Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Twelve ❯ Marguerite des Près ( Chapter 15 )

Chapter 15

"Marguerite des Près"

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," Duo muttered to the rhythm of his heel of his palm hitting his forehead. "I’m so damn stupid."

He gritted his teeth furiously as he repeated the phrase over and over into the chilled air of his room. A tight, obnoxious knot lay just over his heart as he was sentenced to repeatedly relive those moments in the kitchen in his mind, lying in the dark, once again cruelly neglected by the sandman. He lay on the bed and continually turned over, sleepless on one side, then rolled onto the other to realize it did nothing to remedy the situation. And all the while, he would throw in a few more mutters of "Stupid, stupid!" for good measure as he relived Heero’s puppyish and tormenting face glowing blue and staring at him. He felt a physical jolt when he felt Heero pulling him close again, and promptly flopped over on the bed to forcibly ban it from his sleepless thoughts. Despite his best efforts, he only managed in flouncing and squirming about like some graceless fish while fresh memory tormented him. By the time he had exhausted himself, he had succeeded in repressing not a single memory, probably only making it worse—circling those heart-wrenching images in his brain with a thick black marker.

"Goddamn it, this sucks," came the final growl of complaint as Duo lay still on the bed, grimacing up at the ceiling, the blankets scattered around the bed. His low voice, doused in pained sarcasm, came back to him off the lonely walls, unanswered.

"This really does suck. I should have never let him do that. Can’t get it out of my head now, for Christ’s sake…" He blew a bang out of his eye with a sharp puff of air. "God, fuck this! I should just quit this whole secretly-wanting-the-one-thing-I’ll-never-have thing, it’s ridiculous. Definitely not doing any good for my beauty sleep, either, all this being the bridesmaid, but never the bride." He scoffed cruelly at himself and let his hand fall over his face, dragging his fingers across it.

For good measure, he ground the heel of his palm into his eye, desperately trying to scratch the horrible itch in his brain that held him prisoner to a twisted cinema, and moved his pursed lips to let out a groan of a sigh. He felt himself start to sink back into the pillow and the mattress in exhaustion. Sucked down into the night. The continual and hellish rerun of Heero continued in mental matinee even as Duo forced himself to think of other things, perpetually painting his mind in blue light and bottomless blue eyes. It flickered faithfully and silently, like a movie being played in another room, creeping harmlessly through a crack in the door. And there Duo stood in the corridor, gazing raptly at that door, wishing he had the raw guts to just throw it open. He would still be standing there, watching it pitifully when the sandman begrudgingly granted him his rest and he fell into dreams lying, half-covered, hair still messily braided and trailing off the side of the mattress. At the same time, Heero would standing at his own door, though he lay sleepless through out the night.

Trowa bemusedly watched his dreams again pass before him, first scattered images, colors, and feelings haphazardly meshed together. A hand, the corner of Quatre’s mouth, an old pair of mismatched shoes, a mother ewe nudging her sleeping lamb—it continued until fading into black, where he suddenly found himself again reliving the dream of the night before, watching Heero’s motionless face trained on an object Trowa couldn’t see. His eyes darkened lifelessly, tainting his expression similarly as an eternity stretched on in silent dream. And then he was gone, the blackness of his pupils identical to that of the piano where Quatre sat once again, one hand gently stroking the keys.

Aware of himself in this dream, Trowa glanced silently around the room. It was painted a sublime blue and draped in shadow, turning the spectral image of his fiancé into something ghostly and ethereal. Barefooted, Quatre speechlessly sat at the bench, unaware of anything around him beside the sensation of the cool keys against his fingertips as he tapped out a slow, melancholy melody on the highest, gentlest notes, whispering into the night in his dream. His long fingers slowly journeyed from one chalky, ivory note from another in graceful arcs. And without notice, Quatre wordlessly turned his head, sad music silenced, his fingers resting hesitantly. Through the shadow his eyes seemed to pierce, following something just out of Trowa’s sight, through the corporal walls painted in shadow.

"Trowa?" a sleepy voice interrupted him, accompanied by a shifting of fabric and a tired, soft noise as a body sat up cautiously beside him, shaking him from his dream. "What’s the matter?"

The walls were real—the shadows cloaking them were real, as was the gentle sound of something in the distance just beneath Quatre’s concerned voice beside him. Trowa was sitting up in the music room in the night, but the spectral figure at the piano was no more. The polished keys slept peacefully and undisturbed. The blue enchantment of moonlight poured through the window, coloring Quatre’s face as he turned to look at him, blinking the dream away. "Is something wrong?" he asked in a groggy voice, moving an arm from around his waist to touch the back of his neck, the side of his face. "Why did you sit up like that?"

