Amalgamations
Written by Meng Xiaojie
Disclaimer: Mobile Suit Gundam Wing and all related properties are copyrighted by Sotsu Agency, Sunrise, ANB, Bandai America Inc., and TV Asahi. This story is being written for entertainment purposes only. No infringement is intended.
Warnings: Rated G, nothing really heavy.
This was an opening chapter that tried to grow into an actual fic—and failed. I like the structure and style, though, so here it is anyway. One-shot.
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One quiet night at the Maxwell apartment.
Five blinking messages on the vidphone's answering system.
One blink was definitely the library, demanding the return of their copy of My Other Car is a Gundam: The Pilot's Guide to Life, Romance, and Bachelorhood. It was a slim book with a flashy red and yellow cover, written by a thirty-something-year-old man named Cady K. Rheinbolt (who was not, in fact, a Gundam pilot, but claimed to have been inspired by the real pilots' "slick dual-sided aura of gritty determination and suave ambiguity"—whatever the hell that meant). Duo had read it twice already, laughing hysterically every time he got to another weird-ass description of Quatre as "the quicksilver wildcat with a healthy streak of madness," or of Wufei as "a raging inferno of zeal wrapped in the alluring silk of intellect."
Blink number two was probably the Mad Quicksilver Wildcat himself, because Quatre was also reading the book, and had taken to leaving particularly funny quotes on the other three pilots' answering machines.
Blink three was likely the Raging and Alluring Inferno, calling to bitch (again) about the quotes Quatre was leaving on his machine.
Duo grinned, but the smile faded as swiftly as it had come. He wished Heero would call, even if it was just to bitch about Quatre's Rheinbolt quotes.
One quiet night, and five blinking messages.
Four lights on in the apartment.
The table lamp in Duo's living area had been a housewarming gift from Quatre, and as such, it was both tasteful and useful. Long and lean and blue, it filled the room with a soft, warm glow. Actually, it would fit perfectly into a Rheinbolt-approved bachelor pad. Duo snorted to himself, wondering if Quatre had started analyzing his own décor. I'll have to ask next time I talk to him, he thought with a faint smirk. By the way, Q-man, Cady Rheinbolt called; he wants his lamp back.
If Quatre's lamp provided the living area with a Rheinboltian "amiable ambiance," then Heero's lamp definitely supplied the anti-Rheinboltian "work-bench glare." It was a tall black floor lamp topped with a simple bowl and bulb fixture, which served absolutely no decorative purpose, but lit the entire room like the midday sun. "I know you like to read at night," Heero had explained simply. "You need good light in here, or you'll strain your eyes."
Truth be told, Duo used Heero's lamp more often than Quatre's; the war had given him his fill of sitting in semi-darkness, trying to make out complicated schematics and scribbled notes by flashlight, ever-wary of OZ's watchful eyes. Duo liked the bright lamp, and more than that, he was warmed by the obvious thought Heero had put into it.
The kitchen light wasn't anything special, just a standard white bulb set in a standard ceiling fixture. The dining niche, however, had come with an eccentric hanging lamp; three bright white bulbs enclosed by a multicolored stained-glass dome, which hung from a cast-iron chain securely anchored to the ceiling. Quatre and Wufei had declared the thing an eyesore, but Duo rather liked it—the pattern vaguely reminded him of one of the Maxwell Church's tall stained-glass windows.
He'd asked Heero for an opinion, and the only response he'd gotten was a noncommittal grunt. Heero didn't have much use for decorative fashion beyond clean lines and simple color correlation.
One quiet night, five blinking messages, and four lights on in the apartment.
Three pairs of shoes by the door.
Two were Duo's. The work shoes were clean, if a bit scuffed up. The thick, black-soled Docs weren't exactly Preventer-issue, but they were official enough for the office, and tough enough to stand up to the street-beating they got on a regular basis. The running shoes weren't anything flashy, either; black and white leather, with good shock absorption and better traction. They were on their fifth pair of shoestrings, though—Duo tended to pick at them while he cooled off from a hard run. He did a lot of hard running.
His old combat boots were in a box stuffed into his bedroom closet. They hadn't seen the light of day in over three years.
The third set of shoes by the door belonged to Heero. They were his running shoes—same brand as Duo's, actually, but with higher uppers and different shoestrings (Heero never picked at his, so they rarely unraveled). The left one still had a nicked sole from the time Heero had jumped a chain-link fence in pursuit of a mugger. The man was always on duty, even on the way to the basketball court.
Duo couldn't bring himself to smile. Heero's shoes had been sitting by his front door for nearly two months, and their owner still hadn't come to reclaim them.
One quiet night, five blinking messages, four lights on in the apartment, and three pairs of shoes by the door.
Two full glasses on the end table.
Two full glasses, long since gone warm, sweating pools onto their engraved marble coasters (housewarming gifts from Trowa; they were a quartet of playing cards, the Jack from each suit—a private joke between them). The glasses were full of an old Earth drink called a Black and Tan. Heero had discovered it during an undercover stint on L-3's Colony X97806, and he'd introduced it to Duo as soon as he'd returned home.
"The Black and Tan is an ideal amalgamation of beers, Duo," Heero had told him seriously, watching the bartender carefully layer the golden ale and dark stout in their pilsners. "You've often said that you can't decide whether you like your beer dark or light, and this drink provides equal portions of both."
Duo had smothered a laugh at that; Heero had become an avid reader after the wars, and his expanding vocabulary asserted itself in strange and often hilarious ways. An "ideal amalgamation" of beers, Heero? You probably confused the hell out of that poor old barkeep.
Ideal amalgamation or not, the Black and Tan had quickly become their routine after-work drink. They'd tried to get Trowa and Wufei on board, but the former wasn't much of a drinker, and the latter preferred scotch on the rocks. No one knew exactly when or where Wufei had learned to drink scotch, but Duo suspected that Sally Po had something to do with it—that woman's blood was at least 80 proof, if not higher.
Two full glasses on the end table. Duo had forgotten that Heero wasn't planted out on the couch, thumbing through the latest issue of the Dogfight Dirt—a monthly magazine that highlighted the best pilots and piloting stunts throughout history, both recent and historical. Lucrezia Noin had gotten Duo a year's subscription to it (her idea of a housewarming gift), and he'd liked it enough to renew the subscription twice over. Heero had been skeptical at first, but he'd soon become as much a Dogfight devotee as Duo.
Nearly two months since Heero'd dropped off the radar, and Duo still managed to forget that his best friend wasn't just around the corner.
One quiet night, five blinking messages, four lights on in the apartment, three pairs of shoes by the door, and two full glasses on the end table.
One man, sitting alone in his brightly-lit apartment. Watching the messages blink. Watching the glasses sweat.
Wishing Heero would come back for his damned shoes.
Wishing Heero would come back at all.
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