Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Freewheeler ❯ Chapter 1

Freewheeler

Pairing : 1x5
Rating : NC-17
Warnings : Yaoi, lemon, some angst
Summary : Wild and freewheeling, would Wufei ever realise that someone was standing by for him?

A/N : Ack, forgive the corny summary. ~.~ This fic is done for three dear people. ERYNNA, the uncomplaining, hardworking co-owner of Innuendo who sacrificed her brownie ice-cream and only got a 1x5 lemon in return. ^_~ SPITE, who draws the only eyeball-scorching NC-17 1x5 art I know. JANE, whose manga art is used as the base for character/setting design, and the final scene of this fic, and who deserves much of the credit for 1x5 prettiness. Do give her feedback! ^^

He was standing by the window, a dark figure silhouetted against the fading light. His side leaned comfortably into the frame, head tilted to watch the world passing by five storeys below. He had been standing like that for hours, never seeming to tire of whatever he was watching so intently. Without his shirt, his bared back was a taut, graceful line, forming an S-curve from lowered head to powerful shoulders to narrow waist.

He looked vulnerable that way, more so with the faded scars decorating his skin like wartime souvenirs. But he looked human that way too. A man of stone who could be hurt.

In a move that looked achingly familiar by now, one of his arms slowly extended beyond the open window, palm facing downwards. His shoulders relaxed and his outstretched arm swayed as he turned his hand this way and that, letting it glide on the wind.

Then, he did something different. He turned his palm so now it faced skyward. Slowly, his fingers curled inward as if they were wrapping around something precious.

"I know what to do," he said, turning his head.

It was then his cobalt blue eyes could be seen, gleaming unusually bright in the dimness.

++++++++++

The days were cold. It wasn't meant to be that way, with the streaming panes of sunlight sectioning the room into brilliant strips of gold and dark shadow. Yet, the days *were* cold. The coldness was in the silence that took root in every corner of the room, the cracks that aged the walls, the dark fabric of the sofa, even the lone collage advertising itself on the wall.

There was little comfort offered by the subdued fittings in the quarters, but they made him feel like he was anchored there. That was enough. Five years of drifting through Earth, from colony to colony, across seas and lands, and between people, had taught him that real freedom was knowing that he could reach the farthest ends of the world, and still have a space to come back to.

Heero Yuy had returned simply because he had felt the pull. While he acknowledged in some deeper recesses of his mind that he was still very unschooled in the workings and ways of this earth, he knew enough to heed his instincts when he felt the urge to turn back.

When he returned, the Preventers operations had fallen into place and pace with the rest of the world. The political police, some had called the Preventers that. He didn't care, nor did he bother to find out what exactly the Preventers did. All he knew was that the Peacecraft Vision was aligned with the Preventers, and that his former comrades, all of them, were affiliated to the Preventers HQ in one way or another. And for these two reasons, he could be persuaded to stay and find out.

That was a good year and a half ago, his homecoming to Earth. He remembered all of their reactions with such razor-sharp clarity they might have been imprinted in the frontier of his mind and could never be erased. Duo's delight, Quatre's slightly more muted yet still obvious delight. Trowa's understated empathy. Zechs' and Noin's respectful, yet somewhat distanced approach. He guessed correctly - as Quatre later affirmed somewhat ruefully - that the two former Khushrenada allies had treated all four of the ex-Gundam pilots with the same tensed comradeship, and had only warmed up after much trial and tribulation. Relena...he had little contact with. People had assumed he would definitely be reinstated in the position of her personal bodyguard.

They assumed wrong. He would still protect her, but he would do so from the wings, always watching, but never getting in her way.

And finally, there was the last ex-Gundam pilot.

Or the fifth, rather. He need not speak the name, both verbally and mentally, for the man's reputation had gained enough momentum to precede him almost completely. Former Gundam pilot, former scholar, former warrior and soldier, former enfant terrible of the Eve Wars...formerly so many identities that his present self seemed a shadow.

