Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ One Step Forward, Two Steps Back ❯ Duo's Welcome ( Chapter 1 )

One step forward, two steps back

 

Summary: Heero Yuy is a boy whose never believed in love. Duo Maxwell is a orphan whose never felt its touch. What happens when these two boys meet and Heero's belief that a relationship should be based on a dance around the other goes up against Duo's belief that love conquers all? Who will win? Come and witness the dance...

 

Warnings: AU, slight OOC, Yaoi/Shonen-Ai, Language

 

Pairings: 4x6, 1+2+1, 1+R, 5+M, 3+4

 

Rating: PG-13

 

Disclaimer: I don't own Heero, Duo, Trowa, Quatre, Wufei, Meiran or Zechs. I don't really want to own Relena, Dorthy or Hilde. And I most certainly do not own anything associated with Gundam Wing. If I did, this kinda stuff would be happening in the show. So don't sue, there's really no point.

 

Chapter One: Duo's Welcome

 

Duo Maxwell scanned the classroom as he entered it, automatically trying to find someone to sit by and maybe even be friends with. His violet eyes picked out a chocolate-haired boy in the back corner, who was surrounded by empty desks. Duo gripped his backpack just a little tighter and then made his way towards the boy. When he reached the boy's desk, Duo grinned, hoping to make a good first impression.

 

"Hi, I'm Duo. Do you mind if I sit there?" he asked, trying to sound neutral as he pointed to a desk next to the boy. He didn't want to sound too enthusiastic, or the boy might turn him away simply because he was able to. Duo had met people like that before.

 

Cobalt eyes looked up into his and Duo felt as if those eyes were scanning his soul and weighing its sins for judgment. Duo didn't dare break the eye contact for fear of rejection but was relieved when the stranger finally looked back down at the book he had been reading.

 

"Sure go ahead, it's a free country." The voice that exited those lips hit Duo like a brick wall. If Duo had thought that he had a neutral voice, then that idea had just been blown to high heaven and back down again. The voice that came out of this stranger's mouth sounded like it had never held a piece of emotion in its entire life.

 

Duo gritted his teeth and sat down, pulling his backpack under the desk and fishing in it for a minute to pull out his binder. He opened it and grabbed an unsharpened pencil from the pocket. He stared at the pencil sharpener which seemed to be strategically placed at the other end of the classroom, right next to a group of giggling girls. Duo sighed and stared at his pencil again. It seemed to be unfair punishment, and all he planned on doing was sharpening his pencil.

 

"Use this," the boy said, seeing Duo's predicament and placing a small handheld sharpener on his desk.

 

"Thanks a lot." Duo flashed him one of his best smiles, set about carefully sharpening his pencil, and handed it back when he finished. "I don't want to chance going past those girls. It seems that the ladies always go beserk over the hair." Duo fondly pulled his braid off his shoulder. "You'd think that it would be impractical by the length of it, wouldn't you? But it tucks quite efficently into a cap." Duo grinned some more but was discouraged when the boy just looked away and put his sharpener back into a pocket of his own binder.

 

There was an awkward silence for a minute. Then the boy ran a hand through his messy hair, and shot a look at Duo's braid out of the corner of his eye. "It must have taken a long time to grow it out that long."

 

"Yeah," Duo said proudly. "I've been growing it for as long as I can remember. I only trim it once every summer so that it will continue to grow." Duo smiled and then looked down sheepishly.

 

"My hair doesn't grow at all," the boy said simply, causing Duo to look back up. "It just sticks out like this." He motioned to his hair. "I can't tame it, so I just let it go however it wants to. My father thinks it looks like I'm some sort of hillbilly or something."

 

"It looks good," Duo said as he studied it briefly. "It's that style that some models would die for. You know, that 'I-just-got-out-of-bed-and-I'm-sexy-as-hell' kind of look." Duo blushed slightly as he realized what he had just said, but didn't look down this time.

