Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Thunder ❯ Thunder ( One-Shot )

Title: Thunder

Author: Something Like Human

Beta Reader: Renegade Phoenix

Feedback: somethinglikehuman1@excite.com come on…spank me!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything…in fact, I am owned by a black cat named Neko no baka.

Rating: PG

Warnings: Shounen ai: 5 + 2, Possible WAFF, OOCness, not really sure

A/N: After a summer of not writing squat, this is what comes of it. (Just don't tell all my DBZ fans that I'm writing GW now. They still think I'm on a writing vacation! ^_~ )

I love thunderstorms. Ever since I was a little boy, they have infatuated me. I know it sounds strange considering I grew up in a colony where there was no real weather. But when my family visited Earth a few times when I was a child, I was amazed by the powerful display nature put on occasionally when it delivered rain. I loved everything about storms: the color the sky took as the clouds rolled in, the flash of electricity that would cause the clouds to erupt in a violent roar, and the way the rain pounded down on everything. My parents would scold me when they would find me standing alone amidst the tempests.

They could not scold me now if I indulged in my passion. I was on the planet alone but I refrained from moving from my place in front of a large window in the living room of the most recent safe house I was staying in. I told myself that I was no longer a child that played in the rain but a soldier.

It is not completely correct to state that I was alone. I was in fact sharing accommodations with the thunderous pilot 02. In the two days we had already spent here, his mouth did not quit moving. I sometimes think that he even talks to himself. We were in two different rooms last night and I could hear him complaining about the old television set he was watching. When I went and asked him if he was indeed talking to himself, he stated that he knew I was listening.

It was at that point that I realized that the only thunder I was hearing was that caused by the lightening, not Maxwell's mouth. I reluctantly resigned from watching the storm to go in search of my uncharacteristically quiet roommate. It is not that I wanted to hear him talk; I was just curious to see if he was still in the house or not.

I decided to check the kitchen first. It was the most logical starting point since it had all the food in it. It was also the place that we were accustomed to leaving notes if we had to run out somewhere. The room was deserted when I got there. And when I checked to see if there was a note, I did not find any.

The situation was starting to worry me. It is not that I was worried that something had happened to the other pilot; I was worried that something would happen to me. Any minute now that little devil could spring out of some unsuspecting corner and spray me in the face with 'silly string' or whatever the stuff was called that he unleashed on Trowa once. Barton just passively took the punishment and gave no reaction to encourage his attacker. Maxwell has yet to pull another prank on him after that disappointing that I know of. Then again, he maybe doing so and Barton just is not making as big of a deal out of it as Yuy seems to.

I methodically made my way through the small house searching for any sign of Maxwell. There were no trip lines, toilet paper, and buckets of water, silly string, eggs, feathers, or toothpaste anywhere where they were not supposed to be. I quickly checked my bedroom to see if he had booby-trapped it again. Thankfully, I found nothing out of the ordinary there. I even checked the bathroom but he had not even put plastic wrap across the toilet seat, again. That was an unpleasant experience that he luckily did not repeat today.

I finally resigned myself to checking his room. This was a very hard decision for me because I have always believed that one's personal space was just that, personal. I did not like the others trespassing in my room so I never went into theirs without being invited in. Walking down the hallway, I almost changed my mind and aborted the search. I almost did until I noticed that his bedroom door was left ajar and there were no lights coming from the room.

I slowly pushed the door open. At first, I could not see anything that would lead me to believe that Maxwell was there. The bed was empty as far as I could tell. A flash of lightening briefly illuminated the room and I could make out a blanket piled in the far corner of the room. I turned to leave the other pilot's domain but when the thunder resounded in the evening sky, I stopped. There was another noise that accompanied it. The blanket pile made a sound that resembled a whimper.

I flooded the room with light by flicking on the switch by the door and peered at the corner in question. I could not believe my eyes but there was no mistaking what I saw. The great Shinigami was huddled in a large quilt like he was a terrified toddler.

