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lifeaftermeteor · 7 years

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New York, New York 205 December 22-23

--17:40--

Duo sat cross-legged on the couch skimming through Heero’s expansive music collection. Behind him, Hilde was helping Wufei in the kitchen while Quatre and Trowa sat at the dining table talking about the latter’s upcoming circus tour. He eavesdropped as he scrolled through playlist after playlist, the conversations gradually becoming a comforting white noise.

There was a brief commotion from the front door and Duo looked up to find Heero enter with a spectacled blonde…

Wait.

“Holy shit,” he muttered, setting Heero’s laptop aside and standing.

Relena Darlian laughed, pulling the glasses from her eyes and slipping them into a pocket of her oversized sweater. “Hi Duo,” she greeted him. She hovered close to Heero as they moved into the living room.

She was taller than Duo remembered. Curvier too, he realized as he watched Quatre and Trowa rose to greet her before he could shake off his own surprise. She hugged them both. Heero meanwhile moved quietly to join Duo by the couch. “I didn’t know she was coming,” Duo whispered.

Heero hesitated a beat before whispering back, “I hope it’s okay.”

Duo rolled his eyes and gave him a wide, reassuring grin. “Of course it’s okay. Jesus.”

At that moment, Hilde emerged from the kitchen, her face a mask of confusion and curiosity. When she laid eyes on Relena, she bounced about for a moment, giddy. “Another girl! Finally! Welcome to the party – want a beer?”

--19:00--

Trowa watched the goings-on from a suitably safe distance, nursing a beer and occupying prime real estate at the kitchen table with Heero and Hilde. Relena and Wufei had been engaged in some heated debate for the better part of an hour with no signs of stopping. The rest of the apartment’s occupants had gone about their business of being merry with occasional glances over shoulders at the dueling pair as they would pass them, confusion evident.

“What on earth are they arguing about?” Hilde asked from Trowa’s left as she popped a chip into her mouth from the bowl that sat between them.

Duo just happened to be walking past them towards the kitchen at that moment and intoned, “Eh…when I swung by it was the institutional deficiencies inherent in timely intelligence dissemination to the ESUN on national disarmament practices. I think.”

“Festive,” Heero noted, smirking.

“I didn’t think it would be this bad,” Duo hissed, hovering between them and the two subjects of conversation.

“On the contrary,” Heero murmured back, “I didn’t think it would go this well.”

“Duo keep walking,” Trowa instructed. “You’re blocking my view. I’ve never observed Wufei’s courtship rituals in action.”

--20:30--

“What do you mean you’ve never gone out?” Hilde sounded utterly scandalized. She leaned forward in her shock, arms crossed underneath her on the kitchen table.

Where she sat beside Heero, Relena shrugged, her fingers delicately spinning the empty beer bottle before her. Heero thought she looked a bit sheepish about the admission. “It’s difficult to stay below the radar most of the time,” she explained. “But my time usually isn’t my own either, which complicates matters.”

Hilde squinted at her, clearly still trapped in her disbelief. Then – with quick, conspiratorial glance in Heero’s direction – she turned her attention to the rest of the group. “Alright you lot,” she said, her voice carrying over the general din, “new mission parameters. Get Relena drunk and dancing.”

“What?” the subject of the order asked, eyes wide.

“Mission acknowledged,” Heero answered.

“W-waitaminute—”

“Someone figure out where we’re going,” Hilde barked, standing up from the table.

“Already on it,” Wufei replied. Heero looked over to find the man’s eyes glued on the phone in his hand. Trowa leaned over to review the screen with him.

“But…” the protest died on Relena’s lips and drew Heero’s attention back to the women sitting with him at the table. “But I don’t have anything to wear,” Relena admitted quietly.

Heero gave her once-over and determined that she was not in fact dressed for an all-nighter. Turning to Hilde, he found her eyes dancing between the two of them. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

Hilde gave him a wicked grin. “Think you got something to contribute to the wardrobe side quest?”

He turned back to Relena, finding her flushed and flustered. “I might,” he said, offering his hand to Relena with a subtle smile which he hoped was reassuring. She took his hand with only a moment’s hesitation and they headed toward the hallway. “Hilde, you too,” he called over his shoulder as they walked.

From behind, he heard the childish glee erupt. “Alright! Dress up time!”

The outburst broke the tension that had been building in Relena and she laughed, squeezing his hand in hers.