It seemed people couldn't remember that fifth pilot without associating him with the past. And the present...was more forgettable than anything else.

Yet he remembered that pilot. The fifteen-year-old who had arrived to stop the pilots from blasting one another into little pieces. The sixteen-year-old who would risk his every conviction if just to find his own truth.

The twenty-year-old with whom he now shared this apartment.

The man who had grown from a boy into a graceful mess of powerful limbs beneath white silk and wild black hair tamed by silk cord. Eyes that blazed like smouldering obsidian, hardened into steel with desperation-driven single-mindedness, and tortured in their bottomless depths by the possibility that *that* same single-mindedness could be wrong.

Heero saw that fascinating dilemma in those dark eyes the first moment in five years he had laid eyes on Wufei. That was when Heero had unceremoniously insinuated himself into the other man's life. He didn't remember how, or even when, but he did remember the stiff civility they had accorded each other in the first several months, the rigid understanding that Wufei had shown in keeping Heero's reappearance from the others until the time was ripe, the grudging attention that Wufei paid to the safety of Relena Peacecraft.

Heero felt the Chinese man's presence before he heard the slide of the door. That was how attuned he had grown to Wufei's movements about the apartment. Raising his head, Heero was just in time to behold an almost-shadow glide into view.

"I see you still like thinking in the dark, Yuy."

A smile broke over Heero's lips and that was why the darkness had its role to play. Wufei wouldn't see his smile, but Wufei might hear it when Heero replied in the same deliberate tones. "It's enlightening."

"Hn."

"You're early."

Wufei moved in the darkness. It was sudden, just a reflexive twitch. But it spoke volumes of his irritation. Heero had hit a raw nerve and squarely too, as was his usual succinct style.

"And you waited," was Wufei's return and the Chinese man was gone, sweeping into the inner sanctions of the apartment.

Heero remained still for a moment. Wufei was getting good with his verbal retaliations as well. Heero wouldn't deny the pulse of his own temper that suggested that Wufei had pushed his buttons rather successfully.

He didn't remain still for too long.

++++++++++

He followed the trail quickly and confidently. Residual effects from his years as a space terrorist ensured that his sense of direction and his innate ability of tracking remained sharp even in times of peace. Besides...it was never hard tracking down Wufei. The Chinese man blazed rather than moved, strode rather than walk, bristled rather than communicated. And always, always left a trail of lingering pieces of his presence wherever he went. Heero headed straight for the training hall. If Wufei were in as fiery a mood as he was most definitely in, he wouldn't be stupid enough to tear down his own apartment. He would unleash that pent-up energy on...

Heero pushed open the door to the training hall, then froze.

The icy glint of metal point was poised right at his throat. But that was not what hitched in Heero's chest, nor did it cause that fluttering over his skin. Blade threatening his jugular was child's play. The sword's master was a whole different piece of work.

He stared into the other man's deep and night-black eyes, before tearing away his gaze to slide over flushed cheeks, full lips drawn in a tight line, and down to a sweaty, heaving copper body still trapped in a damp silk suit. It was barely the right attire for training, Heero's mind couldn't help pointing out. Raw black silk, designed to skim lightly over form and embrace ever so lightly, curves and angles, was easily ruined. Secondly, the resplendent red dragons embroidered on the silk twisted their way up the sides and around the front of his suit in such a way they had the rather interesting effect of drawing attention to the knot-buttons. Knots that were so tightly clasped it would take *teeth* to pry them apart, and knots that kept the silk covering the firm body that was now trembling with tension beneath it.

"I can slice you from head to navel, Yuy," Wufei said in a voice so cold it jarred the blazing obsidian fire of his eyes.

"Is that all?" Heero said simply.

There was a moment's silence, before Wufei eased his stance, threw back his head and laughed. Just once. It was mirthless, should anyone actually had the mistaken idea that Wufei was amused in any way, and it was resonant with an emotion that had so far, eluded Heero. Heero suspected it eluded Wufei as well, but Wufei would never speak of it, and Heero had left it at that.

