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"Sunny Day Outside Marseilles"Written By: Waterliliylf Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. All rights
remain with Bandai, Sotsu and associated parties. No profit being
made here. Rating: R Warnings: Duo POV, Pure, unmitigated sap and undoubtedly
a certain amount of OOC. You have been warned... Pairings: 1x2x5 Summary: Um, three hot guys driving around the
French Riviera in a sports car..who needs a plot? Sequel to the 'Rainy
Day' stories "Sunny Day Outside Marseilles" Chapter 5: I don't normally end up having to wait for them; it tends to be the other way around. Not that I'm habitually unpunctual, but more that they're somewhat obsessive about being early. I wasn't complaining this time. I was quite happy leaning against our borrowed sports car, and wondering about my chances of sneaking off some time to take her for a spin. Wufei would let me drive if I asked, of course, but he'd so obviously fallen in love with the thing that it seemed a little bit mean to deprive him of the pleasure. 'Ready to go?' he called, hurrying out the door and closing it behind him. He was looking - wow. He didn't usually wear bright colours, and I'd never seen him in that particular shade of red before. He didn't normally go in for sleeveless, skin-tight t-shirts. 'Would you like me to ride shotgun this time? We should be heading off now; if we're going to make our lunch reservations.' He tossed me the keys and I was in the driver's seat with the keys in the ignition before I realised we'd forgotten something. Or someone, more precisely. 'What about Heero? We're going to make him run behind?' 'He's decided not to come.' 'What? Why?' I killed the engine and reached for the door handle. 'Duo, wait.' Wufei put one hand over mine. 'He's decided to stay here, and he wants us to go without him.' 'What's wrong with him?' I jerked his hand off. 'If he's not feeling well, of course we're not leaving him by himself.' Wufei sighed, giving me a long look. 'He's not sick, just tired. If we stayed with him, he'd pretend he was fine and he'd only wear himself out giving you swimming lessons or something. If he we're not here to impress, he'll have to rest a little. I think he needs some time to himself anyway. Now, are you going to drive, or shall I swap seats?' 'I'll do it,' I pressed the security code and swung us out through the gates. 'So this is like - my first lesson in Heero management or something?' He laughed softly. 'Something like that. You know how hard he works, Duo.' I had to snort at that; talk about people inhabiting fragile glass houses and firing off guided missiles! 'I'm not that bad. I know I get too involved in my cases, but I do know when to switch off. I don't think Heero does; I think he dreams computer programs and has nightmares about viruses attacking his systems.' I laughed obligingly. 'He needs to learn to relax, Duo. You're good for him, you know; he's been so laid back since we started this holiday. For the last few weeks, he's been trying to do all of his work from home and take care of you. If he's not watched he'll work himself into the ground.' 'I'm sorry,' I muttered, feeling the sharpest stab of guilt that I hadn't realised. Of course, I'd seen him on his laptop, but I hadn't realised what he was doing. I'd just thought he was keeping himself amused while I was taking a nap, or watching a movie he didn't want to see. 'That was all my fault.' 'Nonsense,' he said crisply. 'As if we'd let anyone else take care of you! And once Heero has his computer, he can work anywhere, so it made sense for him to be the one to stay with you. He needs some rest now, though; that's why I asked Quatre to lend us the villa for a week, before flying on to Paris.' I nodded, automatically pasting on the bright smile that had become second nature now whenever they mentioned Paris. Another misconception; I'd thought that had spending time here had been mostly for my benefit; a nice, quiet place for Duo to recuperate. I was really going to have to stop thinking of myself as the centre of the universe. 'Heero's fine,' Wufei said reassuringly, misreading the expression on my face. 'He just drives himself too hard, you know that. Sometimes, the best thing is to try to get him to the point of sheer exhaustion so he recognises he needs to take a break.' I blushed, slowly and thoroughly, putting a few little things together; the little show they'd put on for me; what had undoubtedly happened in the shower. Heero's tiredness that morning; his comment about how he sometimes needed to give up control. 'So - last night - was that what it was all about?' Wufei sighed. 'Last night, most - all of it - was about me wanting Heero and Heero wanting me. I hadn't actually planned on having an audience,' he smiled, very slightly. 'That was his idea and it probably surprised me just as much as it did you.' 'Oh.' It was oddly nice to realise that they hadn't planned it between them; hadn't sat down and discussed the best way to introduce me to the joys of three-way sex. Then that threw up a whole new worry. 'I'm sorry. I hope you weren't too uncomfortable, having me there.' He snorted. 'Did I look like I was uncomfortable? Honestly, Duo. You find the oddest things to worry about.' 