Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Twelve ❯ American Happiness Virus ( Chapter 2 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Chapter 2
"American Happiness Virus"




Anvils did the dance of death in his stomach, smashing the anxious, optimistic butterflies that had been there before. An onslaught against the last well of starry-eyed hope in him sucked it dry as a bone, drained it into this numb oblivion. Duo waited, staring at the stone-braced face with impossibly unreadable eyes that had to be a mirage. He waited to be awaken by the pounding slap of the girl knocking him out of bed and the flare of dangerous heat in his face and the bottomless crying from the other room of the real world to come back; to wake up from this dream.

But he knew it was real... and he had to accept it. Bite the bullet, as they say, rather then take it in the stomach. As his eyes undoubtedly were numbly goring into Heero's, he managed to get out the dumbest thing off his lips he could have possibly imagined himself saying in this type of situation. But it was the only thing that he could say, that he should say.

"I'm really happy for you, Hee-chan," he said flatly. He was strangling his voice to put some believability behind it and still trying to hide the fact he wasn't really happy.

He couldn't breakdown, he couldn't and he wouldn't. He would have to shove those words, those almost damning words back into the recesses of his mind to be dealt with later; otherwise, he could feel the contradicting argument lunging at his vocal chords to get out. Nine years itching to vent.

Heero bowed his head slightly, muttering, "Uh... Thank you, Duo."

His own breed of mulling butterflies, dormant until now, whirled up in the pit of his stomach suddenly like an urge to vomit. The Japanese man quickly washed down the last hint of coffee in his mug to make sure that didn't happen. He recognized the odd feeling as the same one he got from watching Elijah leave returning in little shivers down his spine as he put his mug back down on the table.

With Duo being unusually silent, Heero glared down at the knuckles on his thumb, nearly choked by the quiet. It'd never seemed like that to him before. Silence had always signaled peace and stability before, but now it felt like a ticking bomb inseparable from his body. Suddenly, he blinked, a look of realization washing his face, and he quickly sat up straight and dug into his coat pocket. "Oh!" he said excitedly. "I forgot about this..."

"What?" Genuinely curious, Duo stole his eyes over the sterile white tabletop. He was happy to have a genuine distraction to keep his mind off the engagement plans. "What?"

Over the soft rustle of fabric mingling with the coffee machines whirring and dripping and people murmuring a background white noise, the American could pick out the rustle of paper as Heero turned back to him, smiling half-mischievously. He cocked an eyebrow at Duo's excited expression, holding a crinkled, old-looking white envelope in front of him temptingly. His face lit up with a glowing sadistic pleasure. "Oh, nothing," he said casually, voice flat. If Duo hadn't known him, it would have sounded like he truly didn't care if he got what was in the envelope. Cracking a smile, Heero began to wiggle it between his long fingers.

Duo could now clearly read the writing on the front, spelled out in perfect form: 'To Duo Maxwell,' along with an unfinished address and a return address in the corner, dancing temptingly out in front of him like a secret about to be whispered. The American's eyes widened in a bubbly anticipation, a feeling in his gut blooming where his hopes had just been crushed. Hell, who could say he wasn't resilient?

"For me?" Duo asked, blinking. Suddenly his eyebrows narrowed playfully. "This isn't a conviction notice, is it, Hee-chan?"

"Of course it is." Dropping the malicious tease, he coined his flat monotony again, frustrating Duo that he could never find a happy medium between the two.

"Jesus, you're a tease," Duo huffed, folding his arms on the table.

"Don't whine," Heero said playfully, "I can't stand whiners."

"Whomever in the world said I was whining?" the American said innocently but flatly with a cocked, Billy-Idol lip.

Heero was slightly taken aback by the scholar precision in Duo's grammar choices but passed it over. "Fine. You can have it."

He handed the envelope over with no fight and sat back to watch, like a moviegoer settled in with his popcorn and pop.

The American skipped the part where he would counteract Heero's monotone, flat and lifeless stabs at jokes with biting but still harmless sarcasm, and jumped straight to ripping the shit out of the envelope top and anxiously pulling out the paper inside. While his face lit up with excitement, almost regressed to a child opening a Christmas present, Heero watched silently. He isolated his coffee off to one side, fixated and anticipating on Duo's face with stony eyes.

"Hmm. An eviction notice - nah, I think it's a disguised warrant for my arrest! What, with you being a police man, you know all about my latest bank robberies I suppose," Duo rambled humorously to himself, unfolding the single piece of notebook paper so viciously, so impatiently that he almost ripped the paper inside. "Let'see..."

The American's eyes darted down to the first line like it was a magnet, Heero noticed, and his stomach flipped when he saw the caricature face freeze in amazement, struck like tiny static bolts had shot up his fingers.

From across the table, all Heero could see now, as Duo was reading intently with neck bowed, was his comrade's eyes blinking and moving back and forth and his lips moving slightly, and he felt nervousness come back-after all it was supposed to be a Christmas present. He knew Duo would like it, or else this wasn't the real Duo. Heero bit his bottom lip as his friend lifted his head again.

Violet eyes focused on him, and then blinked, and blinked again, as Duo reached up with his free hand and pinched his cheek, so it turned red where his fingers had been. "Ouch," he mumbled. "Ow... ow..."

Half-curious and half-frightened, Heero asked, "Did you read it all?"