--21:45--

Relena had never seen L2 eyes before she met Duo. With all her travels with her father throughout the colonies she had heard about them, but never seen them firsthand. Little bare-footed hungry orphans, battle scarred mobile suit techs, strung-out drug addicts…all of them with hypnotic cat-like eyes. Starbursts and the indescribable color of space, blue or purple depending on how they caught the light.

Relena had supposed they’d be beautiful but sinister somehow, her Earth-born biases recognizing them as odd and inherently alien. When she had finally had a chance to see them for herself, they belonged to a Gundam pilot called Death, and their swirling blue-violet depths spoke of doom.

But now she sat diagonally from Duo at some bar which she’d already forgotten the name of, and she didn’t feel the same chills that had gone up her spine at that first meeting so long ago. The indigo halo around his pupils spiked and shattered out into the outer blue and seemed to shift and fade in the dim interior of the bar. They were quite beautiful. The anger and pain was gone for a time, their places filled with something like contentment. It made her smile.

“See something you like?” he asked her, laughter bubbling in his voice while he gave her a sidelong glance.

“Yeah,” she admitted. He apparently hadn’t expected such a blunt answer, judging by the surprise that painted his face. She clarified, “Your eyes are very honest. They don’t tell your secrets, but they don’t go out of their way to hide anything either. Not anymore, at least. They don’t have to.”

--00:20--

“So what number is that?” Relena asked, pointing at the nearly empty glass next to Heero’s elbow.

He eyed it suspiciously for a moment before finally determining, “That’s number…um…‘malfunctioning social filter.’”

Hilde turned to Relena and said, “The one after it is ‘inappropriate come-ons.’”

“Yeah but the space in between is ‘I can keep up with the band,’” Duo threw in, spinning himself into and back out of Heero’s arms, pulling the other man off toward the dance floor.

Quatre chuckled and shook his head at the playful fluidity of the action, the way Heero wove his way through the crowd behind Duo. It seemed to him that the two of them had entered their element on the dance floor, surrounded by strangers and the dark and the music.

Such an odd thing, he mused while he searched fruitlessly for the stoic boy that he had once known – child of the world’s pain and anger and father to its second chance. Heero Yuy had become self-aware. Quatre was envious of his confidence and wished he could let the music take him miles away. As the band led the crowd down dark and sensual paths with carefully manipulated chords and steady drum beats, he watched Heero and Duo meld themselves into two halves of a whole and wished he had the same. He chanced a furtive glance toward Trowa and found the other man engaged in some deep conversation with Wufei and Hilde, though how they heard anything over the bassline he didn’t know.

There was movement off to his side as Relena leaned close to ask, “So how long have they been together?”

The question took him aback and in his momentary confusion, he wasn’t sure who she was referring to. As he turned to face her, he watched her eyes drift back to Duo and Heero and realized he hadn’t been the only one watching from afar. Shaking his head, he leaned close and replied, dismissive, “They’re not.” Her eyes met his gaze and he saw her skepticism. He then added, “Personal space is an alien concept on L2 and dancing is just dancing. Duo’s always been like this. Heero’s grown accustomed to it just like the rest of us.”

Relena nodded and turned to again watch the two men on the dance floor barely visible amongst the crowd. The band crawled out of its languid chords back up to its driving beat and with them went the dancers. Heero spun Duo away from the impossibly close embrace he had captured him moments before and Quatre watched them lose themselves in the beat once more. Beside him, he heard Relena mutter, “You sure?”

--02:00--

The Crypt was a beast of a club. A multi-story behemoth, Trowa had to tamp down the sudden spike of anxiety that appeared on their approach, feeling uncharacteristically nervous. The building itself rumbled with the force of the music barely contained within its walls.

Heero and Wufei had gone on point and made a beeline for the bouncer at the front door. Upon catching sight of the two of them, the large man’s stern face split into a wide grin. He had lifted Heero straight off his feet with the force of a monstrous hug and high-fived Wufei as the shorter man walked past. The rest of them followed with words of thanks to the man as he resumed his sentry duty, and Trowa was left to wonder the backstory as they moved through the building.

Inside, the club was dark floors, roaring music, and black lights. Plumes of neon powder erupted over the dance floor on time with the DJ’s ministrations, the dancers streaked in the stuff. Trowa chanced a glance at Relena and found her enraptured with it.

