"Firsts"

Written By: Waterlilylf

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. All rights remain with Bandai, Sotsu and associated parties. No profit being made here.

Rating: R

Warnings: Yaoi, Post Cannon, sap, angst

Pairings: 3x2

Summary: How do you get past losing the love of your life, the person you fell in love with when you were just fifteen? Trowa desperately needs someone special in his life, even if he hasn't quite realised it yet..

"Firsts"

 

Relationships 101:

The door into Heero's office had a poster stuck on it; showing an explosion, and the words, Caution! Does not play well with others. Duo had stuck it up, naturally, years ago, and it was starting to peel a bit 'round the edges.

It still functioned as a good enough warning though, not that many people made the trek down here, or particularly wanted to spend time with the office's inhabitant. Trowa clicked his way in: Heero was oddly predicable when it came to passwords. He closed the door behind him decisively and walked in to perch on the window ledge. It was weeks since he'd been in here, and nothing had changed. The room still looked like it belonged to a super-villain out to take over the universe. Rows of computers and a massive world map on one wall, countries marked out in a colour pattern that he'd never been able to work out. All that was missing was a Persian cat to stroke as Heero outlined his plans for world domination.

'We need to talk.'

Heero looked up from his laptop, just a bit tetchy to be disturbed. No signs of homicidal rage, like the last time they'd talked. Shouted, rather. 'Why?'

'Shit, Heero. Why do you bloody think? Relena's birthday party?'

'That's not for two months.'

Duo sometimes said that he thought maybe Heero had been raised by wolves. Trowa had never got it. Wolves were pack animals, with a highly developed social structure. If they'd raised Heero, he'd at least have some ideas about social behaviour. And possibly get sarcasm.

Much more likely that he'd been brought up by giant killer robots.

'We need to talk about Duo,' he said flatly.

'What's wrong with him?'

'Nothing, yet. But if you keep sending him stuff he's allergic to, he's going to end up in the ER.'

'What?'

'White chocolate,' Trowa elaborated. 'Stupid damn flower arrangements. He doesn't want all that stuff, Heero. You have to know that. So tell me, what the hell is going on with you?'

Heero shrugged. 'You know that. I'm trying to get him back.'

'No,' Trowa contradicted. 'You're not. You're going through the motions.'

Duo seemed to accept that Heero had never noticed a damn thing about him, but Trowa didn't buy it. Heero Yuy was the most focused, goal-oriented person in the universe. If he'd really, genuinely wanted Duo to go back to him, he wouldn't just be sending occasional stupid gifts. He'd have sent fresh peaches, or some fancy flick-knife, or a bloody jetski that Duo had joked about, or something even halfway personal.

Not some half-hearted, meaningless crap he'd probably ordered over the internet.

'Heero, seriously. Do you even want him back? Honestly?'

'Of course I do.'

'Why?'

'Because.' He looked uncertain somehow. 'He - things make sense with him.'

'I know,' Trowa said quietly. They all knew that. Duo, more than any of them, had spent years acting as a buffer zone between Heero and the rest of the universe, so Heero could lock himself away in this office, or his house, and never actually have to interact with anyone.

'He's still your friend, Heero. We both are. You know that, right?'

'Are you?'

'Yes,' Trowa said emphatically, hating the lost look in Heero's eyes. He was, of course. Heero wasn't just Duo's ex; he'd been Trowa's friend for years before that. He'd known how much Heero valued the friendship. 'Look, the thing with Duo, I'm sorry. Well, no I'm not,' he added honestly, 'but I am sorry about how it happened.'

He did mean that, and not just for Heero's sake. That first fuck in the Preventers locker room hadn't been any way to begin a proper relationship, with Duo pissed at Heero and thinking how much this would hurt him, and Trowa not thinking at all. God alone knew how they'd managed to progress past that, although if he'd turned Duo down, none of this would ever have happened. Duo might have ended up going back to Heero after all, out of sheer habit, and Trowa - might not have been so quick to dismiss Quat's offer, even if he hadn't had Duo waiting for him at home.

That was scary, on quite a few levels.

'Is he happy, with you?'

'I think so,' Trowa said honestly. He'd been happy that morning anyway. There'd been breakfast in bed, and very enthusiastic shower sex, even if Duo had spent some of it bitching about how Trowa needed a proper bathroom with a proper shower, and a decent hot water supply. 'Heero. When he was with you, was he happy?'

'I don't know,' Heero said dolefully. 'Sometimes, maybe. But I don't know if I made him happy. He liked the sex, and I could make him laugh sometimes, but .. he was angry a lot of time as well, or he was upset with me over something. I just don't know how to do relationships,' he added.

'Jeez, Heero. What do you want? For me to give you relationship advice so you can try to get back your ex, who happens to be dating me right now?'

