Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Amour ❯ Of Other Men ( Chapter 4 )

 

 

Amour

 

Chapter 4

 

By Zapenstap

 

 

It wasn't all about sex.

 

In fact, as time went on, sex had less and less to do with it.

 

Heero found enjoyment in sex, of course, or at least he enjoyed it with Relena, but that alone was not what kept him coming around to see her. For years he had been telling himself that there was nothing he could give Relena and nothing she could give to him that would ultimately do either of them any favors, or at least not at this time in his life. And yet something between them was good enough to make a few hours in her company worthwhile, though he didn't understand what it was and couldn't put the way he felt about it into words.

 

He knew it wasn't love.

 

Heero understood love the way he understood most things conceptually, and he knew that he was not ready for it. It was probable that he never would be. It wasn't because he was unemotional, or cold, the way he allowed—and even encouraged—most people to believe. It was because his emotions were too strong, and therefore fiercely controlled. It was what gave him his level of intensity, and he knew it was a stunted existence, but it was the only way he knew how to live. Anything else was dangerous. He had trained himself to bury his feelings deep, monitoring them from a distance, and only allowing himself to feel enough to know what to do. If he didn't, he couldn't trust himself to curb his instinct enough to make the right decisions. He had had to train himself to suppress feelings so as not to go crazy—the way Quatre once did.

 

And even if it was love he felt for Relena, or something reminiscent of it, that didn't mean he was ready to accept it, or express it, or would be capable of taking responsibility for the consequences if he did.

 

Romance was a foreign concept to a boy who had grown up on war. Trying to love Relena—if indeed, he was even capable of such an emotion—was something Heero knew he would inevitably screw up. Though he understood love as a concept and as a feeling, the act of loving someone—at least romantically—wasn't something he understood at all. He knew what it looked like—flowers and dinner and acts of thoughtfulness leading to a home, a family, and children—but it wasn't something he knew how to do. Heero was sensitive in that he understood people, but he was not sensitive in a sentimental way. He didn't know how to deal with the needs or emotions of other people. His trained instinct was to bury pain, sadness, fear, even happiness, to ignore it unless it was useful in making a decision, and then to control it to do what needed to be done. Those habits were not about to die, for he had no way of reworking what his training for piloting the gundam had wrought. He wasn't cut out to be anyone's sweetheart or boyfriend. He definitely wasn't cut out to be a husband or a father.

 

And he knew that deep down, that was exactly what Relena wanted…someday.

 

Even as an idea, the commitment involved was staggering. He had grown up expecting to die—wanting to die. To give his life to another person, to be expected to stay in one place and share—by default of proximity—his deepest secrets and vulnerabilities, to be someone else's physical and emotional support, to love and support as well as protect … It was a bewildering concept. It wasn't that he wanted to die any longer, for he had come to see that he had substantial value in risking his life to the protection of peace and stability on Earth as well as in Space, but that was a problem too. His work required the sort of flexibility that would enable him to disappear for a year if the situation required it, or ten years, and there was always the possibility that he might not return. At any moment his life could be snuffed out like a candle flame, and then who would fulfill the promises he made to other people, especially those of love?

 

He was a soldier. He had never been anything else.

 

He doubted Relena had ever seen it that way, or looked that far ahead. Sometimes she was so enamored of an idea in the moment that she failed to draw the inevitable conclusions. She believed so strongly in her ideals that even in the stark face of reality, she still wouldn't admit to what she knew. He couldn't envision himself forgetting himself and what his life was about enough to be able to love her. He definitely couldn't envision himself promising to stay. The truth was that the only promise he had ever made to keep was his promise to protect Relena from harm, because that was something he could do, because he had come to believe in her and what she was trying to do, and the best way he saw to keep that promise now was to stay the hell away from her.

