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"Greeting Cards"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: Yaoi, funeral practices, AU, fluff Pairings: 1+4, 1x2x1, 3+H, 5xH, 3x4, 6x9 Summary: Each chapter is based on Heero’s
greeting cards and Duo's mortuary. "Greeting Cards "
Chapter 39-- May Is For Mother The sun shone brightly from behind passing clouds as a breeze cut across the hilltop cemetery , where many of Sanc's notables, and all of the Peacecrafts', had been interred. Attending a funeral service and not being the one in charge felt strange. Flowers ruffled and I shivered. "Do you want to go back to the car?" Heero asked me. With Leia Barton properly buried beside her father and daughter, I was ready to go do something. I wasn't sure what. I certainly didn't want to attend the public memorial service Zechs had arranged for the evening. "Are you up for a walk?" I asked him. "If I move I'll warm up." I figured he'd like that. He liked walks and Heero's injuries had healed just fine, plus I knew he missed going to the gym to work out, although the villa had provided everything I could think he could have wanted. "Yes." See? I was right. Swathes of daisies whitewashed the luxuriantly growing grass, cut by sweeps of golden buttercups and dots of pink clover. Heero was pointing all this out, including the taller ribbon of blue camas in the background. He knew the flower names and stories about them and described them with words like "sweeps" and "ribbons" because he had a poet's soul. All I knew was that the wildflowers were pretty. The ground was still too damp to sit on, so we found a rock on the sheltered side of the hill, and I sat while he picked flowers to press in his notebook and draw, I guess, later. What was I to do? I loved this man. I couldn't see myself settling down with anyone else. I was spoiled and no longer wanted to live the life of a bachelor in substandard housing. I wanted someone to care for me and— And. Did I want to take care of Heero? Be his support when he needed solid footing? Was I solid footing? What if I failed him? What if I waited so long he gave up and I lost all chance at achieving happiness? He was giving me time. He hadn't pressed me to repeat my promise. He hadn't held me to it at all. It was up to me, but was I up to it? The big IT. Vows of constancy and duty and foreverness. Well, I knew we could begin with sharing a house and go from there. He stepped into my field of view. "For you." He presented me with a small bouquet. "Ah, thanks." He had tied a stem around the other stems to hold them together. I didn't know what to do with it, so I set it down. "I brought a paper along." I showed him the "For Rent or Lease" pages. "You want to look at houses to rent?" he asked, clarifying for me. "All right. I found a couple possibilities on the internet we can look at as well." What was that in his hand? Oh, my. "Tell me you're not making a daisy chain?" It looked like it to me. Ten little daisies in a row, and the next poised in his hand. "Would you like to learn how?" he asked. "'Ro... that's a girl-thing. No, I don't." "It is not exclusively a girl-thing." Yes, it was, to my mind, but there was my boyfriend linking tiny flowers together. I picked a buttercup and stared at it. "Smell it," he suggested, so I did. "It doesn't smell like anything," I said. "Get it closer." I nearly pushed it up my nose. "Nothing." He was smiling. And he called me the idiot! "Shall we go?" I asked. "Just a second." He was messing with the end of my braid, but he often played with it, like a cat, I swear. I felt a double-tug then he said, "Ready." "You have your flowers?" I had my bouquet stuffed in a pocket where no one would notice it. I may have been gay, but I wasn't that gay. "Yes." He wiggled his notebook at me then slipped it into his jacket pocket (See? He hid his flowers, too.) He was wearing the same brown corduroy jacket he'd worn when I first met him. So we drove and parked and climbed stairs and knocked on doors and drove on and parked and looked at five places. One of them still had the crime scene yellow caution tape trapped in the shrubbery. "It would be nicer if it had not been a meth lab," he said after a thirty second tour. "Yep." The only thing better would have been if it had been burned to the ground first. "Discouraging." "Yeah, but we only just got started. It took me weeks to find my choice accommodations." Heero's expression darkened, his eyes deep blue pools partially hidden behind reeds of abused hair. "Tell me that was an exaggeration." "No. I mean, it takes a lot of looking, that's all. How long did it take for you to find—oh, yeah, you saved the girl and got the room. Well, it takes the rest of us longer. Call it sweat-equity." "I call it a day." "Ah, babe, don't be blue, just your eyes." That got me a flash of angry blue. "That's just the listings today. Tomorrow or the next may bring us a better set to look at." "Tomorrow is Mother's Day." He knew all the holiday's, making cards for them all. This one escaped my notice, for obvious reasons. "I musta had one." "I never knew mine either." His eyes became soft blue with sparkles. I walked him back to the car. "Speaking of mothers," I said, "You know Quat found out his mother died giving birth to him." "I thought he came from a test tube on Zodiac island?" "Me too. Yeah, turns out he wasn't a test tube baby after all. He's been helping Trowa, and to some extent Preventers, search through the Zodiac records for information on his family." "And he came across the death of his mother that way?" "And more he won't talk about. I don't know if that was a good thing to discover while helping, but now he knows." "Trowa seems to care a lot for him," Heero commented. "Good thing for both of them. Lean on one another, ya know?" And that's when it all came together for me. I saw Heero and me leaning on one another holding up a part of our relationship. "Wufei feels the loss of his family deeply. His father was very strict and his mother—" He stopped at the car's door and walked around to stand very close to me. "What is it?" "I love you." He smiled, those blue eyes lost in crescents of cheeks. "I love you, too, Duo." "Let's go to Atlas City," I said. My head was awhirl with plans, which weren't getting verbalized to him. "We just got back from there. You