 

"You think?" When Duo nodded, the boy smiled softly and stuck out a hand. "Heero Yuy."

 

"Hero me?" Duo asked, confused. He stared down at the offered hand with a frown on his face.

 

The boy laughed and Duo discovered that it was a rich, booming sound. He didn't know how on earth he had thought earlier that this person had no emotions at all in his voice.

 

The boy pulled his hand back and shook his head. "No, it's my name. I didn't tell you it before." Heero opened his binder and pulled out a piece of paper, writing his name down on it and then handing it to Duo to see. "Like that."

 

"Oh, I see. Heero Yuy, huh?" Duo tried it out on his own tongue and fiddled with his braid nervously. "It's very different." Duo shifted closer to Heero. "You know, it actually sounds like a name from a story or something. One of those stories where everyone's name is based on their role in the story, so it's all really obvious."

 

Heero glared down at his binder, and Duo realized that his outburst had been taken the wrong way.

 

"I didn't mean it that way. I just meant-" Duo hesitated, stroking his braid. "Aw, dang it. My first day isn't going the way that I thought it would."

 

"This is your first day?" Heero asked, looking up, suddenly interested again.

 

"Uh, yeah. Didn't you wonder why you had never seen me around before?" Duo gave him a lopsided smile. "Man, you're not very observant, are you?" Duo hoped that the tone of his voice took the sting out of his words and was rewarded when Heero smiled too.

 

"Actually, this is my first day here too," Heero told him, his blue eyes holding Duo's, obviously not offended at all. "Isn't that kind of weird that the first people we both talk to are also on their first day?" The colbalt eyes danced with mirth, and Duo found himself wishing that those eyes would look like that more often.

 

"Yeah, that is kinda weird," Duo repeated in agreement.

 

Then the bell rang and both boys reluctantly turned to the front of the classroom, awaiting the beginning of the lesson. A young man, young for a teacher at least, walked into the room and looked around. "Alright, let's all get seated so that we can start the lesson."

 

"Hey. Can we sit here?" a blonde asked Duo, as he motioned to himself and a tall brunette whose hair all hung in front of one eye.

 

"Yeah, sure," Duo replied. "Name's Duo and this is Heero."

 

"Hiya Heero," the blonde said in greeting as he sat down. "I'm Quatre and this is Trowa. Nice to meet you two. This is our first day. Just met Trowa actually."

 

"Really?" Duo asked in disbelief. "Same for 'Ro and me."

 

"'Ro?" Heero asked, but they all ignored him.

 

"Wow, that's weird," Quatre said. "That would make five of us all together, then." Quatre pointed to a Chinese boy who was heading their way. "That's Wufei; he's new here too. They told me that it wasn't that odd to get new students at the beginning of the term, but I didn't think that there would be five of us in one class."

 

"Yeah," Duo agreed.

 

"Alright, let's get going with the attendence," the teacher called out. "As most of you remember from before your two-week spring break, I'm Mr. Tankin, your math teacher." He looked down at the list, then around the room, placing a check on his sheet. "Who is Mr. Chang?"

 

"Here," The Chinese boy that Quatre had pointed out earlier said, as he slipped into the desk next to Heero.

 

"You must be one of our new students." Mr. Tankin said, smiling warmly. "It's nice to meet you, Wufei. We hope that you will feel welcome here."

 

Everyone turned around in their desk to see what 'Mr. Chang' looked like. They studied him for a minute, while Wufei glared at his book, as if it was the book's fault that Wufei had been noticed.

 

"You four must be the other new students. Why don't you all come up here and introduce yourselves to the class, while I finish the attendance," Mr. Tankin said, motioning to the front of the classroom.

 

Duo looked over at Heero and then sighed, heading up to the front. The other four followed him up. Heero, Trowa, and Wufei all stared at their feet, not wanting to have to face the class. Duo looked over at the others and sighed, figuring that he might as well go first, since no one else seemed to want to.