I almost shouted at Maxwell to get up and quit fooling around. Then I realized something. Maxwell, like myself and the other gundam pilots, grew up on the colonies. I had only experienced thunderstorms when I visited Earth as a child. He had admitted that Operation Meteor was his first excursion planet side. To him, most weather conditions were quite new.

Before I was cognitively aware of doing so, I was kneeling beside the cowering boy. I noticed that he had his eyes squeezed shut and probably did not know I had turned on the light or that I was even in the room. The well-worn quilt was pulled tightly around his shoulders and from what I could guess; he had his knees pulled up to his chest. I put my hand on one of his shoulders as I spoke to him.

"Maxwell, it's just a thunderstorm," I stated plainly.

His eyes snapped open when I said that. His pupils dilated and adjusted to the light now on in the room. At that moment he looked less like the terrorist that I had come to know and more like the child he really was; that we really were.

"I know…" he mumbled quietly. He was cut off from saying anything else when another rumble of thunder interrupted him. His body jerked and he closed his eyes once more.

"Maxwell, Duo open your eyes and look at me," I started. When he finally complied, I continued in a hushed but firm voice. "It's just a storm, it is not going to hurt you."

He looked down and replied just as quietly, "I know…"

"You've been through storms before," I reminded him. "The mission before last you even fought during one. It wasn't a problem then."

Deathscythe's pilot snorted, "Yeah, I was slightly distracted by trying not to get killed to really notice that all hell was breaking loose in the clouds."

"For someone who claims to be Death personified, hell breaking loose shouldn't scare you."

"I'm not scared," he replied more like he was trying to convince himself and not me. He closed his eyes again, "I just hate them."

Ah, silly me, we are not afraid of anything we are gundam pilots. I took a breath and turned his words back at him, "I really hate spiders."

"Huh?"

"You hate storms and I hate spiders."

"That's what I thought you said," he responded with more than a little skepticism in his voice. "At least you don't scream and run from them like a little girl…"

"Nah, a little girl had to show me that they may not be entirely harmless but that I could be afr…still hold my dislike of them while respecting them for what they did. Some may be poisonous to people but if there weren't any spiders then there'd be a hell of a lot more of those damn mosquitoes."

"Smart little girl," Maxwell said chuckling slightly at my 'strong dislike'. "Yeah but spiders have a purpose and do something helpful…storms just… well… they don't."

"Have you ever sat and watched a thunder storm?"
He shook his head while looking at me like I was insane. I just stood up and pulled him up with me. He kept the old quilt pulled around his shoulders as I maneuvered him through the house by keeping my hand on his shoulder. I let go of him when we reached the living room. I pulled the curtain back the whole way and put the blind up. He remained standing stock still where I left him. I moved the large armchair in front of the window so he could sit and watch. I then retrieved the boy and lead him to the chair.

"What are you doing? Aren't we too close to the window?" His 'hatred' of storms was very apparent in his voice but I did not dare mention it.

"No, I used to watch storms all the time from windows, hell I even would stand in them when I was little. We are perfectly safe here."

His eyes got even larger than they normally were as I stated that I had been out in them. "I'm not going out there!"

"Of course not, it's too cold tonight to get wet in the rain," I assured him. I motioned to the chair, "We're going to watch it. Thunder storms are actually one of the most beautiful things in nature."

I do not think he believed me but I was going to at least get him to watch the storm to see what it was. I went to push slightly into the chair so at least he could sit but he grabbed onto me and pulled me down with him just as another round of thunder and lightening struck. His fingers fastened tightly to my shirt and he buried his head in my chest. I resisted the urge to shake my head and just sat there letting him cling to me. When the rolling thunder subsided he moved his head away from me slightly. He never looked up at me so I could tell that he was embarrassed by his reaction.

"Watch for the lightening, Duo, the thunder is just the noise it makes."