'I don't know,' Heero said again. 'I don't know how to do any of this. How do people learn about things like that?'

'Watching other people, probably.' It was how he'd learned it; watching the dynamics among the mercenaries who'd raised him, and later his friends at the circus; watching friends and lovers fight and make up and align their lives with each other's.

Heero though, raised by a shadowy assassin, and then locked up in a lab for years like some curious biological specimen, hadn't had any of that. Because he was intelligent, and had been trained to blend in, and normally had Duo or one of the others running defence for him, most people thought he was just a bit shy and a bit scary. Not that he hadn't a single solitary clue about how to deal with people.

'You need to talk to the person you're with, Heero. Yeah, sometimes about the important stuff, and sometimes about little things. Work or a movie or what's for dinner.'

'Even if I'm not interested in any of those things?'

Trowa sighed, settling himself more comfortably on the ledge. 'The point is, you're interested in the actual person, or you should be, if you're with him. You're supposed to care what they think about stuff; how they're feeling about something. Anyway, you should try to find someone who you've got something in common with in the first place, so you can do stuff together. Heero, wait, are you making notes?'

'Of course,' Heero said matter-of-factly, fingers tapping on his keyboard. 'It's all useful information. Go on. I have to pretend to be interested in things I don't care about. What else?'

'No, wait, I never said that! The thing is, if you are interested in someone, you should want to know about them. It's part of the package. Like, you do stuff because they want to.'

'Why?'

'Because. It's just what you do. It's part of being with someone, that you want to spend time with them, even if you don't always end up doing stuff that you want to.'

And if you played your cards right, you got amazing sex in return.

He didn't say that part out loud though. No point about giving away all his secrets, and seriously if Heero had been with Duo for almost a decade, and still hadn't worked that out for himself, he was pretty much beyond hope.

'That makes no sense whatsoever,' Heero grumbled. 'Why would anyone want to be in a situation where you're constantly pretending to be interested in things that bore you, doing things that you have no interest in?'

'Because if you care about someone, you should want to be with that person, to make him happy,' Trowa said baldly. 'And if you don't, then maybe you shouldn't be with him in the first place. Anyway it's not like you have to do it all the time; it works both ways. I don't know, people just compromise.'

Except Heero and Duo hadn't, ever, he realised suddenly. They'd got together as messed-up kids, in the middle of a war, and they'd never really moved past that, somehow cobbling together their fights and break ups and public shouting matches, but never really fixing anything.

'Seriously, you never did anything you didn't want to, just to make Duo happy?'

'Of course. Sometimes, he persuaded me to have sex with him. Or to eat the food that he made.'

'Yeah, I bet that was a real sacrifice for you.'

Heero stared at him. 'No, it was mutually enjoyable.'

'I don't want to know about that. Ever. So, apart from sex, and sometimes eating food he cooked, you never did anything just because he wanted it? You never just, I don't know, went around a junk shop with him, or took him to one of those stupid superhero moves he likes? Never took him out for a meal?'

'I should have done all of those things, shouldn't I?' Heero asked sadly.

'Some of them, yeah. Heero, it's not rocket science, the whole relationship thing.'

'I wish it were. I understand the science. I can't do this. I don't know what you do that I don't.'

'I talk to him,' Trowa said simply. 'I don't know, it's not all life-or-death stuff, Heero. We just talk about work, or some film we watched, or what we're going to do at the weekend, or what to make for dinner. Things people talk about. So, who is he?'

'Who?'

'The person you're writing all those notes down for. Asking me all the questions. And I know it's not Duo. You don't even want him back, do you? Not really?'

'I just miss him. Not all the time,' he added frankly, but 'it's lonely without him sometimes. I miss having someone else in the house. We used to eat dinner together a couple of times a week. I used to think it was silly, that he spent so much time cooking, but I miss it now, and Quatre said...'

'What the fuck has Quatre got to do with any of this?' Trowa demanded, feeling his anger slowly uncoil.

'Nothing, really.' Heero looked surprised at the question. 'We met on L3, a few weeks ago, and I didn't know what was going on with Duo, and I asked his advice.'

'Oh, for God's sake. Seriously! You went for advice to the one person in the universe who's actually worse at relationships than you are!'

'No, he's not. He's very intelligent.'

'He's a bloody idiot! He left me to marry some total stranger because his family wanted it, and now he's having issues with her, no surprise there, since he's actually gay and was sleeping with me for most of the time he was married, and now he seems to think he can just walk away from that, and get me back. I mean, how does that make any sense to a normal person?'

'I don't understand. You don't want him back?'

'Heero, I'm in a relationship. With Duo, which you seem to keep forgetting,' he added pointedly.'I'm happy. We both are. Why the fuck would I throw that over to go back to being Quatre Winner's bit on the side, whenever he can sneak off to be with me?'