 

"Hi, my name is Duo Maxwell, and I just got transferred here from the other side of town," Duo said, figuring that it was as close to the truth as he was going to go in front of all these people.

 

"What's that supposed to mean?" a brown-hair girl asked. "Did you get kicked out of your last school?"

 

"Not exactly," Duo said, suddenly wishing he hadn't gone first after all.

 

"I bet that you're the orphan that my cousin told me about and said was coming to our school," a blonde next to the brunette said. She crossed her arms and turned around to face the rest of the class. "One of those lechers from the street." Everyone laughed at that, and Duo clenched his fists, looking down at the ground.

 

"Ha! It's true!" the first girl exclaimed, and shrugged. "Oh well, whatever. It's not him I was interested in anyways. The one next to him is the hot one."

 

Heero tensed next to Duo, and tried to force himself to relax. It took him a long moment though, to calm down enough to introduce himself. "Hi, I'm Heero Yuy. My mother's an actress and my dad's a soldier. My dad recently got transferred to the base here, which is why I ended up in this school."

 

A few girls gasped and swooned at the mention of his mother being an actress.

 

"Wufei Chang of the dragon clan. I have decided to continue my learning here, rather than with a personal tutor." Wufei spoke before anyone could comment on Heero's introduction and the state of his mother.

 

"Wow! The dragon clan? I hear they're all really rich," someone called out. "They're all laywers and doctors and such."

 

"We take our education very seriously. Therefore we succeed," Wufei stated simply.

 

Everyone looked at each other with twinkles in their eyes, as if they were planning something. Duo was liking them less and less all the time.

 

"Trowa Barton." Trowa spoke quietly, and people leaned forward to hear what he had to say. "Of the Barton circus. I travel to performances all summer and some of the winter months, and attend school wherever we end up stopping between seasons. That happened to be here this time." Trowa nodded his head as everyone sighed in awe.

 

"I would love to travel with the circus," one girl whispered from the front row. "It sounds so cool."

 

Yeah it does, Duo agreed. And Trowa sounded like a very down to earth kind of guy. Maybe he wouldn't mind being friends with a 'street rat', as many people liked to call him.

 

"Quatre Winner," Quatre announced in a loud, enthusiastic voice. "Yes, my dad does run the Winner incorperation but I still only get a thousand dollars a month allowance like most of you. The rest is put in a trust fund for me that I can't access yet." Quatre winked. "Just three more years!"

 

A thousand dollars a month for allowance? Duo asked himself. And he gets more in a trust fund? That was more money than he saw in three months most of the time. He'd been made to feel like a small street boy again, and by someone who had appeared to be so friendly before.

 

Duo sighed as they were dismissed back to their desks. He stared at his hands for the rest of the class, not really listening to anything that was going on. All he could think about was the realization that the two people that he had hoped he could be friends with, were rich and probably didn't want anything to do with him at all.

 

Heero's mother was an actress, and by the gasps in the room, a really good one. Heero was probably as well off as Quatre and Wufei were. He probably had been taught all of his life to be 'wary of any lesser people'.

 

The bell ran to signal the end of the math class, and Duo gathered up all of his things, stuffing them into his backpack. He was about to leave, but Heero grabbed his shoulde,r and Duo stared at him sadly. Heero returned the sad gaze, and placed a piece of paper in Duo's hand. Then he walked off, not looking back once.

 

Duo opened his hand and stared down at the piece of paper in it. He sighed. It was probably just a hate note. He contemplated just throwing it out, but instead he opened it, a small part of him hoping that Heero was different than the rest of the rich people he had met today.

 

In neat, crisp writing were eight words that made Duo regain his faith in Heero being a good guy. A good guy that was worth being friends with.

 

'Meet me at the Willow's Tree for lunch,' the note read. Duo gaped at it. Heero Yuy, some famous actress's son, was willing to eat lunch with him, a street rat.

 

A huge smile appeared on his face and it managed to stay there though his next class.