 

Besides, he knew his limitations. He had already tested them in an attempt, a foolish, mislead, deluded attempt to give Relena what she thought she wanted. They had shared walks in the moonlight and long talks by firelight. They had held hands and kissed and talked and eventually shared and explored each other's bodies, but never during that time did Heero think he felt what he knew he was supposed to feel. Of course, he had kept his distance, coming around when she needed him but never staying for long, avoiding the intimacy and commitment that would make their union real, but that was the habit and necessity of his life; it was just the way he was. Maybe he hadn't really been trying to succeed, but he had been himself, and that alone ought to have been enough to prove a fact about his existence that was tragically but irrevocably true: that he was incapable of giving Relena the life she deserved. Being himself had broken her heart, a necessary evil that had pained him deeply, but which was honest and far easier for both of them to bear than any of the other endings he had reasoned out as inevitable if he had sought instead to deceive her. Anyway, it was better to fail her as a transient idea than as the absent lover, insensible husband, negligent father or any other eventuality in her mind other than the lone, restless and unfulfilled soldier he would always be.

 

Of course, nothing in that line of reasoning explained what was happening now.

 

Heero stared out over the city from the rickety balcony of his small apartment as he thought, the sun setting in the west behind him and lengthening the shadows on the street below. The apartment was merely a temporary residence, one of many in the world, arranged for his use by people who thought they owed him favors. It suited him well enough to accept lodging in the political hub of the world, where Relena lived, so that he was able to keep an eye on her and her local projects while waiting for a developing situation in Space to become dangerous enough to require his intervention. He stood with his elbows on the hard, thin black rail as he thought, oblivious to the bite in the air as a harsh wind bowed the tops of the trees over the roofs of the neighborhood houses down the hill and a few blocks over.

 

There were children playing on the lawns and in the streets of those neighborhoods. It was not an unusual sight. He watched them sometimes in the quiet hours just before evening, curious about the things they did and the ways they played together, carefree of terror, pain, starvation and death. Watching made him search his mind for memories in his own childhood where he had played like that with other children, or even played alone, but he could never think of anything. It seemed to him that he had always been the same, always directed toward a single goal: peace for others and nothing for himself. The children he watched didn't seem to have any goals, or anything to fear from life or death, if they ever even thought in those terms. As the day darkened into dusk, mothers and fathers appeared on porches and driveways, calling their children in for dinner and rebuking them gently and lovingly if they did not obey.

 

Heero watched through unseeing eyes until the last door was shut, thinking alone in the silence.

 

If Relena didn't love him the way she claimed, at least on some level, he didn't think it could possibly feel as good as it felt.

 

It was a horrible realization, one he had come to understand recently and one he had not been able to dismiss from his mind for several days now. Heero knew he was weak, that he was as human as the next person and just as desperate, but it was not a good excuse. Of course he needed her. He needed her physically, but that wasn't all, or even the more troubling part of the problem. Hers was the only soft touch he had ever really known, and it was close to impossible to forget about once it was experienced. He needed her comfort. And yet he hated that weakness in himself. It was that kind of selfishness, that kind of vulnerability and insecurity that started and prolonged the wars he had fought so hard and bitterly to end.

 

He had pretended that it was about a physical desire that he needed to be satisfied and which she satisfied better than any other person, and that was true to a certain extent, but he couldn't deny that there was something else in him that sought a deeper satisfaction, that searched for something more elusive and more precious than Relena's body alone could give, a feeling that no woman other than Relena could give. It was a feeling he had longed for all his life, a feeling that came upon him only in fitful bouts and spurts, a feeling that being with her made him experience. It was happiness.

