It's much easier to appreciate the warm when you've been out in the freezing cold. Siberia was cold, but it was dry and the sun's glow took the edge off of the crispness of the air. The cold in Brussels was wet, miserable, and permeated your clothes and very skin.
So when a hot mug of tea was pushed into his hands, for all that he wasn't very fond of tea, Heero felt an innate pleasure that could only come with meeting such a basic need, elevated only by the feeling of the liquid dragging its warmth down his throat.
Appreciate the small things. She'd taught him that.
"You should really call before you swing by. I know you like to give off airs of aloof coolness, because evidently that's Miss Relena's thing, but surely you know she doesn't keep her schedule open hoping you might hop into it?"
Mariemeia Barton had always been ahead of her years, and as a fourteen year old she wasn't any different. War had aged them all before their time. What had changed, though, was the way she had absorbed elements of the women who had become the bedrock of her life.
She had Une's commanding confidence, as though obedience was the only option offered. He had no doubts she had learned that from her adoptive mother the hard way.
And both contradicting and complimentary, she had Relena's ability to demand respect, and make you instantly at ease, as though you could tell her anything and it would be the right thing to do.
When he didn't say anything back, knowing that doing so would only give her more fuel to feed on, she rolled her eyes.
That one she learned from Wufei.
"Fine, be that way. Mother will be back soon, and maybe she'll know where Miss Relena is today. More tea?"
Heero hadn't realised he'd drained the cup.
"Got any coffee?" He asked, long and crowded flight catching up with him.
She obliged and went to the kitchen to put the kettle on afresh. "What are you doing down here anyway?" she called from the kitchen. "Last I heard things were on a 'hiatus' with you two. Things moving too fast, and such."
Heero winced at the question. Direct and to the point. That one was Une.
"Didn't think of you as a gossip monger, Mari." He groused, in an attempt to get her off that line of questioning. He knew it was pointless but he wasn't one to take a shot with his arms wide open.
Pouring out into a garish Christmas mug, he could almost hear her smug smile.
"I'm a teenager. It's practically in the job description." She replied, pushing the green and red monstrosity into his hands.
Warm.
He took a sip, biding time before the inevitable, her bright grey eyes watching him all the way, unflinching and uncompromising. That one was Une.
"The thing with a hiatus is it's not permanent." He gave in reluctantly, with an edge of sarcasm that was almost childish.
"And so you thought this would be how to end it? So have you come with an apology, a ring, or just your amazing self?" She asked amused. She took far too much pleasure in watching other people squirm. Having spent several summers with her cousin, he blamed Dorothy Catalonia for that one.
The problem was, he didn't know what he intended to do. He'd made a habit out of doing what felt right at any given time, but ultimately that sometimes led to poor planning at times when planning mattered. This mattered a great deal.
He must have had the conflict plain as day on his face, as her amused smile softened into puzzled concern.
"You are back to end the hiatus right? And not just….end it?" You can always tell how much time Mari spent around Relena, because in that moment her expression was the mirror image of her. He hated the way that terrified him.
Their relationship was an on and off thing, and always had been. It would be almost too presumptuous to call it a relationship really. It was more like…company, with someone he trusted enough to keep it. He always had the impression that others expected more of them, like there was a cosmic force dictating it so. He hated being dictated to, and part of him knew his attempts to keep distant were born of a stubborn desire to avoid it.
It wasn't fair. Not to her. However much she allowed him to act on his selfishness and nonsensical neuroses, it couldn't be what she wanted.
And now he was face to face with the direct question, asking him what he was going to do, and he felt an unpleasant twisting in his stomach.
A little miffed at his lack of a reply, Mariemeia sat back and crossed her arms, a scowl now creasing her bright red brow.
"Now you're just being stupid." She sniped, and it took him aback. Many things he'd been called and stupid wasn't one of them.
He was grateful for the sound of a key turning in the door behind them as Commander Une pushed open the door with her hip, bags of Christmas dinner groceries crowding her arms.
Putting them down on the side table, her eyebrows raised in surprise to see her guest.
"My. I wasn't expecting you earthside for a while." She said coolly, but with her work voice clearly switched off. This wasn't his superior speaking to him, but someone who very clearly had opinions of his being here.
"He's here to break up with Miss Relena." Mari piped up, in such a matter of fact tone it made him flinch.
Une took a perch on the arm of the armchair Mari had taken as her throne, and suddenly he had two pairs of scrutinising eyes trained on him. "No he's not." She stated simply.
Heero bristled, but fought the urge to argue for the sake of arguing. That was Wufei's quirk, not his.
As though his snide thought had summoned him, he heard the door shut behind him as the clearly wind-swept Preventer came sauntering through.
"Oh." Was all the acknowledgement Heero received before Wufei's attention turned to Mariemeia. "Stop leaving your homework in my office. It's not cute. And question 13 is wrong."
"Is it wrong, or am I giving an alternative perspective?" She teased, taking the folder from him. Wufei must have been through this a hundred times before as, uncharacteristically, he chose not to take the bait.
"What's Yuy doing here?" he asked her, and Heero felt himself get progressively more irritated at the way others were talking about him as though he wasn't even there.
"Having a crisis that isn't really a crisis, so he can at least tell himself he agonised over it before coming to the correct and inevitable conclusion." Une answered for him, before picking a chocolate from the box on the coffee table.
Heero didn't need to look to know Wufei was rolling his eyes. He suddenly felt very cornered, his mind already coming up with every defensive comeback possible.
Oddly, he didn't need to. "Just let him do what he wants." Wufei intervened, but before Heero could feel any amount of gratitude, the other pilot continued. "If he doesn't get rid her now, it's only a matter of time before it ends anyway."