The American numbly nodded. "Uh, y-yeah... I'm just not sure this is real."

"What?"

Not answering and cocking an eyebrow, Duo leaned forward on one elbow, his hand hooked around the back of his neck and playing with his braid, and scrutinized Heero's face playfully.

As carefully as a ghost, Duo said, "I wish Heero had yellow tapioca in his hair."

Duo waited, Heero staring back at him, then glanced around the air above him. When nothing happened and the sounds of the coffee shop continued undisturbed, Duo just snorted and laughed to himself. "Okay, now I know I'm not dreaming at least."

He shoved the envelope, letter on top, across the table back to Heero. "Here. You read it to me, just to make sure I'm not imagining this." Through his surprised, incredulous face a smile managed to worm to the light.

"Out loud?"

The American waved a hand. "Naw, you read to yourself, I'll just keep up with your brain waves," he said mischievously, jabbing at his temple with his finger.

Curling his lips not enough for a smile, but just enough for Duo to recognize it as one, Heero slid it off the edge of the table and propped his elbows up onto the sterile white tabletop. His face glowed with a smothered triumphant spark, like a mother proud of her son constructing a lump of blocks and declaring it the Eiffel Tower. He cleared his throat and began to read the letter he'd written half a year ago but never got the chance to send.

"Dear Duo..."

Heero realized then just how stupid letters could sound out loud. With a flustered, this-sounds-so-stupid look that evoked a chuckle from across the booth, he skipped down past the curt pleasantries, also incredibly awkward-sounding, to the important part. Duo laughed.

"...Relena and I are getting married on Christmas Day and I want you to be my best man. I've already contacted Quatre, Trowa, and Wufei and they've agreed to be the rest of my groomsmen. I know that none of them have been able to get in contact with you and I doubt this letter will reach you soon, but we're willing to wait until we locate you. You're the only one I would tolerate as my best man, with no offense to the others.

"And as a repayment for the war, Relena's family has granted us a large amount of money, which I decided to put towards one big Christmas gift for all five of us. Before the wedding, you, Quatre and Trowa, Wufei and Sally, Noin and Milliardo, Catherine, Relena, and I will be go to twelve different spots around Earth as a Christmas present..."

Heero's voice dropped off into the background morning song of coffee grinding and the guttural laughter of the old man behind the counter and soft-spoken sweet nothing conversations between old friends and lovers as he glanced up to Duo's face and folded the letter back up quietly. His eyes moved across his comrade's features, gauging the tiny, camouflaged mannerisms that signaled Duo's emotions, besides the loud, boisterous ones that were obvious.

From rooming with him multiple times at various schools under various aliases, he'd learned to read Duo just like he'd learned to read him. And apparently, his knowledge hadn't faded. With purple eyes tracing him back, Duo's numbed face finally burst into an ecstatic smile as the words settled in with pictures of the vacation of a lifetime, eyes lighting up.

"Everybody?" he asked, voice wavering dangerously loud in the peace of the coffee shop. "No way! This is too good to be true!"

Heero curled his lips slightly again, the ghost of a smile. "Then I'm lying, I guess."

The American's eyes were glittering saucers, more animated and excited than if he'd just taken down ten fleets of Leo's and Taurus single-handedly. "Jesus, I can't believe this... Where are we going?" His hands clenched around the edge of the tabletop to prevent him from jumping up in the booth and skyrocketing through the ceiling.

"Duo..."

"Where? Where? Where?"

"It's a secret." Heero's face glowed back, sucked into the infectious blast of happiness that Duo gave off. "You can't open your Christmas present on the ninth, Duo. You'll have to wait."

Suddenly, the sun-freckled American face was six inches from his, with an expression of a man near nirvana.

"So, when do we go?!" Duo asked breathlessly, slanted over the table again with an insatiable, indestructible grin. His eyes darted back and forth, pursing Heero's, which shied off to the side.

"Um-"

"Soon? It'd better be soon! And I swear, if it's more than a week from now, I'm gonna kill you, Heero Yuy-"

"It'll be soon, calm down!" Heero said, grounding the exploding bombshell that was Duo Maxwell at the moment by grabbing his arm and trying to ground him to the booth. His face couldn't help but be infected with the smile snapping Duo's face into two pleasant halves. It was especially annoying when you were trying to be firm with someone, with this cock-eyed smile taking your face prisoner. "Duo-"

The American suddenly sat down, his smile swallowed in half-confused, half-unsure stare that sank into his face for a few seconds. "Wait a minute," he said bluntly, his face contorted into an expression that was indefinitely alien for Heero to ever see. "Just how long have you been waiting to find me?"

Heero shifted in his seat, knowing that the American had him backed into a corner somewhat. "...Um, a year?"

"A whole fu-" Duo began to exclaim loudly, but caught himself quickly to save his manners in front of the inhabitants of the coffee shop and leaned closer to Heero instead, his voice an impatient whisper.

"A whole year! Jesus, Heero-I don't know what to say: that you're insane or that you need to get your priorities straightened out! You don't need to go ruining your marriage over me!"

Big violet eyes drove the incredulity like a hammer into him, strangely protective and even maternal toward him. Sure, Duo'd worried about him before, but never like a parent encouraging a kid to strike out on his own; never so zealously. It was strange, but Heero brushed it off and thought up an answer that would hopefully calm him down.