Heero stepped closer and paused although Wufei didn't shy away. The Chinese man had turned, sheathing his sword, but his shoulders remained tensed for any inadvisable move on Heero's part. When Heero was sure Wufei wouldn't flare, he took another step, then another. It was like approaching a wounded animal, this dance of danger between them, and Heero was careful not to get bitten. He had to stay alive for the next time, and as long they never tire of this dance, there would always be a next time.

"What makes you think I'd let you, Yuy?" Wufei said suddenly, quietly, yet he didn't meet Heero's gaze.

"You have. Before."

"The last time *could* be the last."

"I've developed my sense of optimism."

Wufei snorted at that, but he stood his ground, allowing the small steps that brought Heero closer and closer to him.

"Excessive anger is unhealthy." Heero kept his tone neutral. "You know better than most not to keep it cordoned." The ball was in Wufei's court now. Would he return it? Would he let it pass? Would he choose to ignore it all?

Slender raven eyebrows rose at Heero's choice of words. "Give me a better reason to talk."

"No better reason."

The twitch in Wufei's tensed jaw suggested that he was seething at Heero's refusal to cooperate...but was impotent to do anything about it. Heero could feel a smile creeping over his lips. It was an expression that would have turned some people's blood to ice, if physiologically possible. Yet Wufei had fire in his veins and so he remained unmoved.

"I was..." Wufei began, faltered, then sighed unconsciously and took it up again. "Out."

Another step and they were so close that the slightest turn of head allowed Heero to catch the distinct scent of the other man. Something like heady incense and musk and fire, and all of these overlaid with the unmistakable sleaze that had clung to Wufei from his earlier dalliance with suggestive streets and the willing bodies that peopled those streets.

Heero's smile disappeared. "Found anyone to your *tastes*?" Not good. His words came out sounding just a tinge too bitter and it made him uncomfortable. Emotion-shaded speech was the first sign of weakening self-resolve.

Obsidian eyes raised to meet his own unflinchingly. The rest of Wufei's face remained blank. If Wufei had any knowledge of the nature of Heero's self-reproach, he was not showing it. "If I had, Yuy," he bit out between clenched teeth. "I would be basking in the afterglow right now." His gaze had turned hard, overly bright with a wild gleam.

Heero grunted, tried not to visibly flinch at the bluntness of the other man's words. Yet there was something in Wufei's tone and gaze that veered too closely to desperation and the very timbre of it sent electric jolts straight to Heero's groin.

Heero was close enough to touch now, and he did, lunging as he tugged Wufei roughly to his chest. The sheathed sword clattered to the ground. Their faces almost collided, Wufei just an inch shorter, then the Chinese man's own hands came up, tangling into Heero's collar and pulling his head down. Their kiss was hard, punishing, almost meant to hurt as meshed mouths slid open to allow the sweep of demanding tongues. Yet it wasn't so much an issue of dominance. Wufei yielded instantly, teeth only nipping to remind Heero that this was a privilege, before Heero's tongue undulated in the silky-soft contours of a familiar mouth, tasting as much and as swiftly as he could as they grew breathless.

Tawny hands rose into Wufei's hair, gripping the tail and yanking so the raven head arched back with a startled cry. Heero's lips fastened on the exposed slender neck, gnawing hungry kisses over the bronze skin. Held away from falling by one hand at his head and another arm looped around his waist, Wufei was prisoner to Heero's oral assault and he shivered with stifled groans.

Only when Wufei's hands rose to curl into his shirt to pull him closer and at the same time push him away, did Heero tear away. He lifted his head from now mark-reddened bronze neck. "Here?" He hardly had enough time to look around when Wufei's arms went around him, hauling them both down to one of the training mats that scattered across the hall.

Another brutal kiss, deep and hard, before Wufei pulling away as he leaned back onto his elbows. "You locked the doors already."