'I thought you loved him.'

'Yeah. Well. Maybe it's not enough.'

'Are you in love with Duo?'

'That's not really any of your business.'

He didn't know himself, not really. What he felt for Duo was nothing like he'd ever had for Quat. More that he liked Duo being around.

'I was sure you'd want to be with Quat, if he left Sura, if he came back to Earth,' Heero said slowly, as if he was working something out. 'That would have hurt Duo terribly. I didn't want that to happen.'

'That's why you were trying to get him to leave me?' Trowa shook his head, mystified. It didn't make a shred of sense, except, if you were Heero, it maybe did. 'Heero, look. Duo and I - well, I don't know what's going to happen, really, but I swear, Quat's got nothing to do with it. We are absolutely and utterly over. '

Ridiculously, it hurt, saying it out loud.

'Does Quat know?' Heero asked, head down in his laptop and typing furiously.

'He does, yes.'

'Right.' Heero's expression, when he looked up, was as blank as Trowa had ever seen it. 'I see. Trowa, I have work to do. I'll see you tonight.'

'Sorry, what?'

'Tonight,' Heero repeated. 'Dinner. With Zechs and Wufei. You're coming, aren't you?'

'Yeah. OK. I didn't realise you were coming. I'll see you.' He paused with one hand on the door handle. 'So, the Duo thing. You'll stop stalking him?'

'Hn. I wasn't stalking him.'

'Whatever you were doing then.'

'Don't hurt him, Trowa. I mean it.'

Trowa swallowed. He'd never seen Heero as the scary guy most people did, maybe because the first time they'd really spent time together, Heero had been injured, and needed Trowa to care for him. He'd seen Heero hurt and lost and scared and impossibly bewildered over Duo. He could be fucking scary when he wanted though; a child assassin turned terrorist who ran intelligence for Preventers and did occasional missions no one was supposed to know about.

'I won't. I wouldn't.'

Heero gave him one terse nod; probably as close to his blessing as Trowa would ever get, and Trowa walked out.

Well, he'd survived. More or less. Upside; Heero seemed to have relinquished his claim on Duo. Downside: Trowa was pretty sure he'd been threatened by the most dangerous guy in the universe. And there was that bloody dinner party to get through.

Duo didn't know Heero was invited. At least, Trowa didn't think he knew. He hadn't mentioned it, at least. He did consider calling Duo to check, but Duo was in court all day, and would probably have his 'phone turned off. He'd wait 'til they actually met up; they'd arranged to meet at Duo's flat and go from there to the restaurant Wufei had chosen.

'Hey.' Duo kissed him, and pulled him inside. 'Good timing, Tro. I just got back a minute ago.'

'Hey yourself. Good day?'

'Boring-as-hell day.' Duo shrugged. 'Spent most of it hanging around, waiting. You?'

'OK, some of it. I talked to Heero.'

Duo jerked back and stared at him. 'Talked, as in had another shouting match? Fought a damn duel?'

'Talked as in talked. Really.'

'Oh.' Duo chewed at his bottom lip. 'So? How is he?'

'Worried I'm going to head back to Quat as soon as he lifts a finger,' Trowa said frankly. 'And dump you. You know, he missed you. And he really does care about you.'

'Yeah. I know.' Duo stepped back into his arms and rested his head on Trowa's shoulder. 'I know he does. So, you guys are sorted?'

'Sort of, I think. Wufei invited him tonight; did you know?'

'What? Shit, no, he never said anything, just that it'd be the four of us. It's typical of Chang, though. '

'We could call him and cancel if you wanted?'

'Dunno.' Duo looked like he was tempted. 'Nah, better get it over with. Gotta talk to him sometime, I guess, since Chang's decided to stick his bloody pointy nose in. Pity it didn't get stuck up Zechs' ass,' he added sourly, and Trowa laughed.

'That's all I'm going to be thinking of tonight, whenever I look at the two of them.'

'Bloody perv,' Duo muttered, and then laughed. 'Me too, actually. Ew.'

'Not ew at all,' Trowa teased, dodging a jab from Duo's elbow. 'More like incredibly hot. Stop trying to hit me, would you?' He grabbed Duo's hand, and brushed his lips across the knuckles. 'You sure you're OK with tonight?'

Duo leaned against him. 'Nope. But it's like I said, can't keep avoiding him for ever, can I? And ...

I do miss him, to be honest. D'you mind?'

'Well, you have to put up with me and Quat, so I can't really talk.'

'Not what I asked, Tro.'

'I don't know, really,' Trowa said honestly. It was new territory for him, all of this. He was used to being the one who was still hung up on his ex, not...the one with the boyfriend who was still somehow involved with an ex-boyfriend. His head was starting to hurt, actually. And Heero was his friend and always had been. He didn't want to ruin that, for any of them. 'He needs people around him, doesn't he? He needs us. You.'