"It's worth the celebration just finding you, Duo. You're harder to find than Houdini when you don't want to be found," Heero commented, meeting his eyes with stoic blue ones. "You know that."

"Well, thank you," Duo said, a smile touching his face again, "but still... That's a hell of a long time to postpone your wedding for a brash little American like me! Forgive me, but you've never done anything like this for me in the war."

Taking on a darkened, confused look, Heero said, blinking as he slightly shook his head, "Why shouldn't I? You've been my only real best friend, Duo. It's the least I could do to thank you."

Duo's eyes locked on him, half-simmering with surprise and honor, but quickly focused on the window.

The quiet of the morning, aside from the faint memory of cars guttering up the streets, was knifed by the wail of a siren down the street. Being hyper-tuned to noises and disturbances by the lightning nerves that were needed to live through a war like the A.C. war, they both turned their heads to zero in on the noise. Heero was accustomed to ambulances streaking by, chasing off cars like a draft horse stomping past mice, but somehow he was drawn to watch it as it roared down the empty side of the street. It disappeared over a hill, roaring toward the outskirts and the suburbs. The wail of imminent injury or death faded off, provoking some uncomfortable remembrances from war with it.

Duo turned his head back to Heero, the angular sunlight bathing his face and causing him to squint. There was flippant causality to his expression. He was just as accustomed to the appearance and disappearance of an ambulance as he was. "Hm. Some unlucky guy must have gotten it," Duo said, his humor faint and unnaturally weak. Heero knew he never liked to joke about the sick and injured, unless it was him, but Duo didn't like to have very many publicly somber moments either.

"Yeah," Heero agreed listlessly, eyes still watching where the ambulance had disappeared over the ridge. Something didn't feel right, like part of him had been tied to the back bumper of the ambulance and now strained to follow.

"You okay?" Duo's voice asked while he still stared uncertainly.

Heero flickered his eyes back once, and then jerked his head from the glare of the sunny window. "Yeah, I'm fine," he said flatly. "Just had a... weird feeling, that's all."

"Do these... 'weird feelings' as you put it... bother you Heero?" the American razzed playfully in a mock scholar voice, leaning back and cocking his elbows up in the air with hands laced behind his head. "Because, you know, I think I'd make a pretty decent shrink. People say I'm a good listener, when I'm not deafening the person with the buzzing I pass off as talking."

Heero stared for a moment, eyes still as stoic as a pile of frozen rocks, then suddenly cracked. He smiled wider than Duo had ever seen, that was for sure, and started laughing. Duo's face cracked as well, mostly out of welcome surprise that Heero had actually laughed at one of his lame-as-a-dead-cow jokes, and laughed as well. The Japanese man's face was wonderfully younger when he laughed, chasing off the stress that was obvious in his face. As the laughter died down, Duo snorting into his coffee cup as he tried to calm himself down, Heero suddenly heard his phone ring, choked by the fabric of his coat pocket but still audible.

While rubbing off a ring of coffee residue off his lip, Duo leaned forward curiously. "What's that?"

"My phone," was the monotone answer. "My work phone. They must be calling me back or something, though I don't think there'll ever be an emergency in reception..."

Duo smirked. The other pilot shuffled through his discarded coat, jerking his cell phone out of his pocket, which emitted a slightly annoying briiing as Heero flipped it open quickly.

"Hello?" As he began to listen to whoever was on the line, his face paled considerably. Duo suddenly dropped his causal expression and replaced it with a concerned one.

"Wait, wait! Who?" Heero said angrily. "Slow down, John, I can barely understand you."

Duo leaned forward, furrowing his eyebrows as if it would help him read Heero's thoughts, and rested his elbows on the table while the steam from his mocha slid up the side of his face.

"...Again? Is she okay?"

Duo began to vaguely wonder if Relena had gotten it, then realized that the same person the ambulance had been for was probably the same Heero was stressing over now. It'd be some sort of sweet cruel irony if something had happened to his comrade's fiancé... but not one Duo felt he'd have the heart to take advantage of. He'd never be able to stop thinking of himself as a sleazy bastard if he did something like that... But still, the image that was probably now burned into his retinas of Relena's face beaming beside Heero's, with a lace halo ringing around them, made something in his blood boil and churn.

"...Okay, I'm coming." Heero's eyes suddenly locked on Duo's face for a moment, considering, then dropped to focus on nothing. His teeth locked over his bottom lip in a death grip. "Yeah, it's no big deal... I'm at Sixteenth and Galleon, I can be there in a few minutes." His comrade was curiously watching him as he sighed, closing his stressed prussian eyes. "Yeah, bye."

Before he could hang up, Duo was pressing his concern upon him.

"What happened?" By the genuine glint in his odd purple eyes, Heero knew it wasn't just some brown-nosing impulse; he was worried. Duo was hunched over the table, staring as absorbedly as if he was waiting for news from the delivery room.

"April. My co-worker." Heero's head of tangled brown hair just shook helplessly. "She had another vertigo attack and fell down the stairs. Two flights." The Japanese man's eyes locked on his in a silent apology, with a disappointed dark cast. "I've gotta go... She'll kill me if I don't go and check on her; it'd ruin my visiting streak."