"You noticed." Heero caught Wufei's hand as it reached for him. Placing his mouth against the pulse-point at the wrist, he grazed it with teeth, then bit down, eliciting a hiss from Wufei. "You were waiting for me too."

"Stop playing." Wufei glared heatedly from where he was pinioned under Heero.

"I don't play," Heero raised an eyebrow. Placing a hand on silk-covered chest, he pushed and Wufei's elbows gave as his back met the foam of the mat with a loud thump. Heero's eyes were on those crimson knots again, mind furiously throwing up a thousand and one ways of undoing them. But first...

Heero sat back on his haunches. He had to curl his hands into fist to tide the mounting tension between his legs. Where was his famed control when he needed it? Gods, his pants were getting so tight it was *painful*, and he had a high threshold for pain. "Do it," he ordered softly.

Flashing ebony eyes narrowed in disbelief. "Now, Heero! I can't wait!"

"Do. It." Heero wasn't budging. He'd burst the seams of his pants, but he wasn't budging. Encounters with Wufei were always rough like this. They didn't happen often, but when they did, it was two bodies hurling at each other, hands roving and tearing, mouths bruising. There was only *one* pre-condition Heero had and it *would* be fulfilled.

Growling frustration in his throat, Wufei turned his head, refusing to look at Heero. Heero waited patiently, taking the time to calm the erratic thump of his chest against his ribs, and the even more erratic roiling in his loins. He could wait like this, using the reprieve to let the pleasure gather deep in his groin, building his own arousal to fever heights. He settled his gaze appreciatively on the mass of sheer grace and power lying supine beneath him. Willingly. Then, Wufei moved, turning his head back to match Heero's hungry gaze. Slowly, cheeks deepening in colour, he reached a hand to the band at the nape of his neck. Snagging it in his fingers, he tugged it off in one smooth motion.

Heero's breath caught in his throat as he watched that black hair wing wildly in release, falling about Wufei like a tumble of gossamer. Wufei's hair had grown longer and it was beautiful when free, softening the harsh edges of his features.

"Obedient," Heero remarked, ignoring the bristling from the other man. He stood back up on his feet, quickly and efficiently divesting himself of his clothes. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wufei doing similarly, unceremoniously tugging at the silk pants down his legs and kicking them aside. The silk shirt was almost as quickly undone, if for the tedious task of unclasping the sentinel-like knot-buttons. Heero felt a pang of sorts at that. He would have preferred using his own teeth, ultimately, but now he had more urgent matters to take care off.

His erection was almost standing straight up, a stiff, throbbing length with its livid tip already leaking with pre-cum. Kneeling down on the mat before Wufei, he let his eyes roam freely over the bared copper legs that were slender yet firmly muscled. Wufei kept his briefs on for the only purpose of having them taken off by Heero; his only allowance of real foreplay. Not that they usually indulged enough in it to remember it afterward.

Wasting no time, Heero laid a hand over the clothed bulge throbbing at the apex of bronzed thighs. Alternately squeezing and caressing, he traced the outline of the trapped flesh with his palm, marvelling inwardly at the burning warmth that he felt through the cloth. Cobalt eyes flicked up for an instant, just to make sure their heavy-lidded, obsidian counterparts were watching. Then, digging his fingers under the waistband, Heero yanked the briefs down and off those firm legs. Wufei was not quite as aroused as he was, obviously having suffered a dent in his pride at the earlier display of his submissiveness, but that could change.

Clamping a hand around each of Wufei's ankle, he moved the legs up so the feet lay flat on the mat. He caressed his way up the firm bunches of calves before settling his hands on the points of knees.

"...W...wait..." that husky tenor was so laden with lust it came out a croak.

