Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Adamant Eve ❯ One-shot ( One-Shot )

Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Neither Gundam Wing nor its characters are mine. They are the property of their respective owners. Seth, Mikhail, Daniel, and Kira are mine.

Pairings: past 2x1, unrequited 2+1, OC+1

Warnings: slight angst, continuation, I can't think of anything else.

Author Note: Sorry. I know I should be working on The Elements, but this just popped into my head and demanded to be written. Feedback is appreciated.

*blah* means italics

Adamant Eve

A.C. 207

The former pilot of Wing sat at the kitchen table in his two-story house in the suburbs of Detroit. It was 2:30 in the afternoon on a beautiful October day. His three year-old daughter (he and his husband had adopted three wonderful children) was down for a nap, so he was paying the bills and balancing the checkbooks. All in all, it was a normal Saturday for Heero Donavon.

Heero was pulled from the joys of personal finance when his oldest son, Mikhail, announced his presence with a dignified grunt worthy of Heero's soldier days. Heero looked up from the papers and took off his reading glasses. "Do you need something, Mik?" he asked the almost-sixteen year-old. "Some money, perhaps?"

"Why, Mother, there is no way that I, your son, would be so crass as to ask for money when you're in bill mode. I do have *some* self-preservation instincts." Mikhail pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. "Actually, there's someone for you at the door. He had the weirdest eyes."

Heero nodded at his son's words, and got up from the table. He wondered who it could be as he weaved through the piles of toys in the floor. Sometimes having a five and three year-old at the same time did not seem like a good idea. Heero put on his best frazzled-parent smile before opening the door, expecting it to be another bible salesman. They seemed to breed like rabbits in the suburbs.

"I am so sorry you've had to wait, but you know how teenagers can be. They can't be bothered to tell their parents--" Heero abruptly stopped talking as he saw who was on the other side of the door. He swallowed hard before continuing. "Duo. You-you cut your hair."

Indeed Duo Maxwell, former Deathscythe pilot and Heero's first lover, had cut his hair. It was about an inch long now, maximum. Duo's appearance had changed in other ways, too. He was over six feet tall, whereas Heero had been lucky to make 5'8," and his frame had filled out in the ten years since Heero had last seen him, making him seem more manly.

"Heero," Duo said simply. "It's been a long time. May I come in?"

Heero stared off into space, shocked beyond reason that Duo would show up on his doorstep after so long, for no apparent reason. After several seconds, Heero's rational mind returned to him, and he answered Duo. "Yes, yes. Please come in. Oh, and don't mind the mess; the maid hasn't been in yet this week."

Duo entered the cluttered foyer and Heero led him into the living room. "Would you like something to drink? Some Pepsi, perhaps?" Heero asked nervously, after inviting Duo to sit on the couch. Duo declined, and Heero sat in one of the side chairs. They sat there awkwardly for some minutes, Duo not saying anything and Heero not knowing what to say.

Finally, Duo broke the silence. "That's a nice picture," he said, pointing to the family portrait above the fireplace. Heero agreed; he'd always liked that picture. It was of him, his husband Seth, his sons Mikhail and Daniel, his daughter Kira, and his dog Fury. "It's cute."

"Thanks," Heero said, before lapsing back into silence. Finally, after much deliberation, Heero asked Duo what he had been wondering since the other boy--no, man--arrived at his home. "What do you want from me?"

Duo looked startled at the question, and started to protest. "What do you mean? Can't I visit an old friend, Hee-chan?"

"Can it," Heero said, probably too forcefully. "I know you, and I know you don't just "visit an old friend" for no reason. And don't call me Hee-chan; you gave up the right to call me that when you walked out."

Duo visibly deflated, and Heero was allowed to see a fraction of the pain Duo felt. Duo fidgeted his hands nervously, gesticulating to Heero how he was feeling, and trying to touch Heero's hands. Heero pulled his hands away from Duo's reach before he could touch him. He crossed his arms across his chest as he waited for Duo to answer.

"I-I just needed to see you," Duo said. "I had to see how you were, if you were okay, if--"

"If I was still devastated that you left me after all of your promises of everlasting love?" Heero finished vehemently. His eyes bored into Duo's as all of the old anger and hurt came flooding back with the other's presence. "No, Duo. I'm not. I'm fine. In fact, I'm fan-fucking-tastic."

Duo flinched at Heero's harsh words. He shifted in his seat, obviously uncomfortable under Heero's heated gaze. "No, that's not why I came at all. I came to find out about you. I wanted to know how you were doing."

"I--" Heero started. He closed his jaw as his mind processed what the other man had said. "Really?"