'Yeah, well,' I muttered something incoherent. After all, I was pretty much the newbie here; they'd been shacked up for a couple of years before I'd come on the scene. And there was still this nagging little voice that occasionally suggested that Wufei might not necessarily have wanted me to break up his cosy little romance with Heero; that he'd only gone along with it because it was what his partner had wanted. He just laughed, obviously enjoying my blush. 'There should be a side road on the left-hand side up here.' He started telling me about where we were going; apparently it was vineyard that also had a small gourmet restaurant. Quatre knew the owners and had arranged reservations for us; I got the impression that said reservations weren't normally all that easy to come by. I let him rattle on about how the place had won all sorts of awards and such. Part of me was still thinking about Heero, and feeling guilty for abandoning him. But I could see Wu's point. No way would Heero Yuy admit to needing a day off. I could see how maybe he'd want some time to himself too. Of all of us, he needed that solitude sometimes. I think it was partly the way he'd been brought up, while the rest of us had all had some sort of social contact, he'd been raised by a reclusive assassin, and then thrown in a lab. Sometimes he just needed to be by himself, and he hadn't had much of a chance lately, having appointed himself as my full-time carer. The other part of me was thinking it was a little bid odd, just me and 'Fei going off for the day without Heero. Sure, he'd spelled Heero in hospital visits, and looking after me to give Heero a break, but I couldn't think of a time in the last couple of months when we'd consciously decided to spend time together, just the two of us. Lunch was wonderful, even if I didn't really recognise much of what I was eating. There was some sort of shellfish stew, and something that might have been lamb, and a crisp pastry filled with some velvety lemon filling. After we'd tried to pay, and been politely informed it had been taken off by Monsieur Winner, the waiter invited us to take a walk around the estate. 'Would you like to do that, Duo? It's still early.' 'Well, it sounds nice, but we should probably get back to Heero, shouldn't we? Check he's OK?' Wufei shook his head. 'I sent him a text while you were in the bathroom, and he hadn't replied. He's probably asleep. Come on.' He stood up and there wasn't really any way I could refuse. Not that I wanted to, exactly; I'd just been feeling a bit guilty about leaving Heero all on his own. But then maybe I should feel guilty about not spending time with 'Fei either? It was just the way things had worked out lately; Heero had been devoting so much attention to me that I'd been trying to encourage the two of them to do stuff together. I'd never meant 'Fei to assume that I'd been avoiding his company or anything. 'There's actually something I wanted to talk to you about,' he mentioned as we wandered down a shady laneway. Oh fuck. 'What's wrong?' I tried not to sound as worried as I felt. What if he felt none of this was working out? Admittedly, it seemed strange after what we'd done the previous night, but maybe he'd thought about it, and decided it wasn't what he really wanted. Or maybe he was pissed with me for not realising Heero had been working himself into the ground? 'Nothing's wrong, love.' He slipped an arm around my waist and guided me a little off the path. 'Not now. I just want to talk about something that happened during the war.' OK, that wasn't what I'd been expecting. Not remotely. He didn't say anything for a few minutes, and the two of us just meandered down this little path between neatly-trimmed high hedges, which opened out to reveal the most amazing sight. 'What is it?' It was some sort of flower; and the field looked like a shimmering lake of purple and mauve and lilac. 'French lavender.' He pulled a stem and brushed it against my cheek. 'It's the exact colour of your eyes, Duo.' Oh. Heero's usually the one who pays extravagant compliments, but Wufei can do a pretty good job when he chooses. We wandered around the edges of the field, pulling quite the bouquet as we went, and just soaking up the peace and the sunlight, and the lazy hum of bumblebees, and eventually finding a nice place to sit, where we could rest our backs against a handy tree trunk.. I was starting to think that perhaps he'd decided to drop whatever it was that he'd been planning to talk about, when he spoke. 'You remember when we were in that cell on the lunar base? The three of us?' 'Of course.' It wasn't something I tried to think about all that much; partly for obvious reasons, and partly because it was the first time I'd realised that there was - something - between the other two. 'I don't know if you remember this, but there was one day, when I was pulled out by a couple of the guards.' I nodded, still not entirely sure where he was going with this. We didn't talk about the war very much. 'It was one time when Heero was off on a test flight. They wanted to interrogate you, right?' We were sitting close enough that I felt his whole body give a weird little shudder, and put an arm around his shoulder. It's odd, sometimes, to feel that he's actually just a bit smaller than me. 