 

He knew he had to control it, to suppress it if he had to. In the past, the feelings he had for Relena waxed and waned as he allowed himself to feel and act on them, but they were always within his control. It was a cruel joke that the sexual exploration that he thought about abstractedly as selfish and emotionally distant would turn out to be so fundamentally relational. Having sex with Relena made him think about her all the time, and the more he thought about her the harder it was to control how he felt about her, to suppress what he felt. Their intimacy was becoming uncontainable, and that was too dangerous; for him certainly, but also for Relena. His feelings, whatever they were, could not fulfill her, not the way they were meant to, not by him. He supposed he could be happy with her after a fashion, but he absolutely was not capable of giving her the life she wanted, and the more his feelings deepened only meant the more unhappy and hurt they would both be when his way of dealing with those feelings frustrated her, when he was distant, impatient, and aloof, when he couldn't make sense of rich, social, political life enough to do her credit, when he had to keep leaving her to do the work that might kill him, when he eventually failed to live up to her expectations as a husband and possibly a parent, when he had to surrender her for her own good to someone else who could treat her better, when she wanted more than his silence, and even more than his words.

 

It was good that he caught it early. If he hadn't, he might have felt regret—or worse—when another man did enter Relena's life.

 

He had been getting desperate to once again feel her body close to his and thinking of going to see her when he discovered it, some weeks after his last encounter with Relena in the hotel room in Brussels.

 

In Brussels, Heero told Relena that nothing had changed, and externally it was true, but internally it wasn't, and he knew that they were both aware of it. He had gone directly from the cockpit of his plane to her hotel room to see her, returning to her the moment he completed the objective of his mission. With one night to spare before he had to return the aircraft to the hangar, he chose to fly to her, to stay the night with her during the few hours he had remaining. He had hacked into the hotel data system to discover Relena's room number and found himself at her door in a state of exhaustion, harboring a need for her arms that he couldn't describe. In Malaysia he had missed her, not just her body, but all of her, though he had told himself during those hot, dark, chaotic days that it was brought on by the extreme loneliness of the field. But it wasn't until after allowing himself a moment of respite in her bath and in her bed that he came to understand how profoundly she affected him. He had been avoiding truly sleeping with her before that night, and now that he had he was disturbingly aware of how much he liked it.

 

It was following the culmination of one of the large projects that kept her working from dawn until nightfall six or seven days out of the week that he discovered that—in keeping with their agreement—she hadn't waited for him.

 

There had been a big party to celebrate the victory of a political battle hard fought and hard won, a party Heero hadn't attended. Nevertheless, he found himself hanging around the building until about midnight waiting for her to come out. A few weeks alone had cooled some of the ardor he had felt for Relena after the mission, at least on the surface, but dismissing his desire for her completely didn't seem possible and he had been feeling strange lately, like he was a shimmer or a sparkle quite distinct but disconnected from reality.

 

Around midnight she did come out, but not alone. The man who was with her didn't seem nearly as unsuitable a match as anyone Heero had seen around her lately. He was tall and fair skinned, well-dressed and seemingly well-connected by the number of animated conversations that halted the pair as he and Relena tried to leave the party. Heero noticed that Relena had a hand on his arm and a smile on her face.

 

Heero didn't know how long they had been in contact. They could have been acquainted for some time before that night, for it seemed pretty certain that something was progressing rather than beginning when the man strolled with Relena to a chauffeur parked along the curb and kissed her beside the door. After speaking to the driver, he got in beside her.

 

Heero felt a jolt watching, like being stung by a live electrical current, and for an agonizing, terrifying moment, he wanted nothing more than to satisfy a primal urge to knock the other man to the ground and assert himself in his place beside this woman who belonged to him. It was due to Heero's control over his emotions that the impulse was thwarted, and remembering the terms of their agreement, he merely nodded before walking away. He couldn't complain. He had agreed to let her find someone else, to stay away if she had the chance of being with someone who could satisfy her needs, who could give her a home, a marriage, children—whatever she wanted. He had hoped she would find it. After all, he wanted her to be happy.

 

Later that night, or rather in the wee hours of the morning when he couldn't sleep, Heero looked up information on Relena's mysterious suitor. All of his references checked out. Gregory Balen was a wealthy man and the son of a politician, though he himself was not in politics. His family was prominent, high-blooded, and known to be charitable. His medical history was sound. His associates spoke well of his character. He had flaws, but they were nothing remarkable. Heero could not find anything that would render him unfit to date Relena, or even marry her if she was ever so inclined, and as far as he was concerned, once he closed his laptop, that was the end of it.

