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"The Wedding Planner"Written By: Snowdragonct Disclaimer: Don't own any part of Gundam Wing or the characters, more's the pity. This is for fun...no profit involved. Warnings: AU, yaoi, some OOC, angst, potential lemon(s), sickening sappy fluff Pairings: to be announced, or it’d be too easy (but you know who I like) A/N: This idea hit me while I was driving somewhere, and I needed to start it before the inspiration faded. But it will take second place to Boot Camp and the sequel to Boot Camp, so I can’t promise regular or frequent updates. It’s probably totally predictable FLUFF, so you have been warned. And I’m trying out the world of first-person here, with point of view shifting between Heero and Duo (maybe others…not sure yet). Rating: NC 17 Summary: Heero isn't thrilled when Relena hires
someone to plan their wedding, but once he meets the young man, he's
downright unhappy. Duo Maxwell is friendly, good looking, and spending
way too much time with Relena...Heero's jealousy knows no bounds.
"The Wedding Planner"
Chapter Forty One: Dreams Heero’s Point of View We’d gone quite a ways down the beach by that time; much further than the previous walk we’d taken, and when we climbed some dunes and turned a few corners, we ended up on a secluded stretch of sand approaching a rather quaint cottage with a weathered “for sale” sign hanging from the back porch. “What’s that?” I asked, since it seemed to be where Duo was headed. “My dream house,” he said simply. He was slightly ahead of me, and glanced over his shoulder without quite meeting my eyes. “I told you all about my silly idea for a wedding. I might as well show you where the perfect honeymoon would be.” As if that didn’t conjure images I really shouldn’t have had dancing through my mind. I looked at the cottage, and then at him, questioningly. “What’s so special about it?” He shrugged, suddenly acting a little uncertain about sharing his secret with me. “It’s my dream house,” he repeated, walking up the beach and stepping onto the porch. “I always wanted to live right on the water like this…get up and walk out onto the sand. Listen to the waves every night when I go to sleep…” He sat on the swing, looking out over the ocean. “This is the only place I’ve ever felt at home.” “Why not buy it then?” I asked, gesturing to the “for sale” sign. He gave a short laugh. “As well as Quatre pays me, I can’t afford it.” He looked up at me with a shrug. “Some of the trouble I’ve gotten into…well, I’m still making Quatre hold back some of my wages to cover the legal fees he fronted me. Not that he wants repayment; but, shit…I owe it to him.” I sat down next to him. “I’m sure he’d understand if you wanted to hold off on repaying him so you could buy this place.” “Yeah, he would, if I asked,” he admitted. “But y’know, I have a little bit of pride left.” “What good is it if you miss out on your dream house?” He couldn’t hold back a bitter laugh. “Heero…I’ve missed out on every dream I ever had. Solo…Alex…medical school... When I said I’ve fucked up everything I ever put my hand to, I meant it. Why should this be any different?” “Because you deserve to have at least one thing you want,” I replied, my heart absolutely aching with sympathy for him. “Everyone deserves that.” “Well what you deserve and what you get aren’t always the same.” I wondered where the light-hearted feel of the afternoon had gone, and Duo must have picked up on the shift in tone, because he laughed quietly. “Stop worrying about me, ‘Ro,” he chided, elbowing me, and then getting up and walking down the beach to a rather rickety-looking picnic table. He put the basket down and started laying out an array of food, including sandwiches, drinks and snacks. “Don’t friends worry about each other?” I asked, walking over to help him, whether he wanted it or not. “Yeah, I suppose so,” he conceded, relaxing a little. By the time the meal was set up, he seemed to regain his good humor. “Hey…I told you all about my perfect wedding. Now will you tell me about yours? What you really want.” “Aside from the carriage?” I teased, sitting gingerly on the old bench and breathing a sigh of relief when it didn’t buckle under my weight. He nodded enthusiastically, sitting on the opposite side, much to my disappointment. He gestured me to help myself to food, and cracked open a soda for himself. “Well…” I thought for a moment, taking a bite of a sandwich while trying to recall how I’d pictured my wedding. “While my parents would have liked a very traditional ceremony…probably in Japan…I used to think I’d like to go to one of those little stone chapels in the mountains.” The indigo eyes widened, and Duo looked up at me. “Seriously?” “Very.” He grinned and shook his head. “Shades of Alex,” he muttered. “Why? Did your fireman like the mountains, too?” “He loved ‘em. We used to go hiking on weekends. He planned our whole wedding on top of a mountain.” He grinned good-naturedly. “It was gonna be Hell getting our guests there…involved a chair lift ride to the lodge. But the view from up there…” His voice faded as his gaze went out to the wide sweep of ocean visible from our table. “It was almost as spectacular as this one.” “Almost,” I conceded, looking not at the sparkling waves, but at his