"This happens all the time?" Duo asked, completely ignoring his cooling coffee.

"Not all the time, but usually every few months. We've been trying to get her to see a doctor, but she's as hot-headed as hell when it comes to the poking and prodding and needles of doctors."

The American lopsidedly blew a bang out of his face. "Kinda like you, then?"

The comment suddenly brought back the hazy memory of Duo crouched down beside him, looking annoyed as he searched for his knife to cut him loose in the hospital, just a day or so after they'd just met. Heero smiled at the sun-lit face across the booth from him, and Duo smiled back on impulse. He held his coat under the table, still regretful that they hadn't even had a decent-length conversation. After all, this was Duo Maxwell he was talking to; a practical machine when it came to tête-à-tête.

"Hey, go on!" his comrade prodded happily. "We can always talk later. I promise I'm not skipping town or anything."

Heero rubbed his nose and glanced around the yellow-milky cast in the coffee shop, noticing that most of the young couples that had orchestrated the background noise had disappeared. His eyes bounced from the mirror behind the counter, to an empty, red-leather backed chair, and finally came to a rest on the door behind Duo's head. "Yeah," he said unfocusedly, "I guess." He began to rise from the booth, swinging his denim jacket around his shoulders.

"Wait!" Duo said. "What am I gonna to do? No offense, but you've witnessed how long my attention span can get. I don't want to be stuck in coffee shop all morning and I'm not sure I won't go wondering off."

The stoic eyes were back on him again, a place Duo felt they belonged. "You can go to the house." A slight of a smile touched Heero's flat face as he imagined what his friend's reaction would be. "Quatre and Trowa are there. You've got a lot to catch up on with them, to say the least. They're engaged now."

"Really?" Duo asked excitedly.

Heero just nodded, adjusting his jacket.

An insane and mischievous smile cracked across Duo's face. "Trowa, that sly bastard-he proposed! I'm going up there and ask him why the hell he didn't tell me the second after! I deserve to know things like this!"

Heero smirked at the comment, although the butterflies in his stomach began to nervously flutter off the ground. He got his jacket comfortable around his shoulders and flipped out the collar habitually. He rummaged quickly through his pant pockets and tossed a five onto the table top, along with any change that had gotten caught in his fingers. Meanwhile, the braided pilot practically threw the rest of his coffee down his throat and shoved the emptied cup towards Heero's with a minute clink. He stood up as well and threw on his jacket, mumbling, "Man, people are getting married left and right," to himself.

"What about you?" Heero asked abruptly.

Duo cocked one eyebrow, laying one flat over his other eye with a confused smile. "Are you really asking if I'm married?" he asked, unsure.

Adopting the frazzled, what-did-I-do look frequent of children after their parents joke about something beyond their knowledge, Heero numbly nodded. "Yeah... no girlfriend or fiancé?"

Duo laughed, and then flipped his tail of hair out from his high collar. "No," he replied truthfully, "nobody's got their claws in me just yet."

At least no one who knows they do, he added as a bittersweet afterthought.

"You like being a bachelor?" the Japanese man asked, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"Sure," Duo said hurriedly. "Where's your house? You'd better get going to see your friend, you know." A jerk of his thumb toward the door accented it.

Heero whipped out a scrap piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it and shook out the complementary pieces of lint that came with. He patted down his breast pocket, and then brushed over his back jeans pocket; the pen he was looking for had apparently suddenly got up and run away. Under his breath, he swore at the inconvenience.

"Got a pen?" he asked, flickering blue eyes upward at his lanky friend. Duo muttered to himself, consulting where it might be hidden, and rummaged around in his inside coat pocket until he pulled out a stubby pencil for a substitute. "Thanks," Heero said as he put the piece of paper against his thigh and began to write on it, bent over slightly.

Duo feigned curiosity at what he was writing so that he could lean down slightly as well and that way he wouldn't get the impulse to eye up Heero when he wasn't looking. I could really use another tap-dancing salt shaker right now, he commented to himself as some heat ran to his face. The Japanese man finished the address with a flick of the pencil and stood up, brushing his bangs back into place, even though they were still as disheveled as ever. He handed the paper to Duo.

"It's kinda a long way from here, but nothing that you couldn't handle. It's just off of a new road outside the city, so there won't be any signs up yet."

"Okay," Duo confirmed to himself, glancing over the gist of the address, which was really more a list of directions. Heero stepped forward and pointed out the street he spoke of on the paper.

"When you get here, it's the first gate on the left, across from the only pine tree on the street. I doubt Trowa and Quatre will unlock it for you, so you'll have to slip through the bushes on the left side and cross the stream. You'll have to get through the fence, too; you can climb right over it on the tree by the third post."

With a laugh, Duo asked, "Do you live in a rat maze?"

"It just looks like one. It's just a short walk up the hill to the house after that."

As the American stashed the note in his pocket, he cocked his head and paused. "Why won't Quat and Trowa let me in?" he asked with a suggestive smirk.

A prussian glare shot down the innuendo Duo managed to stir up. "They're sleeping in, Duo. They do everyday."

"Oh, you watch them, do you?"

Heero's glare faltered with a snort. The infectious smile spreading, he turned slightly and shook his head, in amused frustration. "Duo..."