 

He just wouldn't think of another man touching her.

 

He wouldn't interfere.

 

 

Relena didn't expect a mild flirtation to turn into a relationship. It began as a way to counteract the way she felt—but knew she must not feel—about Heero. But as time went on it became something else, something normal, something...hopeful.

 

Gregory Balen had a pleasant, light-hearted sense of humor reminiscent of Sally Po, clean-cut, attractive features, and a devastatingly sharp mind. From the start he was enamored of Relena's success and beauty, amazed by all she had done and all she stood for. He was familiar with her work and supportive of her campaigns, accompanying her to any function or event when he was free, and blessedly comfortable around the press that haunted their every step the first few weeks of their relationship. Together they attended a whirlwind of parties, romantic evenings, extravagant gifts and quiet strolls on deserted landscapes.

 

With Gregory, Relena was happy. When he kissed her, it was with a besotted sort of aggression that was warm and pleasant and easily returned. Furthermore, meeting and becoming close to someone new and different gave Relena the chance to understand herself from another angle and explore the life her adopted mother and father had planned out for her before the war had changed so much. She and Gregory talked casually about the kind of future they could have together: a comfortable, lucrative lifestyle in a country manor with extensive grounds, horses, dogs, a household staff, children, etc. etc.

 

In the beginning of the relationship, Relena didn't take any of it too seriously, but as time passed it was clear that Gregory was serious about taking his life in the direction of settling down. The attention he paid her was not casual or transient. His courtship came with expensive gifts, serious talks, and deepening intimacy. Over time, Relena came to regard Gregory with a lucid feeling of love.

 

Of course, she never forgot Heero Yuy. She didn't expect to, and it took a serious effort to mute her feelings for Heero to the point where she could take a genuine interest in someone else, but she managed it by reminding herself that she and Heero had agreed about what they were both willing and able to give to one another and what they could not afford give up; Relena wanted to be loved openly, to commit someday, to marry someday, and to someday raise a family. As those were not things Heero felt he could do, it was necessary to repress her feelings for him and healthy to lose herself in the whirlwind of a new relationship. Therefore, she didn't hold back.

 

The first time Relena slept with Gregory was after he told her he loved her. Three months into the relationship, it might have been too soon, or too late; Relena wasn't sure because no man had ever told her he loved her before. It happened on the balcony of Gregory's elegant, spacious home on the plateau where she had been leaning over the rail to look at the stars. He brought her a glass of wine and, after a moment of silence, successfully riveted her attention to him by reminiscing on all the time they had recently spent together, who he thought she was and what her company meant to him. When she responded in kind, he explained that his feelings for her had been strengthening, that he missed her when she was away, that he found himself always looking for ways to romance her, to make her happy, and thinking about what kind of future they might have together. Then he told her that it was because he felt he loved her, and could only hope that she returned the feeling.

 

She replied that she did, and they retired to the bedroom to express what they had shared without the need for words.

 

Sex with Gregory mirrored the way Relena felt about him. It was nice, and loving, though different than her encounters had been with Heero. With Gregory it was an act of expression that was pleasurable and physically satisfying in the usual way. It was something she could rationalize doing or not doing depending on the variables of the place and time and her current mood. With Heero, the for whom she had pined and nurtured for years before they even touched, it had only taken her yielding once or twice before wanting him had become almost a compulsion; a physical need to be close, a passion for this particular person that even the fulfillment of the sexual act couldn't quench. But she never spoke of Heero to Gregory, and did her best to banish him from her own thoughts. Being with Gregory made her appreciate how deeply her passion ran for Heero, but being with Gregory also clued her in to what else she had been missing in a relationship.

