Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Waiting for You ❯ Chapter II: Confusion ( Chapter 2 )

"Waiting for You"

by: Banshee Puppet

Part II: Confusion

"Oh shit! I'm going to be late!" Wufei cursed himself as he grabbed his paper, notebook, and text book, shoving a pen behind his ear before running out the door to get to his history class by eight a.m. If he'd have realized it was raining, he might have grabbed an umbrella too, or at the very least, a jacket. By the time he made it to class, he was soaking wet and five minutes late.

"Pleased to meet all of you," Relena was saying in that sweet way she had as Wufei arrived.

"Mr. Chang?" Professor Mattheius asked. It wasn't like the boy to be late, and in such obvious disarray.

"My apologies professor. I overslept. It won't happen again."

"Alright. Just take your seat please. I was just introducing Miss Dorlain."

"Yes," Wufei answered as he sat down. "We have met."

`Late? That isn't like you Wufei,' Trowa mused as he looked at the rather frazzled Chinese pilot. `What happened yesterday?' he wondered.

`Alarm clock, should've thought of that,' Relena mused as she sat down three seats back and one row to the right of Wufei. She'd noticed Trowa sitting in the back corner, but the green-eyed pilot didn't seem to want to be recognized, and maybe that was best for the time being. Even though Relena had made Wufei her new project, and was thus obsessing over him right now, that was mostly all to keep herself busy; she was still suffering over this Heero mess. She didn't know what she would do if she ran into either him or Duo today, and she knew that it was probably inevitable.

Wufei groaned as he closed the door behind him. Ten a.m. after what felt like the longest class of his young life. What a morning, really? He sighed. `I just need to take a shower, get in a clean uniform, then life will go back to normal,' he told himself as he absently dropped his book on his bed and opened the closet in search of some fresh clothes.

"Wufei?" Quatre asked. It was weird to see Wufei here at this hour. Quatre had been sure that his roommate had arranged his schedule so that he would never see the blonde Arabian. But here he was-in a half-unbuttoned, wrinkled uniform, yanking the elastic out of his hair, no less.

"huh?" Wufei asked with one of the most discouraged expressions Quatre had ever seen, as he looked up at toothbrush toting Quatre, who, from the looks of things, had just gotten up himself.

"…why is there printer paper in the bathroom?" Quatre asked, holding up a stack of some five white sheets.

For a moment, Wufei just stared blankly at the paper, then he chuckled , shook his head, and answered, "…well…you see…we had a little accident," he told the other boy as he took the paper from the blonde's hand and returned it to the stack in his desk. "I suppose I missed some, sorry."

"We?" Quatre asked.

"That is what I said. Are you finished with the bathroom?"

"Uh…uhhuh."

"Good. Excuse me," Wufei said as he passed by Quatre and closed the door behind him.

Perplexed, Quatre looked at the time. Trowa would be here any minute and he was still only half-dressed. He sat down and put on his socks and shoes, began buttoning his shirt and told Trowa to "come on in!" when his lover knocked on the door.

"Running late as usual, I see," Trowa commented, giving Quatre a small good morning kiss before Quatre replied, "Yeah, sorry Trowa, it's been a weird day."

Hearing the shower, Trowa realized, "Wufei is here? At this hour?"

"Yeah. He's acting odd too," Quatre said, looking concerned.

"He was late to class today," Trowa noted.

"Wufei? Our Wufei? Late?"

"Mmm," Trowa nodded. "Maybe he's coming down with something."

"He's been in the shower for half an hour too. He's normally in and out. And he mentioned "we" earlier. Trowa, who's "we"? Since when does Wufei have a "we"?

"I don't know, Quatre, but we'd better get going before we're late too, hm?"

