Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ A Different Circumstance (Arc) ❯ #4 - Lies ( Chapter 4 )

The phone rang shrill and loud, jarring Heero from sleep so suddenly that the rude awakening felt as though it had been an almost physical attack. He groaned, tried to lean over the bed to where his discarded clothes lay in a heap, and got tangled in sheets and legs in the damnable process. Trying his best not to curse aloud, mindful of the warm, relaxed body curled up beside him, he stretched out as far as he could, and managed to swipe his pants off the ground. “Yuy.”

 

“Heero?”

 

He stiffened so quickly that his fingers nearly crushed the phone. “Relena.”

 

“I'm sorry if I woke you. Are you still at the office?”

 

He fought to keep any telltale emotion out of his muttered, untruthful reply.

 

There was a long pause, and then, “It's Saturday, Heero. Quatre's game is at three o'clock, at the marina field. I told him you'd agreed to come. Will you be able to make it?”

 

He'd arranged lunch at a discreet restaurant for Wufei and himself, and had purchased tickets to a classical Chinese orchestral concert at night. Had completely forgotten about baseball, and Quatre. In that instant, his deception and thoughtlessness hit him at full blow in the chest, and the guilt crept in, eating him alive.

 

“Of course,” he bit out succinctly. “I said I would be.”

 

There was trustful relief in Relena's enthusiastic reply as she rattled on about details, about how she would send the car to pick him up at one, so that they could have lunch together perhaps, before they went home and got Quatre? She'd also been approached about an investment deal by her brother, and she wanted to discuss it with him if he could possibly spare the time?

 

“Yes,” Heero gritted out, not knowing which was stronger, the urge to hurl the phone against the wall, or the urge to shoot himself between the eyes. Alternatively, simply to pretend that he wasn't cheating on his wife and family, and had been doing so for longer than the words “accident”, “drunk” and “one-night stand” could explain. “I'll see you later.”

 

He flipped the cover shut, and met a piercing, knowing dark gaze.

 

“Heero. It's not a problem.”

 

The words were husky, sparking frissons of electricity in Heero's veins in a way that they had no right to do. At this point, shooting himself would probably be more satisfying than breaking the phone. “There are no problems”.

 

“Ah. Yes, I understand. It's always your call.” Polite, distant already, and Heero instantly hated the withdrawal, especially after last night when they had been...what? Closer? Gentler? More intimate, in a way that was past the sweat and the sex?

 

No. It was all his imagination.

 

There really was nothing he could say, anyway. He had to make up for the past few times he'd been absent for 'family occasions', as Relena liked to call them. Make up for spending the last few weekends in this dingy hellhole of an apartment, where the only beauty, the only real grace, came from its occupant. Make up for all the phone calls he'd been disconnecting, and keep up appearances before anyone decided something was amiss and probed into his private life. He knew Wufei knew all this. He knew all this. There had never been any choice in the matter.

 

“Look,” it came out as more of an entreaty that Heero had planned for it to be. What had happened to his deep-seated conviction? The certainty that he had to break this off, every time he left this room? It was too dangerous. It could ruin his life. “Look—”

 

“I'm not complaining, Heero,” the words were languid, as Wufei rolled over to where the cigarettes were kept on the bedside table. “You should be going.”

 

A flick of a lighter, and then a flare of red and the brilliant orange of smoldering ash. Heero quashed what felt suspiciously like a compelling need to speak; besides, he didn't know what to say. He watched silently, unmoving, as the first curl of smoke wisped up and disappeared into the heavy air, watched as Wufei closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

 

Then he got up quietly to get his things.