He determinedly turned his head towards the window and fixed his eyes on the image presented before him. A moment later jagged streaks of white light sprung across the dark clouds. A second or so later a peal of thunder came. The boy in the chair beside me jerked reflexively but did not look away. I smiled to myself slightly; we had overcome the shutting of eyes and cowering for the moment.

"That was neat…" he whispered. "I didn't know the lightening moved like that. I thought it always hit the ground, or houses, or trees, or people…"

"No, most of the time it's just between the clouds."

"Oh," was all he said as the sky flashed again. Minutes passed by as we watched the storm move over us. I explained that one could tell how far away the storm was by counting the seconds between the lightening and the thunder. He was very relieved when we were counting and the distance was getting farther and farther away. We quit counting after that and just watched the sky flash dimly and the low rumble of distant thunder.

I did not move for a long time. I watched the rain falling peacefully long after I could no longer even hear the faint sounds of the storm. I was going to get up after even the rain tapered off to just a soft drizzle as opposed to the downpour it had been. But then I realized that there was no way I was getting up from that chair easily. Maxwell had fallen asleep against my chest still clutching my shirt. I just shook my head at the other boy. Overcoming one's fears was tiring itself but the sound of the rain was also very soothing. I understood how easily it would be to be lulled to sleep right then. I was just going to let him rest for a few minutes and then we could both get up and go to bed for the night.

I opened my eyes to a daylight-lit room. I realized that I, too, had fallen asleep in that oversized armchair. And to my surprise, Maxwell was still there with me. His head rested on my chest still but instead of clutching my shirt, his arms had somehow become wrapped around me during the night and had not even woken me up. Looking at the clock on the wall, I could see that it was past time that we should have been up.

"Duo, wake up."
I could feel him sigh deeply and then he mumbled sleepily something to the effect of "nice warm teddy bear" without even lifting his head up. It was rather comical to see him avoiding waking up.

"Duo, I am not a teddy bear. And this chair is not big enough to be comfortable for two people. Now get up."

"Wufei?" The American inquired looking up at me with bleary eyes. "How come we're still in the chair?"

"You fell asleep, idiot," I said more teasingly than accusingly. "And then since I couldn't get up with you practically on top of me, I fell asleep too."

"Oh," he said as if I had just told him the meaning of life or something equally as important. He then looked at me with mischief very apparent in his large eyes. He tightened his arms around me quickly for what I assumed was a hug and then jumped up off of me. "Dibs on the bathroom first!"

I sat there for a minute trying to figure out what that was all about as he ran out of the room. It took me a minute to realize that there was only one bathroom in the safe house and I really needed to use it. I stood up to make my way there when I heard the shower start running. The little sneak was knowingly going to take forever in there!

Things went back to normal after that morning and nothing else was said about the storm or the night in the chair. I had come back from meeting a contact in town and found a note on the kitchen table. Maxwell stated in it that he had a mission and had left that afternoon. I went out to where I had hid Nataku to see if I had received any orders. When I went to climb into the cockpit, I stopped. Sitting on my seat was the most ugly colored teddy bear I had ever seen holding a note in front of it. I looked at the pitiful, green thing and shook my head. I took the note and read it:

"Wu - Since you claim not to be a teddy bear, I found this replacement. I unfortunately have

to go blow up some Ozzie right now so can you keep 'Thunder' safe for me? Thanks man!

~Duo

PS: Sorry for the awful color. The poor guy looked so lonely and it actually does grow on you

After awhile. Well at least as much as something that's baby-shit green can. Anyways, it was the

Only one the store had."

I looked at 'Thunder' and back at the note. Only Maxwell would feel sorry for something of that color. Maybe it could grow on me. Well, it would only grow on me as long as I was keeping it safe for his real owner. I secured it in the cockpit and favored it a small smile as I started to look for mission details. Thunder did not smile back but I figured Maxwell would be grinning from ear to ear if he saw me smiling at the bear.