Somehow, today, just standing in the shower with the steaming water beating down on tired, naked flesh and long dark hair, rolling over tense muscles and soothing out aches that long days of hard work could hardly take time to notice, was the only thing in the world Wufei needed. He knew he was a wreck. Quite frankly, he'd seen it coming for a long time now. He needed to relax, meditate, SOEMTHING, the last missions had been hard, and now this mess with Relena was tearing at him and he was this close to shattering into a thousand tiny Wufei pieces. He tried, tried to relax, tried to meditate, tried to do anything, but every time he closed his eyes, Relena flashed across his vision. He kept worrying about her. She didn't strike him as the type of woman who needed to rely on others, but he couldn't get that broken expression out of his mind, or the way she slapped him either. She was stronger than he'd given her credit for; that's what he believed. So why was this weighing on him like this?

Finally, he turned the shower off.

"Why…why do I care?" Wufei wondered aloud.

"Weird?" Duo asked. "You mean as opposed to the way he normally acts?"

Heero smirked vaguely, but uatrr wasn't having any of it. "I'm serious Duo. He chuckled about the paper," Quatre said. "But effused o tell me why it was in te bathroom in the first place. What sort of accident requires printer paper in the bathroom?"

Swallowing a bite of his hamburger, Trowa add simply, "he was late to class is morning. He looked like he'd slept in his uniform like Duo does sometimes. Maybe he's sick."

"He looked fine when I saw him," Heero noted, speaking up finally. "…except that his glasses were broken. One of the arms was taped on," Heero told them.

"I think…" Duo said seriously, "that he must've…been abducted by aliens!"

Heero slapped the back of his head gently. "Idiot," he scolded.

Relena hadn't wanted to confront Heero and Duo so soon, but she couldn't figure out where Wufei was. He had to eat, right? If she wanted to find him, she'd just have to be strong about this.

:"Afternoon," she said.

Heero managed to freeze again, but Duo smiled and said, "hiya Relena! What's up?"

"Well…have any of you seen Wufei? I can't find him, and…"

Seeing the shocked expressions, she added a quickly thought cover. "Professor Mattheius asked him to help me with my history so…"

Straight out lie and she knew it, but she wasn't about toe explain why she was really looking for the solitary pilot of Gundam 05.

`So that's what he was talking to Wufei about after class,' Trowa thought.

"When it rains, he usually eats lunch in the third floor study hall," Trowa told her.

"Thanks" Relena said. "See you later."

"…did anyone else find that just a little odd?" Duo asked. "Aside from the lack of clinging to Heero….don't Relena and Wufei hate each other?"

Heero rests his head in his hands, confusion setting in. "This has GOT to be a dream. I'm going to wake up any minute," he grumbled to himself.

"There you are! Can't you just eat in the cafeteria like a normal person?" Relea asked.

"It's quiet here…or at least, it WAS until you showed up," Wufei told her.

Relena slapped the back of his head and scowled at him.

"Hey! Stop that!" Wufei protested after saving himself from choking. "you don't need ot slap me all the time."

"You're such a jerk," Relean told him as she sat down on the bench he had been sprawled out on before she arrived and leaned her head against his back, whispering, "but you know what? I think deep down, you might just be a human being."

With Relena leaning on his back like this, Wufei was afraid to move. His mind was racing but saying nothing in particular. What he found the strangest was how uncomfortable he felt being comfortable around her. What was it about her? Trusting people wasn't Chang Wufei's style at all. But here was Relena, who was really all alone too, by no choice of her own, leaning on him and saying, "it wouldn't be so bad, would it Wufei? Being friends?"

"Relena, I…friends?" He'd been the one known as the solitary dragon for so long; he had a hard tiem envisioning friendship. Friendship was when you cared about someone, wasn't it? When you worried about them, trusted them, enjoyed their company?

"Yeah, friends," Relena said, not pushing…much. But he could hear her hope on her voice.

A friend was someone who you were comfortable with.

". . . "

"Wufei?" she hadn't expected such a simple question to make him suffer like this. She could practically feel the constipated expression he must be wearing; the muscles hi his back were so tense that she was certain they would snap at any given moment.

But then, with a small sigh, he relaxed a bit and answered her.

"…alright."

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Well, chapter two down! Three more to go. Shouldn't take me too long to get `em up, but reformatting them so it's not one massive five chapter paragraph is a pain in the patootie. Opinions? Thoughts? Random whims?