Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Operation Rubber Band ❯ Operation Rubber Band ( Chapter 1 )

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

I've never envied anything nearly as much as I have that rubber band. It was just one of those normal, yellowish things with no special features to make it any different than any other rubber band. But I envied that rubber band with a vengeance. I know that sounds ridiculous, but just hear me out before you write me off as crazy.

As I'm sure you know, Duo Maxwell was my partner in the war. It's only natural, I suppose, that it carried over into our Preventors' career. Pilot 01 and 02, the perfect blend of tedious attention to detail and reckless intuition. Duo, of course, was the reckless intuition, and as unlikely as it seems, it managed to balance out. Working together, we were practically an unstoppable force. Our missions hardly ever failed.

Duo Maxwell was also one of my friends; one of four close, old friends. Well, as close as I could handle. I still had some problems showing emotion at that time, and though I enjoyed the company of my former terrorist allies, I'm afraid I have to report that I didn't show it very well. They seemed to understand though; one of the reasons I was so fond of them.

That's about as far as common knowledge went regarding Heero Yuy and Duo Maxwell, even when it came to pilot 02 himself. You must be wondering what any of this has to do with that rubber band I told you about. Just relax, I'm getting to that.

Going beyond common knowledge, and in fact, knowledge only I had, was that I had developed an unnatural fascination with my partners' braid. There was just something about the way the end flirted with the backs of his knees, the way it swung carelessly behind him when he ran, the way small strands fell out of the braid, frizzing slightly by the end of the day, and mostly, the way he'd absent-mindedly play with the tip, removing and replacing that cursed rubber band whenever he was nervous or bored that just drove me crazy.

See? I told you I'd get to it.

At first, I figured I could just ignore it. I buried myself even deeper in my reports than normal, diving head first into my work, but it's a little hard to ignore my partners' nervous habits when most of them involve pestering me. It certainly didn't do much for my cause as he flitted around the room, warm waterfalls of chestnut tightly bound together by such a flimsy tie swaying around me.

He was just so damn friendly, too. He'd take it upon himself to sit on the side of my desk, the last quarter of his luscious braid pooling right in front of me, that simple little rubber band taunting me, and ask me out to lunch. I always declined, of course. I wasn't going to get over my newfound braid obsession by prolonging my exposure to it. He'd sigh softly, tell me it was my loss, and come back the next day to try again. It was a torturous little ritual of his. You'd think after damn near a year of turning him down, he'd just stop asking. Nope, not Duo.

Do you see what I had to work with here? I had some crazed obsession with his braid and he was throwing it in my face! But wait, there's more. I still hadn't come to envy the rubber band quite yet. I just had some sort of grudge against it at that point. I clearly remember the night that grudge turned to envy.

We had just got back from a particularly trying field mission, and we were both covered in dirt, sweat and blood, both our own and that of those who stood against us. It was damn near midnight, and Lady Une expected a report on her desk the next morning, which meant we had at least another hour or two stuck in the building together.

We of course wanted to take showers first. Preventor's HQ had everything we needed. The place was damn near its own military base, the building itself ten stories tall, so we headed down to the basement to grab a couple of nice hot showers. This was nothing out of the ordinary for me, but Duo seldom bothered to use the HQ showers, preferring, I guess, to shower at home. But with the prospect of another two hours in the office and with as much as I was sure he ached on top of the dirty wounds he was harboring, he really didn't have much of a choice.

Don't get me wrong, we weren't bleeding profusely from gunshot wounds or anything, but we were both pretty scratched up with a few smaller cuts and gashes, so though it wasn't anything life threatening, even a small gash can hurt like hell if it gets infected.

I was quite relieved to step into my own stall and let the hot water run over my salty, sticky skin. I heard Duo murmur something to the same effect. I finished quickly, dressed and stepped out, leaning against the wall to wait for Duo.

Nothing could have prepared me for the sight I was about to see.

Long, wet strands stuck to his pale, bare skin. It surrounded him like a cloak, casting a shadow over his face and hugging his firm body, the rubber band dangling loosely from his wrist. He was only wearing a pair of blue jeans, his feet as bare as his chest. His cross swayed slightly from its place around his neck as he walked nonchalantly over to the large bathroom mirror.

I'm afraid I could do nothing but gawk at him. I guess it didn't really matter though, as he wasn't self conscious at all, almost seeming to ignore my presence entirely. He went about attempting to towel dry his hair, making it thick and fluffy. I wanted so badly to just reach out and touch his soft mane, but that would have been completely inappropriate, so I just watched in awe as Duo grumbled about not having a hair dryer. Apparently, that was why he waited until he was home to shower. He was having a hell of a time brushing it wet.

My breath was almost pulled right out of me by some invisible force as deft, nimble fingers wove the hair together, holding my beauty and rapture with a few twists of the rubber band. I know it might seem like a big jump, but somehow I drew a parallel between the little yellow rubber band holding Duo's braid together, and whatever held Duo together. I wanted to be Duo's rubber band.

