cd. “Aww! Heero, you are the *sweetest* thing!” She leaned up to kiss him on the cheek, making him blush slightly. “But next time, guys, I wanna play too!” Considering that Hilde was as devious as Duo (or Quatre) I nodded. “Of course. We’ll let you think up the next one.” Heero and Trowa gave me intrigued looks. “You think she’ll do something after this?” Trowa asked. “Of course. To get revenge, if nothing else.” He nodded thoughtfully, conceding the point. Heero was nodding as well, but sourly. “Let’s forget about it for tonight,” Hilde said firmly. “We have an old, classic sci-fi movie playing tonight that dates pre-colony. And you know what that means.” A tendril of anticipated pleasure sparked at the back of my mind. Oh yes, I knew what that meant. Heero was mirroring my smile as we went into the movie theater. I could almost feel sorry for the other people in the theater that night. We bought our popcorn, and our tickets, then went to the directed theater and settled in mid-way between screen and door. Since Quatre and Hilde claimed that they actually wanted to *enjoy* the movie, they separated themselves from the rest of us by a few seats. The first thirty minutes or so, I found nothing to complain about. For their knowledge at the time, this was actually well thought out. Then the ‘astronauts’ on the screen went into space. When the hydraulic line busted on the shuttle, and liquid hydrogen leaked into space, all four of us groaned. Duo flopped back dramatically in his seat, hands covering his eyes and shaking his head. “Oh come on!” he hissed in a near-whisper. “Like *anything* wouldn’t freeze instantly when hitting open space like that!” “And even if it did gush out in a stream,” Trowa noted disapprovingly, “it certainly wouldn’t move *backwards*. There’s no wind factor or gravity in space to make it behave like that!” “And by a remote chance both of those things COULD happen,” Heero noted beside me “it certainly wouldn’t make the engines blow!” “They should sue their technical advisor for stupidity,” I concluded. Then the engine exploded, and Duo started drooling over said explosion. “Such pretty colors…” The action on the screen kept going, with one of the actors falling far enough away that he couldn’t be ‘safely’ rescued. “Stupid woman,” I grumbled. “Don’t just stand there gibbering!” “Who wrote these lines?” Duo demanded. “People don’t do stuff like that! Well, except Heero…” “If I pulled a stunt like that,” Heero pointed to the now floating corpse on the screen, “all four of you would find a way of resurrecting me, just so you can kill me again. And why did he fossilize like that?” “Like I said,” I grouched, “they should sue the advisor for stupidity.” Quatre threw popcorn at us, so we shut up…until the actors did something else massively stupid. “Uh-huh.” Duo gave us a mournful look. “We just didn’t know, guys, that so much information could be captured in just three beats of sound. Darn, think of all the uses we could have put that information to in the war.” That was when Hilde threw her empty soda bottle at Duo’s head. “Will you four be *quiet*?!” she hissed. So we stayed quiet for the rest of the film…or I should say, we just whispered scathing comments to each other. + Heero and I were still shaking our heads later that night over the movie. I could remember what had started this habit of ours. We’d been in an abandoned movie rental store for a week. There was an apartment above it that was still in more or less working condition, but that part of town had been largely deserted. With absolutely nothing to do, we’d decided to watch some of the movies. It was Duo who put in the first one—and promptly started making fun of it. We’d enjoyed it so much we had hunted for other B grade sci-fi movies to continue on through the night. The lights were out, and had been for a while. I was lying in bed, still thinking about the day, not quite ready to fall asleep yet. It had been a good day—I just wish it had lasted longer. “Wufei.” Apparently I’m not the only one still awake. “Yes?” “…why didn’t you punch me?” I almost asked ‘for what’, but before the words could win free of my mouth I realized what he was referring to. The kiss—when he had pinned me to the bed and kissed me. I was still dreaming about that kiss. It was a stupid and childish thing to do. After all, it was just a kiss…but I kept doing it anyway. No one had touched me in any way that could be considered intimate since Meiran. I had soaked up Heero’s touch like a sponge would have lying in a rainstorm. It had been a week since that incident. Why was he bringing it up now? “If I was bothered by you playing tongue twister with me, Yuy, I would have said something before now.” There was a contemplative pause, then the rustle of sheets and bedcovers as he shifted. “I’ve never been sure where you stand. With the others, I would know—but I’ve never been as close to you.” It was true, we weren’t. It was something I had always regretted. I was glad to see that was changing, because of the time we were spending together. Rolling over, my eyes sought his in the dark. “I was an idiot when we met—angry, barely in control of my own emotions. There were times when I hated you because you *were* in control. You knew exactly what you were doing, even though your reasons for doing it changed.” I was glad for that first mission we shared. We finally began to understand each other then. Heero snorted. I could barely see his eyes in the dark, more of his silhouette by the light of the alarm clock on the nightstand between us. “I wanted to beat some sense into you at first. It was a relief when you finally started to grow up.” I glared at him, even though I knew that he couldn’t see it. “I wasn’t the only one in the process of maturing, Yuy.” “Hn.” Hearing his amusement, I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. I understood, now, what he had been truly asking at the beginning of this conversation. In a very round-about way, he was trying to figure out if I was attracted to him. Hm. I’d been trying to figure out before how he viewed me. It took Relena’s intervention with that damn drug before I knew. I didn’t care to reveal my sexual orientation in the same flamboyant way he did. And if I was right, and he was curious, then maybe… “It was rather a surprise to me, more than anything. What are the odds that out of all five of us, two would be gay and three would be bi? Or…are you bi?” “I’m not entirely sure,” Heero admitted slowly. “I’ve rarely been around a woman that I found attractive.” “Heh. I know what you mean. Sally is the only one I can think of. I can’t easily picture her as a date, however. She’s too much of a mother figure.” “Maybe we lean towards guys,” Heero offered after a beat. “Maybe strength means more to us than gender,” I retaliated. “…maybe so.” And if that was so…maybe I would become much closer to Heero than I was right now. Ancestors, I hoped so. ~*~*~*~ Honor: In case you’re wondering, the movie the guys went to see is Mission to Mars. And all of the things they were griping about was what my dad was saying on the drive home. NEVER take an engineer to see a sci-fi movie. Just…don’t. Unless it’s futuristic sci-fi. That’s a pretty safe bet.
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