The molten candy-yellow-orange sun had risen above the buildings across the street and now danced through the taller presences of corporation buildings and lit their metal sides orange. It edged off into the streets and turned the cars into glowing presences themselves. Wisps of industrial smoke and weak clouds dotted the sky above, and the distant blue of the sky sucked the warmth generated by the morning clouds back out into space. It suddenly was too cold for even Duo to tolerate mildly as he opened the door of the coffee shop and stepped out into a smack of cold, compliment of Mother Nature. He stuffed his hands into his pocket and swung the sides of his coat tight around him. Heero was a step behind him as they descended the stairs, and then they stood opposite each other at the bottom, each about to head in their own direction.

Duo noticed how easily Heero's nose turned pink from the cold, but stopped himself from giggling and spoke instead. "So, Hee-chan, are you coming to house after you go see April?" A sudden and short-lived wind whipped through the narrow street and brought an extra razor edge to the cold.

"Yeah," he stated flatly. "I'll have to check in at the station and tell them I'm taking my vacation, then I'll come up. I've got a lot of days saved up."

"From waiting for me," Duo said, "right?"

"Yeah, and the fact I never take vacations helps."

Cracking a white smile in the stunning, intense orange and yellow light, Duo braved one arm out of his coat and gave his friend a mock punch in the arm. "And I bet you never get sick, you lucky bastard."

Shifting his coat to generate some warmth as well, Heero began to shift backward, his internal clock gnawing at him to get moving. As much as he regretted separating, he convinced himself with the thought that he'd have plenty of time to catch up with his best friend. More cold shot up from the snow-dashed sidewalk, invading his ears and nose and corners of his eyes as he spoke again.

"I'll have to contact Relena, too, and tell her we've finally found you. She's out at a conference in India; they never seem to stop bickering with Pakistan. She won't finish for two more days at least. But if the rioters act up again, she'll definitely be delayed." He shrugged. "I'm sure nothing serious will happen."

Duo didn't know how to react to the last statement. If he plastered some conjured sympathetic smile onto his face and strangled the believability into a fake well wishing, Heero would know he wasn't sincere. It wasn't that he was a heartless brat who wished Relena would be caught in the riots, he just felt that any time he could be alone with his friends, his brothers, was perfect.

They were indefinitely their own group, a breed of humanity that hopefully wouldn't ever have to come about again, and Duo had always had this unexplainable sense that anyone whose name wasn't Heero, Trowa, Quatre, and Wufei were outsiders who could threaten their peace. And damn it, they deserved every second of piece they had fought for. But he still didn't want harm to come to Relena seriously. He wasn't a heartless bastard despite all the annoyed feelings he harbored for her.

"I hope she makes it out okay," Duo said.

"Don't worry about her. She'll be fine." Heero shrugged again. "If those self-defense classes were for absolutely nothing, then I'd start to worry about her."

Duo laughed. "Confident, aren't we?" He plucked the sheet of paper out from inside his coat pocket, then jabbed it at his comrade. "You'd better get going. I'd be as pissed as hell if my friends never came to see me in the hospital," he said humorously.

"It sounds more like your eager to get rid of me," Heero said flatly, another one of his stoic stabs at a joke that Duo found odd and amusing anyway. "I'm hurt."

The American shivered in his coat and winked, as he began to turn away. "No, it's not that...I've gotta go surprise Quatre and Trowa before they wake up," he said with a smile.

"Alright," the Japanese man said, turning as well. "Tell them I say good morning."

"'Kay. Bye!" Duo called back, jauntily stepping backwards and watching for a spell as Heero began to walk off into the frosty air and steam of the city. When he finally disappeared around the corner, Duo turned fully around and began to plod mechanically along the iced street.

He flipped his braid onto his back, stiff from the cold, and then unfolded the crinkled scrap of paper, with a glowing smile on his face. Running through his mind were images of how nervous Trowa must have been when he proposed, the poor guy. More interesting, though, were the images of just how Quat must have reacted.

Duo stepped off the sidewalk into the iced street and flagged down the nearest taxi and quickly hopped inside, welcoming the oozing warmth that came with. He sat down and snapped the door shut. Before the cab driver could say anything, Duo was already up near his head, pointing out the directions on the scrap paper. The driver, face pinched red from the cold, nodded genially with understanding and clapped his mittens together after staring the meter. The American, watching the numbers begin to revolve methodically, relaxed in the seat and stared out the golden lit window as the car jerked into motion.




A spray of wet slush and smoky white car exhaust spilled out around Duo's feet as he slammed the cab door shut and waved a genial goodbye to the witty Irish man who had been driving and given him the best restaurants on the back of Heero's directions. He'd even pointed out directions to one of his favorite swimming holes just outside Seattle, the Gorge. He could see the man's hand waving sayonara as well, through the frost on the window. The cab jerked over the uneven road and disappeared down the skeleton-wooded incline back to the suburbs and towards the city.

Duo, breath freezing on his face as the wind blew it back at him, watched for a moment, then folded the paper and shoved it in his pocket. Before him lay another large hill, or rather, a wooded rock face, hidden by a thick coat of furry spruces and witch-like bare-boned oaks and elms. There were hints of a few scattered houses poking through the coat of trees like gophers.