 

After only a few weeks of being a real girlfriend, Relena understood some of Heero's trepidation about not being able to live up to romantic standards. Gregory was nearly perfect in the degree of his thoughtfulness and attention. Flowers arrived frequently at her office, candles set a mood in the bedroom, occasional presents were of her taste and liking, outings were frequent and fun, and he was always more than kind to her. Relena also noticed quickly that the feelings Gregory had for her were absent the guesswork that defined her understanding of Heero's moods and feelings. Gregory was an open book, eloquent and vocal, a vigilant communicator like herself. He was always accessible when she needed him and always willing to humor her in her weakest states. He was certainly more social and extroverted than Heero had ever dreamed of being, and not only was he content to attend various social functions with her, but in his company Relena was invited to even more gatherings than she had previously been privy too. As a result, her public approval increased.

 

It was the affluent, high profile, extremely ambitious love affair her parents had always dreamed for her, the life that she had been bred to live. It was structured, it was neat, it was perfect and it was pleasant.

 

After six months she grew tired of it.

 

At first she didn't understand what was happening. It wasn't that she was unhappy, or had anything to complain about, but she simply wasn't as stimulated as she felt she ought to be. In her relationship with Gregory Balen, Relena's happiness was that of a wooden marionette, a puppet that moved smilingly but chillingly to a plotted, expected, beautifully decided, anticlimactic conclusion. In Gregory's company Relena wore the same mask that she wore to work. She was overwhelmingly diplomatic, devastatingly patient, cloyingly polite, nauseatingly refined, and utterly predictable. She didn't hate it because it was the side of herself she had chosen to show during a time when such qualities in people were needed, but it wasn't the secret part of her that she treasured most, the part she most desperately wanted to a person who loved her to understand and esteem.

 

With Gregory Balen, Relena Darilan was spoiled and bored. In short, she was the person she had been before she met Heero.

 

As Gregory's girlfriend, Relena wasn't the girl who had stood up to the murderous sights of Wing Gundam at St. Gabrielle's and demanded to know why Heero wouldn't take her life the way Lady Une had taken her father's, or the girl who had walked on stage in front of her enemies and verbally blasted the Romafeller Foundation for its insipid blindness, threatening the security they assumed was rightfully theirs through money and tradition. She wasn't remotely the girl she had been when Noin called her a reckless, the girl she begged to show more restraint and exercise more caution. She wasn't the girl who had thrown herself headfirst into a war—albeit, a political battle zone as best befitted her resources and experience—for the sake of a boy who had made her feel more in a few earth-shattering seconds than anyone she had ever known.

 

Despite all of that, it was still a surprise, and even a shock, when Gregory was the one to break up with her.

 

They were in the kitchen at his home, making tea for two after she returned from a conference meeting late at night, when she sensed his disgruntlement and asked—politely—to know what was bothering him. He began by evading, talking about stress at work and trouble with his father. She listened, but didn't respond, and after a moment of awkward silence he told her that he was frustrated because she was never around. She was too busy, he said, too busy with work. She was often gone for a week or more at a time, sometimes twice in a month, and she rarely had more than a few hours of downtime for the two of them even when she was at home. She had to go to bed late and get up early and she was always tired. Then she refused to complain, or be angry, or even talk about anything that upset her. On some days, she hardly seemed to smile. For someone so young, so beautiful, so rich and so powerful, she didn't seem to be enjoying life, or at least not with him. Why, he asked, did she put more energy into her work than she did the people she loved?

 

She asked him, calmly and politely, what she should be expected to do when her work was sometimes all that gave hope and strength to a world so recently damaged by war, when it was all that was keeping her motivated to keep living and believing in the peaceful world she had worked so hard to create and now to maintain. Of course Gregory had no answers, but that didn't change his discontent, his desire for someone—he explained—who wasn't so serious all the time, someone who was more normal, more emotionally available, and less controlling.