A year of this already and every time, there would be that point where Wufei lapsed back into the virginal scholar he had once been. Heero's eyes flicked up, catching an onyx, worried gaze. Never breaking their interlocked gazes, Heero gripped the knees tighter, then he pulled them apart roughly, savouring the small noise of arousal-scored shame from Wufei. There might have been more noises but Heero was quick to catch those in his own mouth, the only way he knew how to offer what might be assurance to his insecure, elusive lover.

Heero crawled between the spread legs, settling himself with a firm copper thigh on either side of him. Gripping Wufei's half-erect member in his hand, he trapped it flat against Wufei's belly as he began to pump languidly, feeling every inch of ridged flesh as he slid his touch up and down. He barely kept his smirk in place as he felt Wufei's cock stiffen and swell in his palm and copper chest heave with laboured pants. Wufei might have decided that he would remain resolved no matter how Heero touched him, manhandled him, invaded his most intimate spaces. But he lost that battle with a jerk of head, hair fluttering over an opened mouth as he groaned helplessly.

It was just as well that Wufei didn't know that Heero had lost at that moment too.

Chang Wufei standing taut and proud with imprisoned emotions was a fiery charm. Chang Wufei laid out for Heero, dishevelled, writhing from *his* touch, black hair splayed out in wanton abandon to match the smouldering lust in obsidian eyes was breathtaking. And Heero would give and give again just to have this.

"Enough..." Wufei grated out, head tossed back against the mat, hair a wild mess around his sweat-dampened face. "Do it, for God's sake!"

Heero stilled his hand, but kept it wrapped around the now dripping shaft. He brushed his thumb across the moist slit at the tip and was rewarded with a low moan from Wufei. His free hand had managed to extract the tube of lubrication from his pants, and he untwisted the cap, all the while keeping his occupied hand massaging Wufei's erection, thumb tracing lazy, wet patterns around the swollen head. Raven hair scattered about flushed cheeks as Wufei resisted, fighting the noises spilling from his own lips. And as always, he surrendered with a tortured sob, body writhing helplessly under Heero.

Cobalt eyes turned almost black in hunger. It was addiction, knowing he controlled Wufei's reactions with each move of touch over flesh. He smeared his fingers generously with the lube.

"I don't need that," Wufei abruptly rose up on his elbows again. His face was contorted in an expression of both rampant desire, and frustration. "Just do it now, dammit!"

Heero gritted his teeth as he felt his crotch tightening at the sight of a flushed, demanding, furiously begging Wufei. But he wasn't so blinded enough by his own desire to actually obey. Wufei was too taut beneath him and thrumming with breaking-point tension. Even the slightest brush against the quivering copper skin had Wufei's whole body clenching.

"Not yet..." Heero managed through his teeth.

Leaning over the Chinese man, Heero laid his mouth against Wufei's, and Wufei responded with a desperation that almost startled him. They kissed hungrily, Heero drawing back every moment Wufei grew impatient until Wufei made a soft keen of exasperation and just let Heero take his mouth slow and deep. Heero's hand was already reaching down, sliding into the crevice between the muscled globes of buttocks. So warm, the heat that invited his fingers as he pressed against the wrinkled ring of Wufei's entrance.

A wrangled moan tore from the already-abused throat that Heero was nuzzling. His fingers circled the pucker, teasing it, until he could feel it easing and he slid home two fingers at once. Liquid heat and sex tensed around his fingers as he drew them out and back in, deeper each time until he brushed the spot that had Wufei's back nearly arching off the mat.

"Enough!" Wufei snapped, eyes hazy slits of sheer hunger. "I...need more than that...do it, Heero...!" Arms reaching down, he drew Heero's face away from his neck to crush his lips fiercely over Heero's.

Heero knew it wasn't quite enough, no matter what Wufei was begging. Then he choked on his objection as callused hands groped for the lube, smearing the slippery gel, then curling around his organ all in one smooth, swift, demanding motion. Heero's fingers dug into the mat, nearly rending the surface as those same hands began a rough rhythm. "Wu...fei..." His seared senses barely made out his own guttural rasps as Heero followed that hand quite blindly, hips bucking into the raw pleasure, groaning low in his throat as he felt his tip pressed against Wufei's opening.