Trowa squinted at him as if he were trying to see him clearly. "I don’t know," he muttered in a gravelly voice as well, feeling suddenly constricted of speech. "It must have just been a dream. I barely remember it."

"You’re all right, though?" Quatre asked, though he felt the answer himself, a churning uncertainty, an awareness turning in the pit of his stomach.

Without another word, he turned his head, mimicking the spectral Arabian of his dream, the last clear image resonating in his brain and found himself staring at the moon-painted corridor that led to the rest of the sleeping house. But he felt otherwise, and in his head, he still heard wisps of that slow melody. "Do you hear something?" he asked in a hush, feeling Quatre’s disheveled hair on his neck as he turned as well, gazing into the blue.

And then there it was. The sound of the door shutting gently. It was distant and muffled, but it was distinguishable to the both of them, and they shared a look as distinguishable pattern of Heero’s gait—a soft but measured, steady step without wandering—tracing its way from the front door, across the den, and unmistakably toward the door connecting to the garage. Trowa heard a gentle, wooden clinking of firewood as the silent ghost passed the music room corridor, and found himself looking again at Quatre’s expressive blue-green eyes, which held no definite answers, only a growing pool of concern.

The next morning, long before Duo would ever dare think of stirring from his bed, Heero sat at the kitchen table and together the two maintained a terribly long staring match while Quatre and Trowa scrounged up breakfast, inevitably finding ways to flirt between the flipping of the eggs and buttering of the toast. His hair was still damp from showering, clumped on his head in great, uncombed black clumps. Eyes sunken, mouth pursed tiredly, he more closely resembled death warmed over than he did his usual, vigilant self. He hadn’t suffered a sleepless night like that for some time and coping with deprivation was not like riding a bike—it was painfully new and difficult every time it struck. If it had been anyone other than Heero Yuy, Quatre was sure that he would have simply collapsed on the kitchen table in a near-vegetable state.

The smell of burnt firewood was unmistakable on Heero, undiluted by his thorough morning shower. And every time that Quatre passed by that morning, that scent leapt to the front of his mind, reminding him of just what had transpired the night before, when he had been stalking around the house in the middle of the night, sneaking off to the devil’s lair. The garage room did tend to get colder than the rest of the house at night.

There had been the smell of coffee lingering in the kitchen as well when he and Trowa had arrived, finding Heero there, already sitting silently at the table and gazing out into the morning light. Quatre just had a sense that something had happened there, and, with a few well-timed looks and faint signals, he ascertained Trowa noticed it, too. It was a rather large clue, though, that Heero had not left that spot, instead choosing to gaze at the chair sitting crookedly opposite him as if it held some message essential to his survival and simply would not divulge any it to him in anything above a gentle whisper. He looked ragged trying to decipher it, and Quatre only had the heart to inquire to what he wanted to eat, not to ask the question that had been weighing on him so heavily ever since he had stood at the frostbitten window with his fiancé, watching Heero and Duo fighting in the snow.

The answer to the unspeakable question became even more seemingly distant after Heero had silently chewed his way through breakfast and then had stood up, pushing his chair so the legs screeched on the floor, shouting through the quiet tension in the air. Quatre and Trowa, both sitting at the table (though not daring to occupy the one opposite him, for fear he might startle awake from some extended sleepwalk if he broke eye contact) jerked their heads up to look at him.

Quatre gulped hard to get the mouthful of toast down quickly enough to ask, "Something wrong, Heero?"

"I’m gonna go into town for something," he announced, running a hand unhappily through his damp mop. "Need anything?" he asked spiritlessly, instead sounding as if he were addressing a brick wall.

When Quatre and Trowa both silently shook their heads, too surprised and morbidly curious to speak in his presence, he simply nodded an affirmative and turned to leave the kitchen. Numskull happily trotted at his heels as far as the doorway arch, following in anticipation and hope of some attention lavished on him, but Heero disappeared around the corner and his departure was punctuated by the front door shutting unobtrusively. The disappointed dog tilted his head curiously at this and remained watching the closed door for a few minutes more, hoping he’d turn around and come back and scratch his belly. Those left behind at the kitchen table exchanged a look with each other, but the remainder of the their peaceful breakfast was interrupted by Numskull’s eager barking at the window as a car that was not Heero’s pulled up through the slush.