 

It took her days to process what he meant. In all of her memory she had always felt a little isolated compared to other people, always aloof and deeply introverted, quiet and empathetically reflective, bred to behave a certain way and even to feel a certain way. She rarely spoke about her own feelings unless it was in a passion, but was always quick to dissect, process and categorize those of other people. She supposed that she did bully people on a daily basis, for she was intimidating at her age in her position, and she sometimes used that as leverage to force people to accept the vital understanding that people had different ways of thinking. She supposed she was too good at politics not to be somewhat manipulative if not downright overpowering when she wanted to press a point, and indeed, when she did inspections or residing over meetings it wasn't uncommon for her to give flat out orders under the guise of recommendation.

 

It took hours of trying to reconcile with Gregory over the phone before she realized that reconciliation was not only improbable, but not something either of them really wanted. After all, he was right. She was someone who defined her existence by her work. Into it she poured all of her energy, and indeed, all of her personality, and came out of it as something barely recognizable as human.

 

It was then—for some inexplicable reason—that Relena's heart began to ache, not from the pain of her breakup, but with a deeper emptiness that she feared would never be fulfilled. In the darkest part of the night, when sleep would not come through the churning of her thoughts, she wept where no one could see her and cried Heero's name into her pillow.

 

At work she was cool and collected, though absent of the recent glow that being in a relationship had put into her face. Her depression only increased as the days went by and all she could think about was the idea of herself as a woman in power, someone who had somehow become everything she fought against, a figure of power who was intimidating, controlling and exacting, an inhuman icon masquerading moral and diplomatic perfection that no one could reasonably live up to. She knew that there were people in the world who hated her, not for the work she did, but as a representative of that work, and even those who approved of her didn't think her as a person, or even see her as a person. It was actually imperative that no one looked too closely at the Vice Foreign Minister. She had become a diplomat at sixteen, and that had only been possible as long as what most people saw was a legacy of peace rather than a young girl. Twenty four wasn't a vast improvement. She couldn't blame anyone for scorning her.

 

As the days passed, the loneliness of her life and the pain of her identity swelled to a point where she felt ill and one day even fell half-asleep while standing up by the window in her office. She hadn't slept much in over a week, and the endless long days and mounting stress was getting to her. By midday she felt slightly feverish and dizzy, though she was not sick, and at length decided to go home early on the recommendation of an older gentleman in her department who noticed that she looked rather pale and drawn.

 

She left with the full intention of taking a long nap and then doing some work from her home office that needed to be done despite her fatigue, but on the way home, after a few carefully placed phone calls made in a state of overwhelmed exhaustion and desperation, she had her driver take her to the outskirts of the city instead. She couldn't explain how it happened, or what she had been thinking, and indeed, she didn't try to think.

 

It was nearing twilight when she pulled up to an apartment complex on a hill in a poorer district of the city than she was used to venturing, but she knew she was in the right place just by the feeling that came over her the moment she stepped out of the car. Her driver was surprised when she told him to go home, that she would call if she needed a ride, but that she had some business to do here that might take some time.

 

Relena stood for awhile on the curb, drained physically and emotionally to the point of collapse, almost senseless to what she was doing and feeling, and yet knowing that more than anything else, she just needed to see him.

 

After her driver left, it began to rain.

 

 

Heero was surprised to hear a knock at his door on a weekday afternoon. He had been sitting at his table comparing newspapers to see what sorts of things were being covered by the press in which areas when a soft, but urgent rapping at his door interrupted his thoughts. The apartment he lived in was not highly secure. Anybody could come right up to any floor and there wasn't even an indoor hallway to give the illusion of a contained structure. Heero wasn't worried about anybody who would ask to be let in by knocking, but it was raining and he had told no one that that he resided at this address.