A quick glance around revealed the small, insignificant-looking pine tree Heero had mention, sandwiched between the gloomy bare trees on the side of the road. The American, overwhelmed by the bitter cold, shivered as he dashed across the abandoned street toward the shadowed gate that must be his comrade's. Large Norwegian spruces threw their dark, sagging arms of woe out to shelter the metal gate and tarred driveway past it, looking like depressed old men towering over him with snow as their hair.

Duo remembered Heero's instructions and quickly veered off toward the frozen stream to the side, in a deep, slush-compacted ditch. The remnants of long jagged bushes shot up through the snow and slashed at his clothes, but snapped as he ripped them off of himself. The slush began to suck at Duo's feet as he trudged down the slick hill toward the rocks that jutted out of the iced-over stream.

The ice itself looked solid enough, but he'd rather take the harder way than have ice cubes for feet. The American steadied his boot on the first frozen stone, testing it for danger, then quickly shifted his weight and jumped across the jaunty rock path to the other side as fast as he could, laughing as he made it across.

He glanced behind him and grinned at the fact he had so much dumb luck and agility at his disposal. Duo climbed over the other side of the ditch and ducked through the small thicket of Norwegian spruce offspring while thick mint scent ran rampant through his senses. He was so charmed by the smell that he barely felt his face pinching pink from the cold. Apparently, the city kept itself very well incubated and the difference out here in temperature, on an isolated hill in the outlying suburbs exposed to the full fury of winter, was bone rattling. The American wrapped his coat tighter around his body and stomped through the growing snow, the iced green fence approaching.

He quickly found the small tree by the third post, which, true to Heero's word, it coiled over the top of the rail like a snake's tongue. Pushing aside the cranky bushes that clawed at his pants, Duo put his foot on the sloped trunk and gripped the random branches to pull him up and over the fence. Jumping off quickly so that his weight wouldn't snap the brittle-looking branch, he stood up and brushed the snow off his knees.

Now that he was over the obstacles, he realized with a elated shock to his heart that there was nothing but a slushy stretch of driveway separating him from his best friends, who had become fuzzy warm memories lazing in the back of his mind. The American ducked through the line of towering, darkly shadowed, almost depressing trees overhead onto the sheltered driveway.

Down the middle of the blacktop salt had carved away a path of clean tar that Duo leapt onto furiously and began to sprint up the curving driveway, while his face was an unconquerable grin. Above him the specter-like presences of the Norwegian spruces began to thin so that dashes of sky peeked through, stared down at the strange visitor. Duo began to slow in awe when the curve lessened and opened up to a small flat space carved into the hill, bristled by trees on all sides but the front.

He stopped, dead in his tracks, taken aback. His eyes scanned the front of the house, about thirty feet from him, and his warm anxious breath clouded on his face as he paused there for a moment.

Barbie would have been disappointed, Duo mused to himself, eyeing the house curiously. Images of mansions with wealth and extravagance untold, complete with belly dancers, had been haunting the back of his mind. After all, Peacecraft money was involved, no doubt with an infinitely generous offer from the Winner family as well. He had imagined a marbled house of the gods even too luxurious for Zeus to stomach, but instead got a smack in the face when he was presented with a humble blue Lego piece of a home, hiding in the toes of the trees surrounding it.

The front of the house was flat save for the slanted dark gray porch over the door and very narrow. The thick lining of trees prevented Duo from seeing how far back it extended though. A misty cadet blue and framed with dark blue shutters and a large vista window on the right, it looked like a ocean home plucked off the beach and stashed up in the mountains in total secrecy. The dark, white-spotted roof bluntly slanted off at either side with pine boughs poking at it, some trimmed, some not. There was a garage connected to the far right side, slightly sunken back into the arms of the pines, with another frosted vista window where the door would have been. Above that window was a pair of miniature French doors, more suited to be a window than an exit, sealed shut by jagged ice. The snow-mounded cars huddled just to the side of it, sheltered by a tarp and two poles slanting off the garage roof. Piles of musty, soggy-looking logs were heaped in front of the two cars and squirrels would occasionally chatter from inside them. The American paused, taking in the genial charm of the place, and then was jerked back to reality by a flicker of movement in the front door window.

Cold nipping fiercely at his heels, the boy ran to the door. He glanced through the window while rubbing his hands for warmth, eyes greeted by muddled grayness of shadow inside, and suddenly a blur of muddy brown and black flung itself at the glass, and then plummeted to the floor.

Duo flinched in surprise, then leaned towards the glass to hear the yips of a tiny border terrier furiously announcing there was someone at the door. The American tried the knob; it slipped open without hesitation. As soon as he got the door open, there was three pounds of ecstatic puppy on him.

Warm, wet dog tongue assaulted his face, and Duo had to grab the small puppy and hold him up before he slid back down his jacket because of gravity. The American curiously held the puppy up and read the inscription on its tiny pink collar. 'Numskull.' He laughed and held the wiggling ball of life out in front of him, eliciting a whine from the matted brown face and liquid black eyes. It was a tiny dog, probably only six or seven months old, with fragile-looking dynamic legs that scratched at his jacket furiously.

While Duo looked over Numskull, two tiny, mud-freckled paws clawed out for human affection and the dog's body quivered with unbridled excitement. This was a new scent, a new human, something to be explored and analyzed, like a leaf scurrying across the yard with the wind or an alien toy on the floor.