dreamy eyes and gleaming chestnut hair. “So how’d Relena get you to consider Romefeller?” he asked, apparently oblivious to my stare. “The earliest opening there is a full two-year wait.” “Good,” I mumbled under my breath. “What?” “I said, if she wants a place like that it’s good enough for me,” I amended quickly. “I could probably sweet-talk Silvia into getting you in sooner, if that’s the place you settle on,” he said quietly, frowning as he picked up a sandwich. “No don’t!” I said quickly, looking sheepishly away when he glanced up at me. “I mean. Well, it’s obvious Relena and I have our differences. A long engagement is probably a good idea. We’ll have time to—.” Change our minds…our sexual preferences…our choice of fiancés… “—to work things out?” he finished helpfully, his attention once again riveted on his food. “I guess.” “That’s a good idea,” he added. “You two have a lot to figure out.” I felt a twinge of irritation at the knowing tone of his voice. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Indigo eyes shot me a sidelong look. “Nothing. Just—it seems—from an outsider’s perspective, that maybe you two need to communicate more.” The last thing I wanted to talk about while I was trying to figure out the best way to break the news to Duo that I might be interested in him as more than a friend was Relena. And for some reason, he seemed fixated on helping me with my relationship problems with her. Well, no shit. He thinks you two are friends…that you’re straight…that he’s safe in your company. I felt like an ass. Here I’d been flirting with Duo all day, trying to draw a reaction that might prove to me beyond all doubt that he was seriously attracted to me. And he was clueless to the fact that I was attracted to him. Knowing that he was gay, it had been pretty easy for me to do things that got reactions from him—but I had no idea how to convey a reciprocal interest. Then he raised a very direct look to my face, making me resist the urge to squirm under its intensity. “D’you even know what you want out of life, Yuy?” I’d thought I did. And I tried to latch onto that ghost of a memory. “I always wanted to—to make my parents proud—to be a success at my job.” I felt a frown crease my forehead. “I guess—to have a home and family.” “Kids?” I shook my head. “No time.” “So it’ll be you and Relena in your big mansion on the hill?” he suggested. I frowned again. “I guess.” “That’s your dream?” The frown deepened. “I don’t know. Honestly, I never gave it much thought.” “Well you better start,” he advised. “All I just heard was what you think everyone expects of you. It’s all about duty.” He scowled deeply. “But life’s not just duty and obligation, Heero. It’s also about what you want from it, and what you make of it. You need to figure that out before you can share your life with someone else. If you don’t even know what you want, how can you possibly give Relena what she wants?” I gave him a very hard look, once again resenting his intrusion into my relationship with Relena. Actually, I was resenting his mention of my relationship with Relena. I didn’t even want to talk about her. And I especially didn’t want to talk about her to the man who was causing my most serious doubts about getting married in the first place. “And what, exactly, does Relena want, Mister Expert?” I asked snidely. He shrugged, finishing his sandwich in a couple of bites, and washing it down with soda. “How the hell should I know, Yuy? She’s not my fiancée.” The indigo eyes narrowed astutely. “But I sure as hell knew what Solo and Alex wanted…from themselves, life…from me.” He pushed himself to his feet, pacing restlessly across the sand. “Shit, Heero…I probably even have a better clue about what Relena wants than you do.” “And how would you know that?” I sneered, feeling a familiar upwelling of anger at the fact that Relena always seemed to confide in everyone but me. “Because I’m not just a good talker; I’m a good listener, too.” “And I’m not?” “No—that’s not what I meant.” “Then what did you mean?” He threw his hands up in surrender. “I don’t know, ‘Ro. You confuse the shit out of me. And I’m guessing that means you confuse the shit out of everyone else, too…Relena included.” “Would you just stop bringing her into this?” I demanded. “For fuck’s sake, Duo, she was too goddamned busy today to bother spending time with me! What makes you think she cares what I want any more than I care what she wants?” His jaw dropped at that, and he frowned in confusion. “Is it really just a business deal with you two, or what?” he asked with an almost horrified look. “I’ve never seen an engaged couple so completely detached about their relationship.” “As I recall, we hired a wedding planner…not a marriage counselor. Stop trying to fucking fix my goddamned engagement, Maxwell!” Yeah, I know, I was hiding my fear of confessing my feelings for him behind anger at his frustrating attempts to help me fix a relationship I was less and less sure I wanted to fix. “But it needs fixing.” “You don’t know jack shit about our relationship,” I snarled back angrily. “I seem to know more about it than you do! I know you need to figure out how you want it to be. And then you need to do something about it before it’s too late.” “What’s it to you one way or the other?” He turned