The young cashier lifted his head from his remedy for the slow business that morning and casually put the magazine on the stool after he had stood up to lay eyes on the customer walking through the door. The bells gradually jangled to a halt, while the dark-haired man frowned to himself and brushed out the snowflakes in his hair, standing in a pair of slush-soaked shoes.

Without a friendly word, as was the treatment Heero Yuy seemed to be affording the world this morning and reasonably so, he seemed to scent the air as if beginning a sacred hunt. And the air rushing into his lungs was soaked with the mingling aromas of hundreds of flowers, each freshly delivered just that morning to Ray’s Flora from distant and far warmer places. For a moment, his mind was set with purpose and characteristic determination, but it soon floundered when the realization hit him of where his feet had automatically taken him. The image of warmly lit blossoms screaming with color and overpoweringly sweet-smelling air—the feminism of it all—surrounding him suddenly sucked the boldness from him. An idea sparked by the sad look on Duo’s face had led him here, of all places?

Heero was startled from his reverie, standing in an aisle of bewilderingly beautiful lilacs blending with the ardent color of roses with delicate forget-me-nots and cheerful tulips, when the cashier appeared at the end of the aisle, looking at him cautiously down the fragrant, overflowing flowered lane. After a moment of consideration, the tall, lanky kid’s face lit up in recognition and he smiled shyly from underneath his curly mop of hair. "Hey, Officer Yuy," he greeted. "It’s been a long time since I seen you in here."

Gray eyes. April’s kid, Heero recalled quickly, turning a corner of his mouth as the friendliest greeting he could concoct on negative hours sleep. He’d been working there for years, now. Ever since he’d moved to Seattle. "Nice to see you again, Greg," he spoke up, his hand shoved nervously in his pockets.

"Looking for something in particular?" the kid asked as he shuffled up beside Heero with a long-legged gait, making the poor Gundam pilot feel rather short next to him. His eyes barely skimmed shoulder level. "Another bouquet for Relena, I suppose? You used to be in here every week when you first came. Can't believe she didn’t get tired of flowers after that first year you came here."

"Yeah," Heero grunted, turning to stare at the dizzying assortment of color. "Me neither."

"Need help finding something?"

Heero glanced at him again, his lips pinching unhappily. Did he really give off the frustration he felt so visibly? Or was he just becoming that much easier to read to the average civilian eye, not just the cunning and penetrating violet ones of Duo Maxwell? And speaking of which, he could just imagine the healthy laugh he would have appreciated from the sight of an old war pilot standing, perplexed, in a utopia of red and lavender and white flowers. Again confronted by the intimidating look of hundreds of blossoms bunched before his eyes, Heero glanced up and down the aisle.

"I guess so," he said aimlessly, frowning. "I don’t really know what I’m doing."

"Are you buying something for Relena?" Greg asked, peering over the bountiful rows.

"No," Heero said quickly, feeling an odd feeling knotting in his stomach.

The young man raised his eyebrows to himself, as the Japanese man was reaching out to touch a flower, looking no less confounded. "Someone else?" he asked cautiously.

"Yeah, someone else."

"Someone not your fiancée?" Greg glanced around nervously when Heero nodded silently. "Someone special to you, though, right? Not like an acquaintance or anything?" he asked, cautiously wording himself as he tried to clarify the situation a little more—the idea forming in his head was hazy but he understood what it meant.

"No, no—definitely more than an acquaintance," Heero answered. Unfortunately, Greg did not seem to notice just how wearied the customer was (of course not able to know he was running on naught but a measly ounce of sleep) and took the answer with a reddening complexion. That just didn’t seem like the Mr. Yuy he knew, the dedicated worker his mother had described to him after long workdays, but it wasn’t his business to pry if he wanted to give a bouquet of flowers to someone not his intended wife. It rattled him a little, though.

"Well, um," he began, doing his best to be diplomatic about the whole thing, "you could start looking by definition—you know, all these flowers mean a different thing. For example, uh—take this purple lilac here—"

Greg began, picking up a small bundle of flowers, wrapped together with a band and a long, sunny yellow bow and flipped the card attached to squint at the flowery print. "Purple lilacs are symbols of budding love," he read, then busily began picking through the other nearby flowers, hoping to spark Heero into buying one or another with an exact message. "Black mulberry: devotion; pink camellias: longing; the jonquil: "Love me;" uh—and the tulip, that’s a declaration of love—"

Heero suddenly pulled himself from the image of Duo smiling sadly at him to realize, with a hot flush in his face, just what was spilling out of Greg’s mouth as he busily listed off another three or four flowers of ardent love. He stiffened up, as the cashier began pointing out particular shades of roses and which worked best together to serenade with, and found his mouth unable to move for a moment. Then it flew into action, feeling more self-conscious than he had for a long, long time.