'Yeah.' Duo dropped a kiss on his cheek. 'Thanks. Listen, I need to change. Come and give me some fashion advice, yeah?'

'Those,' Trowa croaked ten minutes later, voice hoarse at the sight of Duo in skin-tight jeans. 'Those. Definitely.'

'Yeah?' Duo twirled for him, giving him a good view of that perfect ass, hugged by clinging denim. 'Not the leather pants?'

'Oh, God,' Trowa moaned, remembering Duo in the leather pants he'd just taken off. 'Maybe you should try them on again.'

'Maybe I should,' Duo agreed brightly, swooping over to give him a quick kiss before shimmying out of the jeans.

The little fashion show was a fun tease, he got that, but he thought it was also Duo's way of getting him to relax, the first time he'd been in the little apartment since that night. A way to create some good memories, to make him laugh. Maybe slough off some of the Heero tension.

'Well?' Duo posed in front of him and it was suddenly even harder to swallow.

He nodded instead, fervently.

'You absolutely sure?' Duo turned, very slowly, in front of him, showing off.

'Sure, yeah. Why are we going out again? Can't we just stay here, and I can take those off and see what happens after?'

'God, don't tempt me,' Duo moaned, pressing into Trowa's hand. 'We have to go, 'cause if we don't 'Fei will probably just come here and drag us out.'

'He would too, wouldn't he?'

'One good thing about tonight, it'll be fun watching Zechs giving himself a coronary trying not to stare at my ass. Not while Wufei's watching anyway.'

'You're evil sometimes.'

'Who, me?' Duo batted his eyelashes. 'Serves 'Fei right if Zechsy's eyes are out on stalks. Might teach him not to meddle in other people's business.'

'He'd better not ogle too much,' Trowa said grimly.

'Ooh, you going all possessive on me?' Duo teased. 'I didn't think you were the caveman sort.'

'Wait and find out.'

'Now, that could be fun. Oh, before we go, I nearly forgot. I have something for you.'

'I noticed,' Trowa murmured appreciatively, eyes on the curve of Duo's rear. 'I didn't think I got to unwrap it 'til later though.'

'After dinner,' Duo gave him a deliciously enticing little wiggle. 'Promise. But actually, I've got you something else as well. It's on the balcony.'

'Another mirror?'

He did like the one Duo had given him before, and the kitchen chairs Duo had sanded down were nice enough, and would probably come in handy if he ever had guests. He he wasn't sure he wanted to clutter the place up with more stuff that Duo had picked up wherever. The lighthouse was his, the first place he'd ever owned. He wasn't sure he wanted it washed away under a tide of Duo's flea-market tat.

The thing on the balcony wasn't a mirror. He wasn't actually sure what it was. It was a misshapen thing made out of twisty black iron, and looked like it belonged in some sort of Gothic horror film, or a sex dungeon.

'it's a candlebra,' Duo said brightly, touching a couple of pointy bits where you were obviously meant to stick the actual candles. 'You put them here, you know, those big white ones you can get?'

'Yeah.'

Candles were useful in a power cut, but he'd never got them as romantic accessories. Quat had gone through a phase of liking the silly, scented ones, but they'd made Trowa sneeze.

'Oh,' Duo said, looking at his expression. 'It's fine if you don't like it. I just saw it dumped outside this old house that was being renovated, and it seemed a shame just to leave it there to be broken up for scrap. I thought it might look good in your bedroom.'

'I don't hate it,' Trowa said cautiously. It was a practical enough thing, he supposed, and it wouldn't take up that much space. He could always dump it in another room if he got sick of it. After the pep talk he'd given Heero, he supposed he pretty much had to suck it up and smile. Shit. At this rate, the lighthouse was going to turn into some sort of repository of flea-market rejects.

Still, once he got to have Duo in it, he could probably survive.

It might be nice, actually. Candlelight and Duo spread naked on his bed.

'Wow.' Duo grinned at him. 'You look happy all of a sudden. What's the look for?'

'You.' Trowa kissed him. 'Sex dungeon fantasies; that candelabra thing, and you tied to the bed in those leather pants, and me...stripping them off and then totally taking advantage of you. Maybe we could get another mirror, so you could see what I was doing to you.'

'Oh, fuck, Tro,' Duo gasped, pressing against him. 'Don't say stuff like that, not when we've got to out.'

'Gave you something to think about, didn't I? And something to look for, the next time you go to one of those markets. Now, come on, Maxwell.' He gave Duo a light smack on that gorgeous, leather-clad ass.

'Don't wanna,' Duo whined, and earned himself another smack, harder this time.

'Suck it up, Duo. You're the one who said we should go in the first place.'

~ * ~

Chapter 16

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