Since his interrogation had begun, a twisting feeling had settled in his stomach, and it was deeply uncomfortable. Now, it felt like somebody had punched him square in the centre of his chest.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" He asked darkly.
As though sensing a fight ready to break out, Une stood from her armchair perch and shoved a bag of her groceries in Wufei's direction. "In the fridge, please." She asked without asking.
He could see the urge to disobey gather in his stance, but sense apparently got the better of him and Wufei sighed his grief on the way to the kitchen. If Une was Mariemeia's surrogate mother, Wufei was the cantankerous but ultimately well-meaning uncle.
How had a military commander with a personality disorder, a child solider with a bad temper and a mini-dictator managed to morph themselves into a well-functioning, makeshift family unit?
"He was a dick about it, but he's not wrong." Mari piped up, provoking a quick tap to the shoulder as her mother reminded her about her language. "I don't know who he is yet, still figuring it out, but her works in the ESUN building, and they spend practically every lunch together."
"And why would you know this, Mari, when you're meant to be at school?" Her mother raised an eyebrow at her.
"….or so I hear?" Mari corrected herself quickly.
"Nice try." She answered coolly, before shifting her attention back to him. "My truant daughter is referring to Relena's new assistant. I'm sure it's not quite the scandal she's stirring things up to be, but there's certainly a fondness there."
It was with those words ringing in his ears, like music played far too loudly and too often, that he found himself focusing on one particularly stupid pigeon on a bench in parliament square. He was only paces away from the entrance to the ESUN administration building, somewhere he'd been often in his life without thinking much about it at all, and somehow now felt like he would be intruding upon it.
His parka kept the majority of the chill off, but he could still feel the bite of the wind on his face. One child kept running through the throng of birds picking scraps off of the floor, sending them up on a flurry only for them to settle down as they were before second later. Brightly coloured lights lined the square, laced around branches and winding up the huge pine tree adorning the centre of the square.
It was all very picturesque, but it bought back thoughts he had come outside to escape for a while.
He had never really found good reason to celebrate Christmas. He wasn't religious, and he didn't have a family to go through the motions with. It was just another time of year, cold and constantly crowded, that also happened to be the anniversary of two very difficult wars.
"I think it's the anniversary of when we all made the decision to be better."
She'd said the words to him in this same square, looking at the tree where people from around the world had lovingly tied their wishes for the future. She looked as cold as he felt now, nose pink and wrapped in every layer imaginable. She'd had a cold, and punctuated the sentence with an ungraceful cough, but the words struck something in him that he hadn't released he needed.
In one sentence, she'd made him feel just like everyone else, giving him permission to find meaning in things he once found meaningless. And in doing so, in that moment, she also made him feel like the only one of his kind. With those words, he belonged to her.
He recalled his irritation that others seemed so confident that he would align his life to hers, that he would choose her in the end. They were asking the wrong question, deciphering the wrong fate.
As he watched her come out of the revolving door, her assistant in tow carrying what were no doubt her office gifts in his arms, he felt purpose like he hadn't in a very long time.
He became hers the second she took a place in his life that couldn't be replaced. She was his friend, but he had others. She was his lover, but even that wasn't a role exclusively hers. She was someone he trusted and confided in, but over the years he'd allowed others to assume that role in his life. It wasn't definable. But it was regardless.
What she wasn't was his.
He wasn't sure exactly when he'd gotten off of the bench, or when he'd made his way to the other side of the square. The public place had been so busy and bustling, and it was suddenly drowned out by the pumping of blood through his veins and gathering around his ears.
He certainly didn't recall any conscious decision making that lead to crushing her mouth to his, hand on the back of her guiding her deeper into his very public display of affection.
Her handbag fell out of the crook of her elbow and thudded onto the floor, freeing up her arm to grip onto his coat. His face burned, as the heat radiated between them, that the chilled air dared not touch.
When he opened his eyes, he rested his forehead on hers, not wanting to look around at those he could hear gathering to get a good look.
"You didn't think this through, did you?" She asked softly, muffled breath mingling with his with her proximity.
He shook his head, unable and unwilling to pretend otherwise. He'd been pretending for too long.
"I needed to send your pack mule a message." He said it as a joke but they both new it was more than a little true.
From his vantage point he could see her cheeks crinkle into a smile.
"My pack mule is catching a flight in two hours. To visit his boyfriend." She should have been annoyed. He'd made a very public spectacle of her and she would no doubt have to deal with that ad infinitum in the weeks to come at an already busy time. But she smiled as brightly as the luminations dancing above them as he reconciled the full extent of his rashly executed display of dominance.
If he wasn't red already, by then he was practically fluorescent.
A silence passed between them, and he was all too aware of a flash going off every few seconds from the gaggle of onlookers around them.
"I think…we could both be better people next year. Right?" She asked softly, the question at the end betraying her anxiety. He'd never given her any reason to assume he could promise her anything and he'd done so on purpose. In this same day he'd been called silly, stupid and treated like a child. For the first time in the day he agreed with them.
"…I think I'm going to stay earthside for a while." He answered. He hadn't planned to, but the words came out regardless and when he didn't resent them or wish them gone he knew he was doing the right thing.
She suddenly broke their makeshift cocoon, bending down to pick up her abandoned handbag.
"Then we have plans to make. Coffee?" She turned around to take her presents out of her assistant's hand, who now had a knowing smile on his face, before unloading them onto Heero and beginning her descent through the square.
He suddenly felt as wind-swept as Wufei had looked earlier, but something settled inside him that felt distinctly warm.
Like a hot mug of tea.