"Oh no, no," he corrected, fighting his own betraying expression. "It’s not for a woman!"

Greg looked semi-relieved to hear that, though he immediately apologized. "Oh, sorry, Mr. Yuy. I just thought from the way you—well, I just assumed that it would be for a woman, because you were already standing in the ‘Love and Affection’ aisle, as we call it. So, it’s really not for a special person or anything?"

"No, he’s very important to me—" he immediately defended, but trailed off, ailed by a horrible turning of knots in his stomach as he tried to continue. It was right, the words were right, but the rest of them were overshadowed by something very unsettling in his mind before they formed, making his throat constrict and turn dry. He shifted gears as he felt heat returning to his face. "Well, do you have anything beside flowers? Just a… cheer-me-up present or something?"

"Oh, sure," Greg said brightly, relieved he was not selling flowers to an adulterer, "we’ve got a ton of chocolates, too. I think that would be all right to give to a guy, don’t you?"

Walking down the snow-crusted sidewalk a few minutes later with an unadorned white box of chocolate cherries, almonds, and every imaginable combination of sweets and chocolate hidden somewhere inside, Heero hadn’t left the odd sensation in the flower shop. It trailed him faithfully to his car, where it only seemed to hover and intensify the longer he stood still—the more chance he had to stop and think about what he’d just done. So, he did the only thing he could in the face of such a peculiar anxiety, he laughed at it. Chuckled at himself if he were barking mad, in much the way Duo had done so many times, snicker at his own foolishness, the foolishness of humanity itself. Even the few odd looks he received as he passed, laughing to himself, helped vanquish the butterflies in his stomach. But it didn’t erase the feeling completely.

He stopped at the curb and gazed silently down at the box before climbing into the car. "He can’t get mad if I eat just one," he conjectured as he lifted the lid and snuck a chocolate truffle into his mouth before fishing the keys out of his pocket.

Approaching the frosted gates some time later, Heero did not suspect anything out of the ordinary. Even as the hill gently rose and the dark pines parted to display the humble face of his home for the last years, he did not think to pay attention to the pair of car tracks that were not his own, or the other car sitting and collecting gently falling snowflakes off to the side. Insight had left him, instead hazed over by anxiety as he walked up to his own doorstep and stepped into the warmth of his own foyer, and he could barely see the floor beneath his feet as he made his way to the den while imagining the way Duo’s mouth would turn when he presented him a box of chocolates. Anything to rid him of that terrible, sad image burned into his consciousness since last night—

"There you are, Heero," a voice greeted him happily as he nearly ran into the warm body standing in front of him, obscured by Duo’s face in his mind, barely able to catch his feet before he toppled it over. The voice let off a soft, feminine laugh and two hands were on his shoulders, steadying itself.

"Careful, now," came the affectionate words just as he felt a familiar pair of lips greet him on the cheek. "Where were you going in such a hurry?"

Heero had not greeted Relena in return, his fiancée with an affectionate arm around his waist, because he was looking at Duo sitting in the same ruffled shirt and mismatched socks of the previous night on the couch, knees pulled up to his chest and painting on a bemused face as he watched Heero nearly topple his wife-to-be over in a mysterious rush. He had to tear his eyes away, because he felt Relena’s eyes on him, expecting an answer. He didn’t realize he had been staring silently for the last few moments at Duo, generally bewildered.

"Uh," he managed out without a stumble of voice, "just coming home. What are you—"

"Are these for me?" she suddenly asked, her face lighting up like a candle as she realized what Heero held in his hand. "Chocolates? You are too sweet, you know," she cooed, stepping back to reveal the pale blue dress she wore as she usurped the precious cheer-me-up gift.

"This is just what I needed after that disaster of a campaign. Thanks." And she leaned in to reward him with a kiss on the lips, to which Heero pressed back, though his mind was still three frames back, focusing on that fabricated amused smirk staring at him from the distant couch that burned a hole through him.

A/N: Again, here I come with a bag full of reasons why I should have gotten the chapter out faster (actually, compared to some other chapters, I was pretty diligent about his one) but I think I’ll skip most of them and just say I’m probably too damn busy for my own good, or the welfare of my updating schedule. Just took the PSAT’s and the ACT is on Saturday the 22nd for me. Whoopee. Anyway, the title is French for the wild daisy. The "meaning" of which, as I understand it, is "Dost thou love me?". I’m so mean to Heero, and then I turn around and do all the more horrible damage to Duo, don’t I? Poor guy… but the story must be told.