Earlier in the evening, he and Wufei had worked up the group’s itinerary, catching bar specials and live sets throughout. The Crypt was the closer, the finale of a night of debauchery. Wufei had been rather insistent. “She’s never been out,” he had told Trowa when he questioned the choice. “She’s unlikely to have done anything fun just for the hell of it, rather than for some damn photo op. We can at least give her that.”

Trowa had at the time decided not to remind Wufei that he’d spent a good few hours arguing with the very same woman he was now looking to entertain. He had instead stayed silent while Wufei built the order of battle.

Hell of a way to finish, Trowa thought as they set up camp on the sidelines of the third floor’s dance hall. Several of their group promptly disappeared into the throng, and Wufei headed to the closest bar to get the stragglers something to drink. Trowa hung back with Relena, who was still transfixed on the crowd before them. “Having fun?” he asked her. She said nothing, but grinned ear-to-ear and nodded. When Wufei returned, the three of them huddled close to better hear one another over the roar of the music.

He lost track of time talking to the two of them. Relena and Wufei were an equal match, he determined: who else in their little band would ever subject him to the intricacies of Western philosophy while intoxicated, after all. The thought had him smirking to himself and scanning the dance floor.

Before long, Heero emerged from the darkness, his face and chest spattered with neon dust. That wasn’t all though. “Looks like someone got friendly,” Trowa observed, gesturing to Heero’s hip before taking a long pull from the beer in his hand.

The man twisted around to find a bright green hand print emblazoned on his left flank in iridescent dust. He groaned and tried to dust the print off, but only managed to spread the dust down the back of his thigh.

“Last guy who did that left with fewer functioning joints than he arrived,” Wufei reminded him, obviously taking note of the more subdued response from his roommate.

“This one should count himself lucky then,” Relena intoned, eyes wide at her friend.

“She does,” Hilde stated proudly, sidling up beside Heero and wrapping her arms around his midsection. She planted a dramatic kiss against the man’s shoulder and then slunk around him to take Relena’s hand. “You have hovered far too long since our last dance, deary,” Hilde informed her, gently coaxing her away from the rest of the group and toward the dance floor. “The night is no longer young! Come on!”

Relena cast a wary glance backward at the rest of them. Trowa then saw her tighten her grip on Hilde’s hand and take a deep breath before she answered, “Let’s go.” Hilde grinned up at her and promptly pivoted on her heel, leading her back into the fray of bright lights, heavy bass, and clouds of neon dust.

--05:10--

The night had left them all spent and starving…and now also covered head to toe in streaks of neon powder that stuck to their bodies like a second skin courtesy the hours spent dancing and drinking in The Crypt. The hour was too late for another bar, but unanimously determined too early to go home, they opted to find a place to conquer their appetites before they collapsed.

The 24-hour diner was brightly lit, garishly so compared to their evening out. Two hours yet till sunrise and the city was getting its second wind. It seemed appropriate to Wufei then that the wait staff was equal parts bleary-eyed all-nighters running down the end of their shift and over-caffeinated earlier risers.

Their host took one look at their dust-streaked clothes and promptly escorted them to the back of the venue where they joined the rest of the diner’s party-going patrons. The tables stacked with food and coffee, the diners all talking too loud due to hearing loss. We’ll fit right in, he thought as they pulled a couple tables together to fit the group of them.

Wufei moved to take the seat next to Quatre before Trowa slipped forward and – with a knowing smile – left him the seat next to Relena. He took a steadying breath and sat down, thankful Trowa said nothing aloud to draw attention to the arrangement. Relena meanwhile seemed too engaged in conversation with Duo on her left to have noticed.

They ordered mounds of food and several carafes of coffee, and when it all arrived several minutes later, it was bedlam as they each piled plates high. As the dust settled, Wufei caught Relena eyeing the chocolate chip pancakes that had somehow landed between them. Pointing at the plate, Wufei told her, “Each of those you eat earns you an extra hour of obscurity.”

Relena locked eyes on him and he watched a playful smile spread across her lips as she slowly reached out and hooked a finger under the plate’s edge. Inching it toward her, she asked, “Really? How fascinating. Can I hold you to that?”

Wufei grinned back at her, but was unable to hold that steady gaze for too long. Flushing, he turned away and took a long swallow of his coffee.

#gundam wing #snippet saturday #relena darlian #heero yuy #duo maxwell #hilde schbeiker #trowa barton #quatre winner #wufei chang

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