'Not exactly. They said it didn't matter what they did to me; that I was only going to be executed anyway, and I wasn't important. That it was just a little perk of the job, getting to play with prisoners.' His voice, telling me this, was so damn controlled, that I could almost feel the effort he could make not to let this get away from him. 'They didn't,' I breathed, not sure if I was pleading with him, or God, or the universe. Please, please, let - that - not have happened to him. Not our proud dragon. He shook his head, and I started to breathe again. 'They didn't get the chance to go that far. I never knew how he found out, but Trowa stopped it.' He didn't say how far it had gone, though, and I didn't want to ask. This was his own particular nightmare, and I wasn't going to force him to relive a second of it. I was going to make damn sure that I bought Trowa a hell of a good present home, though. 'It just seemed - easier to pretend that nothing of the sort had ever happened, that they'd only wanted to question and that was all. Gods, Duo. I'd been so arrogant, so sure that nothing they could do would touch me. That I could withstand any abuse; any torture they chose to inflict.' 'I never knew,' I whispered. 'I never wanted to tell either of you. But Heero heard me later that night, after you'd fallen asleep; I'd thought you were both asleep, actually, and he guessed what had happened.' I nodded, not entirely sure if I'd ever be able to tell him that I'd been awake too. I'd heard him cry out in his sleep, a sound I'd never thought Chang Wufei would make, but before I could move, Heero, who'd been closer, was beside him. I'd never known what it was all about 'til now; I'd tried so hard to keep my eyes shut, but I hadn't been able to block out the softly murmuring voices, or the image of Heero with his arms around Wufei. He shook his head, soft dark hair whispering against my cheek. 'I thought that - we should tell you, so you'd be prepared. That you had a right to know what might happen. Heero refused. He said he thought you'd had some sort of bad experience in your past, and he didn't want you to have to deal with that.' 'I just remember you two being so close, in that cell,' I told him quietly. I don't think I'd ever felt lonelier in my whole life than that night, and that was saying something. I'd known, really, that I'd never had a chance with Heero. I'd fallen for him the first time we'd met, but that was the occupational hazard of being gay, right? Falling for the straight best friend? In some ways, it had made it easier to dream about him; knowing it was just a crush on my part and nothing would ever come of it. Seeing him with 'Fei that night had turned things into a whole other ball game. Ahem. No pun intended. Finding out that Heero wasn't just gay, but that he was already taken; that I'd never had a chance. 'I still feel so ashamed of how I reacted. Such weakness on my part. I would have done anything, told them everything, to get them to stop. I begged them; I can still hear my own voice sometimes in my dreams; so pitiably weak. I know that Heero,' he hesitated, 'Heero would have been stronger.' 'You don't,' I denied. 'Thank God, nothing like that ever happened to him, but you can't tell how people are going to deal.' I turned my head to look at him. 'And for the record, you weren't weak. I remember you in that cell the next day; you told me you'd been roughed up a bit, but you never once let me think that anything else had happened.' I picked up his right hand and kissed it gently; remembering the injuries he'd had after that night. There'd been a burn mark, right in the centre of his palm. 'I think everyone falls apart in that sort of situation, but you pulled yourself together straightaway. More than I did when it happened to me.' 'Duo, you said last night that you'd never…' he looked horrified. 'I know. And it didn't but I came damn close.' I took a deep breath; I'd never actually said this bit to anyone out loud before. 'Some guy nearly caught me in an alley when I was twelve or thirteen. I - I managed to get away, but I had nightmares for ages.' I could still feel it sometimes; that sharp bite of fear. 'I swear, I holed up in an old cellar for days after that. I was terrified he'd still be there, waiting for me. You are … so much stronger, 'Fei. I remember them tossing you back in the cell with us, and you pretending nothing had happened. I knew that was a lie, I knew they'd beat the hell out of you, but I never suspected there was anything else. I saw what they'd done to you, love, and you never broke,' my voice dropped to a whisper. 'I think they pulled you out 'cause they knew you were strong, that they'd have a challenge.' 'Heero…says that.' His voice was just that little bit unsteady. 'Then it must be true. You know Heero is always right.' He offered me a faint smile. 'Well, he thinks he is. Duo, I just thought you should know, since we are becoming more intimate.' He looked away from me, studying the stalk of lavender he held in one hand. 'If I should….react badly to anything you try to do, it will not be because of you. I wanted you to know that.' 