The American laughed as the pink tongue reached out for his nose, steam rising from the tiny flaring nostrils, and hooked the wiggling Toto-look-alike under his arm and hurried inside into the warmth of a running heater. He shut the door behind him and let the wiggling bunch of puppy down onto the floor, where it scampered excitedly around his feet. He stopped and looked up.

The first thought that came to mind was it was a damn nice house.

The entrance hall was small and narrow, with a door on either side, one cracked open to reveal a clean, pristine white bathroom and the other bristling with dark coats and random shoes heaped in the corner. The floors were all an amber-colored wood, polished and cold under Duo's feet as he stared at the rest of the house while quickly kicking off his shoes.

The entrance hall dropped off into an airy, high ceilinged den that included most of the space in the entire house. The center of the den dropped down a foot into a 10-foot lounging space complete with two old red velvet couches that looked like they could swallow a human whole, dark shag carpet, and a dog bed in the corner. To the right of Duo, as he trotted out onto the den, was an open arched path to a sterile, industrial kitchen with a l-shaped counter separate from the wall and a generous open space for a dining table that ended at a large frosted vista window.

To the left, there were two more doors and a sunlit hallway clinging to the wall that ducked past the flight of stairs protruding out into the den area. Just to the right of the stairs was a flat, dark green wall with a single door met by a dropped pair of stairs. The far right wall, past the kitchen, was covered with various paintings, some obscure swirls of dark colors, some optimistic-looking glows of peach and yellow and red that must have been people. There was another open door way that led to a darkened room filled with different black presences that Duo couldn't quite make out, but guessed must be entertainment centers and stereos or something.

The second floor was basically a thin, narrow strip of balcony overlooking the den, curling around the wall. It reminded him of those old elevated trainsets he'd seen once in antique show, whirring over his head and weaving around near the ceiling. There were four more doors upstairs, one tucked away where the house dipped back. Duo flipped his bangs back from his eyes, violet eyes scanning over everything a few more times. This odd feeling like overwhelmed him... A feeling like he was intruding on something sacred, something wonderful that he'd been dead and oblivious to.

He felt like he had missed out on something.

A protesting bark from Numskull broke him back into reality. It raced around his heels, anxious for attention, and would occasionally claw at his pant leg.

Duo leaned over with a smile and obliged the little bundle of tangled brown fur with a quick backrub before straightening out and glancing around for any sight of his engaged friends. The den was obviously empty and the sound of the dog barking hadn't woken anybody up... so where would they be? The entire dim cast of the house was as still as stone and even the shadows were sleepily oblivious to the fact it was morning and they should be gone. He furrowed his eyebrows and scratched his head aimlessly, eyes glancing over the deep-colored furniture and around the high walls.

It was time to go hunting for lovebirds.



Duo was mentally smacking himself when he stumbled into the sun-lit music room hidden behind the staircase. Where else would they have been?

He'd investigated the upstairs thoroughly, sneaking into all the darkened bedrooms and found them as lifeless as if they had no oxygen in them. Some of them, Duo suspected, had rarely seen a human body in them for years. The dust that had flown up from the carpet as the door swung open had threatened to choke him to death. He'd confusedly trotted back down the stairs afterward with his hand trying to scratch a spark of inspiration into his brain and searched the downstairs level just as completely, but he saw no sign that Quatre and Trowa even lived here... Of course, he'd forgotten about the little lane of golden morning sunlight streaming out from the sheltered side of the stairs that led to the music room.

Violet eyes settled on his subjects, still unhurriedly asleep in a small explosion of quilts, and then Duo smirked and silently dashed out and around the corner back into the den with his braid rhythmically slapping his back.

His socks only made tiny thuds as he ran towards the pristine white bathroom in the entryway. As quickly as he could, he swung the heavy mahogany door open, snatched the small glint of gold and numbers off the sink, and tore out of the bathroom again, like a criminal escaping with crown jewels. As he padded back towards the music room, a maniac smile plastered firmly on his face, he cranked the dial on the back of old-fashioned, gold-accented alarm clock he'd retrieved so it was set to go off in precisely one minute. His face began to ache from the steadily widening smile he had.

As he turned the corner back into the rosin-scented music room and warm sunlight splayed out on his face, he wished he had a camera with him. Duo paused in the doorway and surveyed the room briefly.

It was a rectangular room about twenty feet across and six feet deep, with deep mahogany wood floors and lush wine-colored walls. There was a piano hidden away the in the corner with a familiar violin and flute laid on it, and a pile of old-looking books thrown haphazardly beneath it. The source of light was a large vista window confronting the thick green masses of pine trees behind the house, with the sun rising and reflecting off the large polished boulders scattered nearby and landing on Quatre and Trowa, who were sleeping smack dab in the middle of the mostly empty room. All that was visible above the bundle of cotton and flannel blankets was a flash of gingery hair and the top of the Arab's pale blonde head, which was engulfed by pillow.

Duo trotted close enough to the sleeping pair that when he strained to listen, he heard Trowa mumbling in his sleep and shifting in time with the telltale groans Duo's weight on the floorboards made. The American brushed his braid quickly onto his back as he bent over, so that it wouldn't brush Quatre's head, as he strategically positioned the round golden alarm clock. It sat innocently a few inches from the fluffy pillow and both Trowa's and Quatre ears.