That's when Operation Rubber Band came into being.

Mission parameters? Simple. Steal the rubber band at all costs. If I could unravel his beauty, I could reach out and hold him together. Yeah, I realize my logic was a little flawed. But I figured if I could somehow put myself in a situation that got me close enough to Duo to take it, I could take Duo, too. I still worked in mission mind set back then, so I had to turn it into a mission of some sort. I would have been completely lost if I hadn't.

A plan? Yeah, I had the vague workings of one. Step One: Learn more about Duo.

It was with great effort that I didn't show my curiosity when Duo didn't seem to be the least bit surprised when I agreed to have lunch with him the very next day. Instead, he graced me with a warm smile and lead me off without question.

That's when I started the reconnaissance part of the mission. I'm nothing if I'm not thorough. I must have asked a million questions during that short hour at some greasy hamburger stand that Duo apparently frequented often, judging by the way the waitress knew him on a first name basis. What was his favorite kind of music? What did he usually do on the weekends? His favorite color? His long term goals? Favorite kind of mission? He chuckled at that one, informing me that it was any mission where no one ended up hurt. Movies? Books? Food? If he thought it to be strange that my conversational skills went from occasional grunting to an extreme inquisitive nature, he hid it well. He hardly batted an eye, answering each of my questions, seemingly honestly, and even managed to surprise me by reciprocating them in turn.

There was one question that earned me a reaction though, and I have to admit, it was difficult to ask in nonchalance, but I pressed forward, telling myself it was part of the mission plans. I can steel myself to do just about anything telling myself that. After all, they don't call me Heero Anything-For-The-Mission Yuy for nothing.

I asked him if he had a girlfriend. He held his calm well, but not before the pink managed a hold on his face, and he mumbled something about not being interested. It was the first time he hadn't responded clearly to one of my questions, so I pushed it a little, gently asking what he meant by 'not interested'. That's when he told me, with much hesitation, that he wasn't interested in girls period. When it was plain that he might pass out from the sudden, abrupt fever spreading across his skin, I just shrugged and told him I wasn't either.

It was interesting to see his eyes pop out of his head and jaw drop to the floor.

He recovered quickly, but not before I could commit that delightful little expression to memory.

For the last two days that week, I accepted his invitations to lunch. After Friday's little 'session', I was finished with my reconwork and decided it was time to move to Step Two: Spend more time with Duo.

For the next month, I made sure that the two of us were practically inseparable. We would knock back a few beers after work at his apartment, we'd hang out on the weekends, we caught a few movies, we had dinner together; hell, I even went so far as to go with him to the orphanage on Sundays, listening to Duo talk about a God I didn't know and played with children I had never before met.

I bought him things, too. I made an effort to grab some CD's for him that I knew he wanted but didn't have. I bought and built a large bookshelf for all his mountains of books that had no place to go, and so were unceremoniously stacked in a closet. He ended up with various shirts in his favorite colors: black and blue, not surprisingly. Shit, I even went so far as to stock his fridge with all his favorite foods.

Duo is not the most attentive person when it comes to his own needs. I know damn well he makes as much as I do, but he seemed to get by only on what he absolutely needed, leaving himself little room for luxury. When I asked about it, he just shrugged and said it wasn't important. I had a feeling most of his money somehow ended up going to the children he was so fond of.

Somewhere during that month, I started to realize that my affection for Duo was moving well past his braid and right down to his very soul; that the mission really didn't matter anymore, and that I was building something with my energetic partner that I wasn't quite ready to face yet. It was a thought that nagged at the back of my mind, but I ignored it, needing the safety of a mission to mask just what was really going on.

But then I was entering the final stretch, and I couldn't help but get a little nervous. Step Three: Get closer to Duo. And yes, that holds all the implications you are thinking. I was trying to use mission mode to help me become romantically involved with my partner, Duo Maxwell. I bet you all saw that coming a mile away, but I hadn't really realized it until the moment my brain clicked over from Step Two to Step Three. I had started Operation Rubber Band with some vague notion of wanting to be for Duo what his little rubber band was for his hair. I had really thought that it was all part of my envy of a little, stretchy yellow thing, and I'd never bothered to think everything through. Somehow, my mind went straight from the mission to the objective without bothering to think about what it meant. It was never about the rubber band to begin with.

Now that I was realizing it, I was sitting just this side of the fence from pure, unadulterated terror.

So what did I do? Capped it all down with my 'This is a mission' mind set. To this day, I doubt I would have got through it at all without it.

Thanks to my determination to complete my objective, I planned for the night weeks in advance. I made reservations at a rather expensive, highly praised restaurant in town. I bought a blue, silk shirt to 'bring out my eyes', as the clerk had put it. I bought another CD that suited Duo's lighter tastes for the car ride over. I looked up facts about homosexual relationships, because I sure as hell hadn't ever been in one, and it didn't seem to me that Duo had, either. I forced myself to digest the information in a clinical fashion.