have work in the morning. We should eat and you can drop me off at the palace." I grasped his shoulders and made him look at me. "Let's go there because it's the nearest place where we can get married." It was fortunate that I had a grip on him, because his knees gave out. "Whoa, babe." Gasp. He clenched my arms like steel forceps. "God, 'Ro, you okay? Didn't mean to put you into shock." "Y-yes." He pulled himself together and started to say something more, when my cell phone interrupted us. I kept an arm around his waist while I answered the call. "Hey, Duo here. What'sup? Who? Oh, yeah." Heero met my eyes, searching for clues as to what had happened. I shrugged and mimed, "I don't know yet." "The Claremont's, yeah. Now? Yeah, I can. Okay. Bye." I pocketed the phone. "That was their daughter. She asked if we could meet her at her house." "Did she sound upset?" "Not like bad news or anything, just hassled, I guess." "Then we should go now." I agreed and we drove across town again and up to the cemetery to park, because once again, I wouldn't leave a mortuary van on a narrow street like that. "Hope all is well," he repeated. "Me, too, but she didn't say it wasn't." We didn't bring up the Atlas City topic at all. Not the best time to explain that wild moment. When we arrived, a young woman was standing in the front yard. She shooed two toddlers inside with an older sister then came to the gate "Are your parents okay?" That was all I wanted to know and had to get any bad news out of the way. "Yes. Oh, I'm sorry to worry you. No, they're fine and happy in their new home with less to take care of." "That's a relief." "Sorry. It's just that they left me with instructions to contact you when the renter's lease was up." Now I was confused. "What renters? Don't you live here?" "I'm doing a bad job of explaining," she said. "Yes, I do. Mother thought you were looking for a place to buy. That may not be true. It's been a while and she can get confused." "No, she was right and we're still house hunting. What's this all about?" "Why don't I take you to see the cabin?" "Cabin?" Heero whispered. I lifted a shoulder, again miming my lack of knowledge. "Okay," I answered. "It was the original house on the property, and when Mom and Dad moved here they lived in it for two years while Dad built their house and his studio." The daughter wound her way down a long driveway which began at the street, ran alongside the one to the main house and then branched off and slightly uphill. The heavy growth of trees and shrubs hid the road completely from the street and the other houses in the neighborhood. "I was going to move in, then I got married and we moved to another city, then we started having children and the cabin was too small. So, mom and dad leased it out." "And the lease is up?" Heero asked. "And the renters gone now, right?" I wanted that clear. "Yes, of course. It's empty so I can show it to you. It's small." It was small. A front room led to the kitchen opening to a pantry and from there the out of doors. Back inside, next to the kitchen was a hall with a bathroom and two bedrooms sprouting off on alternating sides, and a den. And that was the house. Nothing mattered after we saw the den with its wall of windows providing a scenic view of the Sanc valley. All that light made it perfect for painting. I knew it and so did Heero. It was our home. "What are they asking for this? It is for sale, right? That's why you called? To sell it?" It had to be so. "Yes. Mom said, 'call Duo Maxwell and if he likes the place give him and that lovely friend of his the envelope I sent you.' And here it it, for you." I took it, but it handed directly to Heero. "You read it, please." "All right." His beautiful blue eyes, the ones that stunned me from the start, left mine and scanned the page. Then he looked back up. "You are going to like this." (o) We sat in the car and looked at the papers in our hands, shaking with excitement. "It's ours," he said. "Unbelievable." "We just have to get our signatures authenticated and file this in the morning. Duo, we have a house, that one. Are you sure—?" "Sure? Sure I want it? Hell yes! Sure I want to share it with you? God, Heero, I wanted to go to Atlas City an hour ago and get married. Yes, I want to share it with you!" His kiss melted into mine, sealing our new life. He had my shirt unbuttoned and a hand down my pants, but kissing in the dark in the parking lot of a cemetery began to creep my boyfriend out and he stopped. "I want you, but back at my place. We can pack, call Trowa to get some time off, I have to—" "Shh," I calmed him down a bit and dressed. "Okay, I'll take you home. Here's your jacket." I saw a lavender paper in the inner pocket. "What's that?" "Oh, it skipped my mind entirely. Your card." "Card? When did you have time to make this?" "I had no time, so expect very little from it. It is the thought that counts this time." "It always is, babe." It was blank on the cover so I opened it to read what he'd written in that beautiful script of his: "I endeavor to prove to you that I am worthy of your heart; I can be trusted with it. You will never stand alone in this world while I live." "Will you say this to me when we get married?" I asked. "If you like. I can write more." "Write for me. I want to echo these thoughts but in your words." "All right, love. Whatever you want, but it will take me some time." "Then we'd better get home quick," I said, chuckled and started the van. (o) Later on I went to brush my teeth. I looked into the mirror and saw reflected back at me my face and the yellow dusting of pollen on my nose. It had to be from smelling that buttercup. That meant all day long I'd been walking around with a yellow nose. Heero. He'd done that on purpose, the bastard. What had I done? Oh, well, just a little teasing about him and his girly daisy chain. My braid! I pulled it around to the front and there it was-- Heero's ...no... MY daisy chain. For God'ssakes I'd been wearing that in my hair all day too! I called out to him. "You let me wear a yellow nose all day?! And flowers?! 'Ro? Stop laughing!" Of course I couldn't stop laughing either; that is, until he whispered, "Yes." Yes? Oh, yeeees. "You'll go to Atlas City with me and get married tomorrow?" "Yes." I couldn't wait. End
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