a pained look my way. “I’m your friend, Yuy. Or I thought I was. And it’s fucking killing me watching you two treat each other like you don’t matter…watching her treat you…” He stopped suddenly, eyes widening in momentary guilt, as if he’d said something he regretted. And then he turned away. “I’m going for a walk,” he said curtly, stalking towards the water. “Me too!” I threw after him, turning the opposite way and starting back towards Howard’s. I was fuming as I stormed down that beach, seething with resentment that Duo thought he had Relena all figured out, when after years of dating, I was still clueless. How dare he presume to know her that well? Or me, for that matter? I knew what I wanted. Or at least what I had wanted. I’d wanted a good job, a nice home, a pretty wife… I suppose “faithful” would have been nice, too. But then, there are no guarantees in life, are there? But now, I wanted… I had no idea what I wanted. I glanced back over my shoulder, but Duo was still walking away from me, albeit more slowly. His shoulders were slumped, giving him a dejected look, but I couldn’t go back and admit I didn’t have a clue as to what I wanted, so I kept walking. And while we’re on the subject, I did have a clue…Wufei had made me figure that much out. But I was afraid to say it out loud…afraid of what it might mean for my future. I wanted more laughter in my life. I’d come to realize that during the time I’d been friends with Duo. It wasn’t until he coaxed and cajoled me into having fun that I realized how much I missed it. The workouts with Wufei, and our nights out to dinner or a movie had been few and far between since I’d hooked up with Relena. She demanded every free moment of my life, it seemed. And for the first time, I truly realized how much I resented that. I’d had more fun in the weeks since I met Duo than I’d had in ages. I wanted more passion, too, for that matter. I wanted to do the things that excited me…the things I’d given up for Relena...like sky-diving. And…(this was the hardest admission for me)…I wanted to do those things with Duo…not Relena. I wanted Duo. There, I admitted it…to myself…to that nagging voice that argued in the back of my head about my obligations to my parents and to Relena…to everyone but Duo. And shit...he was really the only one who needed to hear my admission…and the one I was most terrified to confront.
I got up and started walking diagonally across the beach to intercept him. He stopped when he saw me, a puzzled frown creasing his forehead as I came closer. But I didn’t stop—I walked right up into his personal space, put my hands on either side of his face, and kissed him. And he let me. Not only that, but he kissed back...and he did it like he meant it. He let me coax his mouth open and slide my tongue in to explore the warmth and flavor that was Duo. His mouth tasted of ice cream and soda, while his lips were slightly salty from the spray of the surf. And the kiss wasn’t like any kiss I’d known before. It was intoxicating and intense—it made me feel like my whole body was on fire—like I could stay there forever and never need anything more. I didn’t even notice the waves lapping over my shoes as his arms went around my waist, and cool hands slid up under my shirt. My own hands were already in motion, dropping from his face to take hold of his belt loops and pull him against me so I could feel his body pressed to mine. He moaned into the kiss, and I almost took him right there in the surf, wanting nothing more than to throw him down and explore every inch of his body. But instead, I slipped my thigh between his legs, gasping at the hard proof that he wanted me as much as I wanted him. I think he might’ve murmured something indiscernible into the kiss, his fingers digging into my back as if to permanently mold our bodies together. And as he ground his hips against mine, I could hear his breath quicken and become harsh with need. Everything about that moment was perfect. Except for the need to fucking breathe! When I drew back just enough to suck in a much-needed breath of air, Duo’s eyes flew open, and he pulled away. “Shit! Oh, shit! Heero…no!” he gasped, backing a step. His face was flushed, his breathing ragged, and the expression on his face was stark terror. “I didn’t—.You can’t—I can’t—.” He shook his head uncomprehendingly. “You’re not—.” “Duo, I—.” “No!” he said more sharply, starting to look slightly wild around the eyes. He shook his head harder. “You can’t do this to me!” he said angrily, his hands tightening into fists. “I quit, Yuy. I fucking quit!” With that, he turned and ran for the parking lot, leaving his shoes and the basket where they’d fallen. I didn’t try to stop him. I couldn’t. He was right to run away. He was the one with a conscience…the one with a soul. I was the heartless bastard who broke his trust, as well as Relena’s. I watched as he literally flung himself into the Jeep, starting the engine with a roar and spinning the tires as he threw the vehicle into gear. Dirt and gravel flew as he spun the Jeep around and floored it leaving the parking lot. It reminded me vaguely of the time he’d smoked the tires of the Jaguar leaving Relena’s estate. Only this time, I didn’t think there was going to be any explanation that would calm his temper. tbc... |