Restraining a mischievous laugh with a hand over his mouth, Duo stealthily sat down cross-legged on the floor behind the alarm clock. His lips spread in a bubbly, expecting grin while he imagined their reactions. His smile grew as the clock suddenly wobbled and shrilled a high-pitched wake-up call and he nearly couldn't mask his laughter when alarm clock started furiously wiggling across the floor.

Quatre mumbled loudly into the pillow something that sounded like "doughnut fish" and lifted his drowsy head out of his pillow, eyes still squinted shut, while Trowa curled up sleepily and hid further under the blankets. The blonde clumsily reached out, body heavy from sleep, and fumbled around blindly with his fingers for the alarm, which quite often wiggled just out of his grasp. Gritting his teeth in displeasure, Quatre finally slammed his hand down on the alarm and silenced it. For a moment he sat propped up on his elbows, one of Heero's old green tank tops hanging loose around his moderate frame, and blinked slowly behind his closed eyelids. He unceremoniously flopped back down onto the makeshift bed and succumbed to sleep again. This time he buried his face in the tangled mop of Trowa's hair and sleepily smacked his lips, mumbling once again something that sounded awfully like a sort of pastry marine creature.

Suddenly, from underneath the covers, Trowa shifted and let the blonde's head roll off the top of his and blinked open drowsy green eyes, barely conscious. "Quatre..." he mumbled, voice gravelly from sleep.

Quatre just buried his face into the pillow and let his body relax for sleep again and drew closer to Trowa's body heat. "...What?" he murmured in response.

"...You didn't set the alarm, did you?"

Duo's stomach was aching he was shaking from silent laugher so hard. His fingers barely had the strength to stay clamped over his mouth, which could give the secret away and ruin the entire prank. The American began to tip backwards as he struggled to stay quiet. Suddenly, Trowa's head turned, eyes still resisting the vivid golden light streaming in from the left, and his gaze confusedly settled on the laughing person sitting two feet from him.

He cocked his head to one side, like a curious puppy baffled by something. A puppy with ginger hair sticking out at all angles. "Duo?" he said increduously.

Quatre's head flew up at that, his pale hair lopped over onto one side. "Mmnhha?" he asked.

"Gotcha!"





The sterile stretch of gleaming silver accents and dull white sheets and flat gray tiles stretched for miles out in front of Heero, none of it seeming to lead to anywhere familiar. Glaring industrial lights passed over him in quick succession, as he strode leisurely down the hall, hoping to stumble across the door soon. His eyes numbly rolled across the floor tiles that gleamed from the harsh light above and that glare shimmered and led ahead of him wherever he went.

He wasn't surprised that the doctors had rejected him from April's room, with her being incredibly and unexpectedly delusional and impulsive with her concussion. They didn't want to risk her doing something stupid while Heero was in her company, like try to get out of bed or accidentally roll out. But at least they had told her that he was glad to see she was going to be fine and back to work in a few days-it got him out of hot water. There was no way she could come to work and razz on him for not coming to see her when she was injured tomorrow morning...

Wait. He wasn't going to work tomorrow... He'd found Duo; that meant the wedding could proceed and his vacation began. The resurfacing stresses of preparing a wedding, especially for a bride and groom who were both so infamous and eminent as the Peacecraft daughter and the Gundam pilot who had saved the Earth, were dulled by the fact that he'd have his best friend there to help him cope and probably take a lot of the load off his shoulders.

A weak smile crossed his face as he pictured what hell it would be to get Duo fitted for a tuxedo, remembering how time-consuming and taxing and awkward the other men's fittings had been, with Relena nitpicking over the smallest details and Sally purposefully ribbing and distracting them during it all. His smile grew faintly, fed by images of the memory of the peace celebration Quatre had held after the war had ended.

It was one of the rare times Duo Maxwell had ever remitted to wearing a 'monkey suit' and even then, Heero could remember, while being reclusive in the background of the party and watching from a far off corner, how the American had finally given up all patience with his tie and ripped it off and used it as a tool to rag on Hilde as she tried her best to dance and to slap anyone who came near the cookie plate. Heero remembered it warmly, but his memory staled when he remembered the aching cold isolation he'd felt once he'd lost sight of the American's larking about and realized he was alone.

It'd been a lonely night after that, since apparently all the pilots had left early and without even his keen senses noticing. He didn't know why he had lingered so long after most had left... but he'd been looking for something... something brown...

Suddenly, Heero's head jerked up to attention, as he spotted a telephone across the hall. He sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets, sauntering across the tiles over to it, fishing out change as he lifted the receiver off the hook. He mechanically inserted his money and lingered his fingers over the keyboard, already eyeing up the needed numbers.

Before he began to dial for the American Embassy in India, he brought up the image of Duo stuffing a sacred chocolate chip cookie into his mouth, and then defending the rest of his spoils playfully by slapping Noin's hand with his tie. He smiled, then dialed the number, the expression still glued to his face. As the monotone, automated ring came into the receiver, Heero's mind wandered aimlessly back to the house, to the room he'd reserved for Duo and if he'd like it. Wistfully, he toured it again in his mind... and realized that he'd left all his pictures... all his paintings up in the abandoned greenhouse above Duo's room in the remodeled garage. All his insecurites put on paper for anyone to see... Heero's stomach dropped in fear.

And Relena picked up.