 

He was surprised to see Relena standing on his doorstep with a sheet of rain sleeting behind her, her hair and face sprinkled with drops that glistened on her forehead and cheeks. He noted by her clothes, also splattered with rain, that she had come here from work. She wore expensive business attire, a full pants suit with a ruffled blouse and those silk scarves she sometimes wore around her neck and tucked into the lapels of her coat to add color to the otherwise earthy tones. The pantsuit was cream-colored, but the scarves were blue green like her eyes. It was her eyes that held his attention.

 

They stared at him with a steely gaze that was half defiance and half petition, eyes that reminded him of the glass shards of a mirror, reflecting something of himself back at him. He stepped back silently to let her in.

 

“How did you know I was here?” He shut the door behind her when she crossed the threshold, but she didn't move out of the entryway or look in his direction as he passed her, her arms hanging at her sides as her eyes drifted around the room.

 

“I'm resourceful when I need to be,” she said vaguely, and refused to look at him, staring instead at the wooden floor under her feet and the fire sizzling low in his hearth. “It's warm in here,” she added quietly, and the distance in her voice that caught his attention.

 

“Can I get you anything?” he asked, stepping around her to lead the way into the living room. “Water? Wine?”

 

“No,” she said. If she was surprised by his hospitality, she didn't show it. She stood completely still, her shoulders back and her spine erect, but her eyes seemingly unfocused despite their intensity. It was hard to tell in the firelight, but he thought she looked rather pale.

 

“Relena?”

 

She looked at him then, and when she did he felt the electricity in her gaze, a sizzle that missed its mark by a hair as Relena flushed and dragged her eyes away from his face. There was something strange about her posture. On closer observation, he realized that she was shivering, though it wasn't cold with the fire going and only splatters of rainwater on her coat and skin. And yet he could visibly see the tremors passing through her body.

 

“I should go,” she said suddenly, and he realized that he had been staring at her in silence for almost a full minute. “I shouldn't have intruded upon you here. I'm sorry.” Just like that, she turned swiftly for the door.

 

He moved before he thought, intercepting her before she could touch the handle even though he had three times the distance to cover. He locked the door from the inside, turning the bolt with one hand and grabbing Relena's wrist with the other. They were so close he could smell her perfume, a heavenly scent that reminded him of her in ways that he shouldn't have been thinking about at that moment. Images of the two of them together passed through his mind in a flash, and it was an effort not to pull her close and run a hand down her back just to feel her curves. She didn't struggle in his grip, and even though she was mere inches away from him, she was careful not to touch any part of his body, not even a brush of clothing. Her head hung between them, and she refused to meet his eyes.

 

“What's wrong?” he demanded.

 

He knew something was wrong. He could sense it in her as plainly he could see the pain in her face. At first she didn't answer, taking measured breaths as she stared at the ground between their feet, but slowly she raised her head. If she had been trying to hide her face a moment ago because of emotion, she had no need to now. Her expression was as flat and as blank as a board, a mask of ice that was as cold and serene as her voice.

 

“Gregory and I broke up,” she said tonelessly. “A few days ago.” She looked away, managing to shrug a little even with her wrist ensnared in his grip, almost as if he wasn't there. “I thought you might have heard, but it's not important. I'm not really upset about it. I've just been thinking lately and…. I…” She turned to look at him, blue-green eyes melting soft like the soothing waters of a lagoon, “I wanted to see you.” As soon as their eyes met, she looked hastily away, dropping her gaze to shadowed crease on the far side of the room where the wall met the floor. “That's all,” she whispered.

 

The mention of Gregory sent a swift and sudden stab of jealousy through Heero, an emotion he ignored as resolutely as he ignored the sense of competition he had felt whenever he saw or heard word of that other man over the intervening months since he had last seen Relena. He ignored it because it was a weak human emotion, an instinct he could manage as long as he could control his emotional involvement in the situation. As for Relena, he didn't know what she wanted. He didn't think it was comfort about the breakup, because she wasn't likely to find that in him despite his wish for her happiness, and he didn't think it was to ask him to renew the relationship they had had before Gregory came into her life because it would have been ludicrous to think she would want to go back to casual sex without strings at a time like this. The only thing he was sure of was that she didn't seem quite herself.