Duo nodded, sad eyes sparkling at Heero. "Yes, and to tell you that...that I'm sorry for what I did to you all those years ago."

"I forgave you for that a long time ago," Heero said wistfully. "I forgave you six years ago, on my honeymoon with Seth." Heero played with his wedding ring as he remembered that magical time. He and Seth had gone on a cruise, where they made love all day and night for three wonderful weeks. "It was then that I realized if you hadn't done what you did, I never would've met my soul mate." Heero fell silent as both men remembered that day, more than ten years ago, when Duo walked out on Heero.

***Heero was sitting at his laptop, as usual. It was two months after the Marimaeia incident, and both he and Duo needed to find jobs. They had lived together since the end of the first war, in an apartment in San Diego.

Heero was distracted from his search by Duo banging something around in the bedroom. He left the computer and went to where Duo was. "Duo?" he asked curiously, but somehow still in a monotone. Heero still spoke mostly in monosyllabic sentences; he hadn't yet gotten over that part of his training. "Duo?" he asked again, when he saw that his lover had gotten a heavy trunk down from the closet, and was busily throwing clothes into it.

Duo jumped and looked at Heero, seemingly surprised that all of the noise he had been making got the "Perfect Soldier" to budge from his precious laptop. "I'm leaving," Duo said, putting more personal effects into the trunk.

"Where are you going? When will you be back?" Heero asked, his voice for once having emotion in it as he contemplated his love's answers.

"I don't know where I'm going, and I won't be back," Duo said, confirming Heero's fears.

"Wha-what do you mean?" Heero asked, terrified that Duo was going to say the same thing. That he was going to say he was leaving Heero.

Duo stopped tossing clothes into the trunk and walked over to Heero, who was trembling as he held up the wall. "Heero, I'm sorry. I love you, but I'm too young--we're too young--to tie ourselves down to anyone. I do love you, but I have to wonder if I just think I do because of all we've been through together. I'm leaving, Heero, and I won't be back."

Duo left after saying that, taking only the trunk that he had filled a little over halfway with him. Heero had waited until he couldn't see the taillights to their Miata anymore before he broke down. That night, Heero did something he hadn't done since the death of Odin Lowe. He cried himself to sleep.***

***

"I stayed in that apartment for two years," Heero told Duo. "I waited, foolishly, for you to come back. I hoped that sooner or later you would come to your senses and come back to me. But you didn't, and eventually, I had to come to terms with the fact that you weren't coming back. I moved to Detroit, and I met Seth. Two years later, we got married."

Duo stared at Heero, taking in the face that he had so foolishly given up, believing that it was impossible to find the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with by the time he was seventeen. "Tell me about your kids," Duo said, even though he knew every gushing word would pound the proverbial stake further into his heart. Every pronouncement of love for someone else would prove to Duo that he was no longer needed--or wanted--in Heero's life. But Duo was a masochist at heart, at least when it came to the blue-eyed beauty, and he would take any amount of torture if it meant he could look upon Heero's face for even a moment longer.

"My kids," Heero said, smiling pensively. He rubbed his stomach before continuing his answer. "Well, I have three kids: Mikhail, who's sixteen; Daniel, who's five; and Kira, who's three. They're all adopted. Seth and I, we adopted Mik shortly after our honeymoon, when he was ten. The boy insisted on calling me Mommy. He said that there had to be a mommy and a daddy, and because I looked more girly, I was deemed Mommy. Daniel and Kira call me Mommy, too. Seth thinks it's *so* cute.

"We're, um, we're getting another kid, but this time, we're doing the male pregnancy thing," Heero said, further shredding Duo's heart. "You know, where they take a donator egg and wipe it clean of DNA, then insert the sperm of the fathers into it. I don't know how, but somehow, it works. I'm due May 12th. We're all really excited about it."

Duo nodded in the appropriate spots as Heero continued to jabber on about his kids. He was amazed that Heero could talk for so long; it put Duo's wartime record to shame. Heero had definitely changed in the ten years that he hadn't seen him. He talked nonstop, was a soccer "mom," and was happier than Duo had ever seen him. With that last revelation, Duo realized that what he really came for--to get Heero back--wasn't going to happen.

Duo stood up, interrupting Heero's story about when Daniel had the flu, and told Heero that he had to go. On his way out, he met two people from the family portrait, presumably Seth and Daniel, coming up the front walk. Duo walked away with a heavy heart as he heard his lost love greet his new family.

"Who was that?" Duo heard Seth say in reference to Duo.

Duo's heard shattered at Heero's answer. "Oh, nobody important. Just an old friend."

Selune