You know, for the mission and all that junk.

But when the time came to tell him about it, I just kind of froze. I was standing next to my desk, and some of the weirdest things that had ever happened to me in my life suddenly all pounced on me at once.

My heart was in my chest. My mouth went dry. My stomach was flipping and rolling inside me. I couldn't breathe well. I thought there was something wrong with my knees, because I suddenly felt woozy and capable of collapsing at any moment. I think I was a little flushed, too, when Duo finally asked me why I was hovering over his desk in stone silence instead of working on a very important report that was due to be on Lady Une's desk in an hour.

It took me damn near a full minute to find my voice. I have no idea where it had gone, but when it returned, it was higher than usual, and it was so scratchy, it sounded like I hadn't had anything to drink in weeks.

Even after I found it and coaxed it out of hiding, I couldn't even begin to fathom saying the word 'date'. I almost faltered just thinking about it. So instead, I just tried my best to smile through the heat in my face and told him, as calmly as I could, that I was taking him out for a fancy dinner, my treat, joking about being tired of greasy hamburgers, and told him to dress appropriately. I said I'd pick him up at eight. He looked almost hopeful for a minute, something I didn't quite understand at the time, and then flashed me one of his Duo Maxwell smiles, but the rare one that reaches all the way to his eyes. He was practically glowing as I shuffled away, purely confused at his expressions, but treasuring them all the same.

There, that wasn't so bad. I didn't even have to use the word date. Just because I didn't quite make my implications for the evening clear, I could always improvise. I'm a soldier at heart; it's what we do.

I have to say, the night started off... awkward. Duo was wearing a stunning violet shirt, and I mentally chuckled at the thought that he may have bought it for the same reason I bought mine. It did the job well, in any case. We spoke very little on the car ride there, other than Duo complimenting my shirt and taking notice of my careful music selection. The dinner itself was all right. Duo kept the conversation flowing well, though I felt a little strange when I'd look up and find him staring at me with some unknown expression in his eyes. It was kind and gentle, almost as if there was some kind of fondness there, but whenever I caught him looking, he'd look away, so I wasn't able to analyze it further.

When I made it through dinner unscathed, I almost started to panic. I hadn't planned beyond eating, so I had no idea what excuse I could use to get me into Duo's apartment after it was over. When no suitable excuse presented itself by the time we made it back to his apartment, I was damn near hysterical. Duo was fidgeting in the passenger seat, and when I met his eyes, he asked me if I wanted to come up himself. A strange sense of relief filled me, and then I was trailing behind Duo as he fumbled in his pocket for his keys.

When he finally got them out, he dropped them, and his hands were visibly shaking.

I don't think I've ever seen him shake before, and I certainly have never seen him drop something without being injured, so I'm afraid I just stood there gawking at him, confused. He blushed clear to the roots of his hair as he bent down, picked them up and practically threw the door open. He offered me a beer and we sat, drinking in uncomfortable silence for a while. It was probably the longest silence we'd ever had between us since the war. Even at work, Duo was always saying something, more often than not, just cracking a joke or two to keep the mood light and help the day go by faster.

The tension in the room was so thick, I could almost touch it.

I desperately tried to think of something to say, but Duo beat me to it. He cut straight to the heart of the matter. He asked me why I asked him to dinner. I was damn shocked that he had seen through my plan, though I guess I shouldn't have been. It was pretty transparent to everyone but me, I guess. I had no idea what to say, and I didn't want to brush him off, so I just kind of sat there staring at him. His face was a strange mixture of hope and fear, and I didn't want to hurt him. What if he didn't want this? What if he really just thought of me as a partner? Was I jeopardizing things for this silly notion of a mission I created?

That's when it hit me. I mean really hit me. I wasn't obsessed with his braid. I wasn't even obsessed with his soul. No, obsessed was the wrong word entirely. I was hit by a ton of bricks and I just couldn't keep it from getting to my face, so when my eyes got large, I guess Duo thought I was reacting negatively, and I still hadn't said anything. His face kind of fell for a moment, the hope long gone, replaced by pain mixed with the fear before he could slip the mask up and cock me a lop-sided grin. He told me to forget he asked; that it wasn't important.

In that small moment, before he could get his mask back up, I realized something else. With my lack of response and my strange expression, I had just unraveled Duo Maxwell a little more.

Before I even had time to think about what I was doing, I had already crossed the room and wrapped my arms around him. I told him it was important, that HE was important. I made him look at me, and I almost lost my nerve, but the fear in his eyes solidified my resolve. I kissed him. Though it was my very first, I didn't stop at a simple brush of the lips, wanting more, wanting to make sure I let him know how I felt and just how deep it ran.

When we finally came up for air, I answered his question. I took him to dinner because I loved him.

Then I ran my fingers down his braid and carefully slipped the rubber band off his hair and over my wrist, undoing his braid slowly to watch his hair cascade over his back. He smiled, told me he loved me, and kissed me again.

Mission Complete.