 

“Why won't you look at me?” he ventured in a straightforward, almost commanding tone of voice.

 

“I…” She closed her eyes, her muscles tightening with a tension he rarely saw in her, as if she was struggling to hold something in or keep something back and wasn't sure if she was strong enough to manage it. But he had forced it, and when she looked up at him again, something seemed to crack. “Heero,” she said, almost to herself, and her hand reached up to touch his cheek. Before he knew it, she was rising on the balls of her feet, her fingers tangling in his hair, trapping him close as the upward surge of her body brought her lips to his. He barely managed to pull away after the slightest brush, staring at her with wide eyes. “I miss you.” She said it almost like it was an apology.

 

There were shadows under her eyes, evidence of fatigue so great he almost reached out to steady her, as if he sensed she was about to fall.

 

“Come on,” he said, and the rumble that caught in his throat seemed to propel her into movement.

 

She didn't protest as he led her by the wrist to his bedroom, pushing open the door and guiding her to the bed. He deposited her onto the edge of the mattress merely by releasing her wrist, for as soon as he let go she fell, landing with a little bounce appropriate to her weight. He lowered the blinds as she stared at the bare walls around his room, straight-backed and proper, her hands folded demurely in her lap. She was awake enough that she knew she was tired, and tired enough not to realize that she was trying too hard to seem as if she were more awake.

 

“Take off your shoes and lie down,” he ordered. He dimmed the lamp as she complied, leaving it on, but muting the light to a soothing, moon-yellow glow.

 

“You don't want me?” she asked as she removed her coat. He turned to look at her out of the corner of his eye as she slipped between the black, cotton sheets of his bed. She had only removed her coat, but her blouse underneath was sleeveless and thin enough to show the outline of her bra against her skin, though even that was somewhat obscured by the scarf that still hung around her neck. He noticed the way the golden highlights of her hair and the pale beauty of her skin seemed to shine in contrast to his black sheets, and his eyes lingered a moment on her body before he pulled the comforter up under her chin.

 

“Heero?” she asked as he rose from the edge of the bed and began to pull away from her. “Do you think I'm controlling?”

 

The question caught him off guard. It was so ludicrous an idea he didn't know how to reply, and yet he sensed urgency in her tone, and the more he remained silent and reflective, the more he felt he understood what she meant. It explained, in part, why she had come here.

 

“You need to sleep,” he said softly. “We'll talk when you're better rested.”

 

She closed her eyes as he turned off the lights. He watched her for a few minutes in the partial darkness of the late afternoon, waiting until her features smoothed to softness and her breathing became more regular. He stayed until she turned over on her side, a lump in his bed that he wasn't sure what to do with and didn't know if he could help. He knew she was stressed out, overworked, emotionally drained and anxious. She needed rest, but beyond that he wasn't sure what he could do for her.

 

His eyes narrowed as he thought, and he found himself eyeing the scarves that hung loosely around her neck, the brightest point of color in the room.

 

She had been too strong for him—that other man.

 

 

TBC

 

 

 

Alas, it seems there will not be a lemon is every chapter, but actually, the plot of this story (much like the beginning of this chapter) has a lot less to do with sex than is initially implied. But lemons are fun! So I might as well cram in some goodies while I'm writing this tangled little love story. And after all, it is a convenient way to get two reluctant people to share space and work some things out.

 

Amour. Hmm… I like this story. It means a secret love affair…but a secret from whom?

 

This chapter is going to be a two-parter of sorts, though all the chapters are connected. It's just that I meant this one to get to a certain place that it didn't get to and the more I think about it, the more I feel that a little space is necessary before I continue this scene. So please share your thoughts and let me know what you think so far so I can get the next one out with a clear conscience!

 

*sends bushels of love to all the loyal 1xR readers*

 

Zapenstap