'Oh, 'Fei. You do know I'd never hurt you.. Never. Love, is that why… after the war, it took you and Heero so long to hook up?' He shrugged. 'Part of it, maybe. I'm not sure. I think it was hard for both of us, at the start, adjusting to our new lives. Things were complicated enough; and I suppose we didn't want to risk losing each other as friends. Also, Heero was interested in someone other than me.' 'Relena, right? I used to think that as well.' 'Gods, Duo. You can be so impossibly dense.' His voice was so full of sheer affection that it took me a minute to work past that to what he'd actually said. Oh. 'You mean…me? He never said anything! Never!' 'He never had a chance, had he? After the War, you took off to L2 like a squad of mobile dolls were on your tail. He tried to contact you, several times, and in the end, he assumed you were straight, or just not interested in him.' Oh, shit. That sent so many things whirling through my head that I actually clutched his arm for support. Heero had wanted to be with me, from the start. All those wasted years when I'd tried to convince myself that taking off was the right thing; easier than seeing him with someone else. Or maybe they hadn't been wasted. I'd set up a business, all on my own some, I'd provided employment, helped to rebuild the poorest the colony in a small way. I'd met Dylan. I wondered if it had hurt Wufei knowing he was Heero's second choice; if maybe he'd resented even the little bit of contact Heero had had with me after the war. Or maybe he'd been secure enough by that stage not to mind. 'What?' Wufei was looking at me with the weirdest expression. Doubt and worry and affection and a teeny little bit of fear. It made me wonder what my own face looked like. 'Duo, it's not like I - took him from you or anything. I swear.' 'I know that!' I guess that came out firm enough for him to relax. 'I think things probably worked out OK in the end, you know. Considering we both got the guy and all?' It was - sort of weird, trying to imagine what my life would be like if Heero had declared himself all those years ago. To be totally honest, a part of me would probably have panicked. I'd pretty much accepted the being gay part, wasn't really ready to start working out the practice though. His smile was a brief lift of his lips, but it looked real. 'We did, didn't we? And maybe we should go home and check on him now?' 'Sure.' I let him pull me to my feet. ''Fei, can I ask you something? When you guys got together, did it take long before you could let him - you know?' He nodded. 'It took time. I think it would have, anyway, even without what happened. I'd been brought up to believe homosexuality was wrong, and I needed to get past that conditioning as well.' 'But it's …OK now?' I pressed. 'I mean, Heero said that you take turns, right?' I thought he was going to give himself a hernia, he started to laugh so hard. 'Take turns?' He demanded. 'Is that what he said?' 'Um. No, maybe that was how I called it. Look, I'm still so damned new to this, all right? I don't know all that much about how most gay couples operate, much less our set-up. It would be a hell of a lot easier I had a list of guidelines.' He burst out laughing. 'Maxwell, you've never read a rule book in your entire life. I think, for this, that there are no rules. I'm sorry; it's just that you fit in so well that I forget you haven't always been with us.' 'Really? I think that's one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me.' 'Really,' he assured me. 'I promise you, letting Heero love me is …considerably more than OK. Not that I'm suggesting you try it until you feel ready or anything, but … I hope you will let us, one day.' I gave him a brief nod. I'd seen Heero's face, after all, seen that particular joy and I knew I wanted to try it at some point. 'Uh, 'Fei, one other thing. You said, last night, that Heero likes it rough, and I just wondered, um, …' His smile did this weird metamorphosis into a smirk. 'He doesn't like being whipped, if that's what you're wondering. But try slapping him on the ass the next time we're in bed, and see what happens.' Oooooh-kay. Time to banish that scary image of a leather-clad Wufei brandishing a whip from my head. 'What, like he'll try to kill me?' 'Ah, possibly not.' The smirk got…smirkier. 'Try it, Duo. Heero quite likes a certain amount of domination. 'Just as well,' I grinned at him.. 'It looks like he's going to have to get used to being the idea of the house sub, after all, at least for the time being!' 'I don't think he'll mind, somehow.' We were just coming back out to the estate when he pulled me back out of sight. 'Don't worry too much about what I've said, please. It happened a long time ago, but as I said, I thought it was something that you should know.' 'I … appreciate that,' I said carefully, meaning
it, more or less knowing what it had cost him to tell me. I wasn't
sure if he really wanted me going back over it though, so I just wrapped
my arms around him and smooched the hell out of him. Promising myself
that I would try harder to be there for him, after he'd given me that
little glimpse into his past. That I'd try harder to open up with
both of them.
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