He was sliding in before the tatters of his mind could register it, the head of his painfully hard sex *gripped* by unbearably tight, velvet heat that sucked him in as he slid another inch into Wufei.

"Faster...damn...it! Inside..." Wufei whimpered, if what his half-growled, half-mewled pleading could be called that. His legs rose, curling like a vice around Heero's waist, flexing to force Heero even deeper.

Hands braced shiveringly on the mat, Heero's mind was mostly destroyed by the ravaging lust that had taken over. Harsh growls spilling from his lips and that little voice of logic reminding him not to hurt his partner faded to a hum as he drove forward savagely, impaling Wufei to the hilt. A long moan was wrenched from Wufei, teeth gnawing on bruised lips as he wrestled with thick pain and the promise of pleasure.

Heero was drawing out again, then lunging even more fiercely into the rippling heat and pliancy of Wufei, pounding again and again into the welcoming envelope of flesh and unspeakable pleasure. Wufei's hands clawed at him, nails raking burning lines down his back.

"...More..." Heero made out that word in the bubble of moans tumbling from Wufei's lips. "More, I need...Heero..."

Heero sank against Wufei's chest, his cock still buried deep, the tendrils of sensation already pooling deep in his groin, growing heavy with the need to reach completion. Wufei's voice was an echo above him, urging him, and he complied, wrapping his arms around the taut copper chest and pulling Wufei up with him as he slowly sat back. He hadn't anticipated Wufei's eagerness, the Chinese man driving against him and the sudden, crushing tension of himself forced impossibly deep into Wufei as the quivering copper body drove down fully onto his lap. They cried out, both of them, noises mingling in the stillness of the hall.

Muscled limbs curled around one another so tightly they might have been melded together. Everything else was forgotten as they clung fiercely to even the flimsiest shred of warmth that diffused from their entangled bodies.

The pain was sharp, but so was the pleasure. Wufei's head was sagged against Heero's shoulder, trembling and body wracked by new and still-merciless agonised ecstasy. Heero wrapped his arms around him, pressing their chests together as he buried his face into Wufei's neck. He ate at the sweat-salty skin ravenously, nipping and sucking on every inch he could find between the damp locks of raven hair.

His hands fondled the firm yet soft inner thighs that straddled him, sweeping up Wufei's sides to his nipples, eagerly rubbing and rolling the nubs into hard peaks between his fingers. Wufei rocked against him, forcing fiery waves of molten desire straight to their seamed groins. One hand slid down to the neglected erection trapped between their bodies and Heero palmed it, stroking it to a weeping hardness again, Wufei's moans against his shoulders signalling his readiness.

Copper thighs rose, aided at the hip by Heero's free hand, then drove downwards again. Heero closed his eyes tightly at the explosion of shivery sparks deep in his guts. Gods, it felt so *good*. He heard a hoarse cry from Wufei and he forced his eyes open. Pinned onto Heero's lap, and Heero's buried cock pounding against his prostate with the new angle, it was Wufei's rhythm from there on. Thighs rising and falling with a frenzy spurred on by Heero's hips snapping up to meet each drive, Wufei's head was lolled back, hair free-falling from his head, face flushed with that expression of unleashed eroticism that would have drove any of his partners crazy. Like it was driving Heero mad now. Heero's hand was still caught between them, clamped tightly around the swollen shaft, pumping as best he could in the midst of frenetic, feverish sliding of flesh against flesh.

Then he felt it. Wufei's thighs trembling even harder, jerking together in a spasm, the thick veins of Wufei's sex pulsing, and Wufei came in a hot flood, ribbons of milky-white stickiness spurting across their bellies.

Heero was close to the edge himself. He shifted, Wufei's boneless body moulding to the raw urgency in his movements, raising himself and thrusting deep and hard. Familiar tightening of deep in his belly, his body seizing in a violent tremor, then his vision inked, and he groaned into Wufei's shoulder as he climaxed, still thrusting a few more times, spilling himself in gushing streams into Wufei. His mind was blank, lost in the shivery-shards of thundering sensations, and the warmth of another body folded into his own.

++++++++++

He had slipped out from under an unmoving Heero earlier, taken his clothes and headed to the bathroom. As he did, he thought he saw Heero move from the corner of his eyes and he had walked a little faster, trying his best to ignore the sting in his lower torso. That ache was physical, something he dealt with clinically and willingly. Yet, Heero's movements, looking more and more like he wanted to join Wufei in the shower after the sex, or even wanting to pull Wufei back into that lazy, post-coital embrace that up till recently Wufei had accepted as a cursory after-sex activity, were the little things that Wufei was not able to deal with at the present.

He just couldn't explain that sense of emptiness at his own convictions. They had brought him fulfilment once, but they had also deserted him to his solitude.

He shivered, just a little, and he frowned. He was wearing a white, long-sleeved turtle-neck shirt. It was not quite that cold. The shirt usually kept him warm enough. He raised a hand to the cloth around his neck and the shift of the material tingled the skin below. The way Heero's neck was buried against his neck, lips and teeth all over his skin. Copper fingers rose a little more, touching neatly-tied dark hair. The way Heero had refused to give until Wufei gave himself to him first.

Heero was standing by the window in that way he always did no matter when Wufei was looking. His expression was that of wistful contemplation to Wufei's eyes, although to others Heero might have been as stony-faced as before. What was Heero looking at? What was he seeing whenever he stood guard at the window like that? Wufei never asked, and never found out.

"Heero," Wufei said without thinking, and he found himself staring in discomfort as the Japanese man came quietly and stood before him.

"Yes?" Clad in a sleeveless black shirt and white pants, the simplicity of his attire only brought the layered depths of his cobalt eyes into sharper focus. Five years had barely changed him, and yet changed him beyond anyone's imagination.

They gazed at each other, each waiting for the other to break the silence first. Logically, Wufei would have to be the one to speak. He had been the one who had called Heero. It struck him then. Heero coming every time he called. Even a year ago, when they had first met after five years of treading their individual paths, Wufei had looked at Heero and the man had followed, obeying whatever he had seen in Wufei's gaze. And since then, it was a year's worth of waiting for any moment Wufei might be ready.

"Why, Heero?"

The Japanese crossed his arms slowly, a gesture that meant he was trying to be rational and not quite succeeding as well as he wanted them both to think. "Because."

"You can't be here all the time." Wufei had to struggle to keep his voice steady.

"Wufei." Heero spoke quietly, his cobalt gaze intent and not allowing Wufei the slightest chance of escape. "When you're a mission, you have to wait. When you've already done everything that is necessary to accomplish the mission and until the target has appeared, you're on standby. That is what I'm doing."

It'd be melodramatic to say that the War had truly brought about any phenomenal upheavals to their lives. Truth was, the normalcy was probably the only thing that actually came out of all those years of fighting across space and motherland.

Yet, after the War, Wufei had changed. It was like all the invisible strings that had bound Wufei to his burdens for sixteen years snapped too suddenly. And he was freewheeling, tumbling and lost in his own unleashed emotions. There was no solace in it. There never *was* for the freewheeler. Even the wildest kite to soar the skies was but a meaningless flutter without its guiding hand.

Obsidian eyes still stared at the space where Heero had stood before the Japanese man left the room silently. Slowly, the corners of Wufei's lips turned up ever slightly. Five years, Wufei had been just standing by as much as Heero had, waiting to be reeled in while Heero patiently held onto him with the flimsiest of lifelines.

Getting up, he cast a lingering look around his sparse apartment that was as much his as it was Heero's by now.

He supposed...he still preferred its austere refuge than the temporary colour of the streets outside.

Then, he turned and headed in the direction that Heero had left.

fin
July 2004