Tropical Treasure Hunt

by waterlilylf

So. Suppose you're at staying at the most unimaginably lavish tropical resort in the world. Suppose you're with your boyfriend, who's the most incredible guy in the universe. How can life possibly get better than this? How about an early morning treasure hunt? 1 x 2.

Note 1: this is for the amazing Kaeru Shisho, on the most joyous occasion of her birthday. (Many thanks to Snowdragonct for looking it over.)

Note 2: This is set in the same universe as 'Third Time's the Charm', and takes place approximately twenty-one months after 'Charm' finishes.

Tropical Treasure Hunt:

If I squint, even a little bit, the whole world is made entirely of dancing shades of blue and green, framed by the dark antique wood of the daybed I'm lying in, and its gauzy silk drapes. (Oh, yes. We have a four-poster bed in the garden. This place is seriously that fancy.) The infinity pool in front of me merges seamlessly with the ocean, mistily aquamarine with a few darker cobalt patches of deeper water, and the ocean with the sky. To my left is our bungalow, hand-carved out of teak and splashed with lavish displays of orchids and hibiscus. If I turn my head, very slightly, to the right, I can see my darling Heero, skin a darker gold than usual after ten days on a beach in Malaysia, and dressed in ridiculously well-fitted black swimming trunks, reclining on a sun-lounger under a frangipani tree. The scarlet hibiscus flower behind his ear has wilted, just a little bit, from when I put it there at before lunch, but it's still a bright splash of colour in his dark hair.

It's not fair, I think, just a shade grouchily, that someone who hardly bothers to pull a comb through his hair (longer now than I've ever seen it, since he hasn't had time to get it cut in the last couple of months) can look quite that sexy. If didn't spend hours on my hair, it would return to its primeval state in less than a day.

The guy is utterly, undeniably gorgeous.

Also, mine.

Query: what in the world could be wrong with this idyllic picture?

Just one tiny thing. My beloved is squinting at his tablet, forehead creased at whatever he's reading.

Work, then.

On holiday.

Tsk.

Well, I'll soon put a stop to that.

I prop myself up one elbow, and reach for the fruit drink our butler (We have, believe it or not, our own personal butler; all the bungalows come with a full complement of staff) brought me a few minutes ago. I take a sip, and then dip my fingers into the glass and pick out a blueberry. Not madly tropical, but it'll do the job quite nicely.

I carefully hold it between finger and thumb, narrow my eyes in Heero's direction, and flick it at him. Yes! That gets his attention, ricocheting neatly off his forehead and falling onto the screen with a satisfactory little splat that leaves a pretty purple smear on the glass.

'Duo?' He looks up, aggrieved. 'What he hell was that for?'

'We had an agreement, dearest,' I say sweetly. 'Remember?'

The deal was something we'd hammered out on the third morning, after I got fed up with Heero constantly vanishing 'just for a second' with a suspiciously smartphone-shaped bulge in his shorts. Our agreement is that Heero gets to play with his favourite toy for an hour every morning (actually, he's an insanely early riser, and I like to sleep in, so mostly it's for longer than that) and for four fifteen-minute periods of his own choosing during the day. If there's a major world financial meltdown, like every stock market in the universe suddenly crashing, the deal is null and void, but otherwise, we're sticking to it.

Or one of us is.

The other one occasionally needs a little incentive.

'I thought you were asleep,' he says, his tone a nicely-judged fusion of apology and defensiveness.

'Nope.'

'You were snoring.'

'I was not,' I say haughtily. 'I don't snore.' (I don't think I do, anyway. Clearly, I can't actually know.)

'Must've been the butler then, before he left.' Heero gives me a sudden grin, and I make a face, patting the mattress beside me.

'C'mere, cookie.'

'Are you going to throw more fruit at me?' he asks, flicking a suspicious glance at my glass.

'Maybe. Come here and you'll find out,' I coax.

'Here' just happens to be a teak four-poster bed, draped with pale green silks, in the private gardens of our own bungalow. Absolute paradise, even if it's not quite Heero's favourite fantasy of the two of us alone on a desert island somewhere. I'm not entirely certain if he abandoned that because he guessed it wouldn't be quite my thing, or if he couldn't find one with a fast and reliable internet service.

Instead, he's found us this place. Not an actual island, but each bungalow (there are only fifteen in total, on a massive site) is set in its own large garden, looking on to the resort's private beach. We're alone on our very own private piece of paradise, apart from a couple of discreet staff members who materialise at specific times to bring us meals, or change the bed linen (scattering rose petals on top naturally.)

'Are you going to pour anything on me?' Heero demands, his eyes still on my half-full glass of juice.

OK, I did (sort of accidentally-ish) pour a few little, ice-cold drops of mango smoothie on a certain sensitive body part yesterday, when he was reading something and not paying any attention to me, but I licked it off as an apology. Very thoroughly. He'd stopped complaining very shortly after I'd started.

Right then.

Enough playing around.

'Heero?' I drop my voice a couple of octaves, and tilt my head slightly so my hair falls over one bare shoulder. I let one hand drift up to twirl a few strands idly round one finger. 'C'mere, baby.'

That does that job perfectly; he practically teleports on to the bed.

'Oh. There you are,' I smile up at him. To be honest, I had maybe thought of dropping an ice-cube down his back, just for fun, but now that he's actually here beside me, smelling deliciously of coconut-scented sun lotion, I can think of some other things to do instead.

Heero's a creature of habit; even on holiday, he likes to have a routine. I mostly tease him about it, but I'm more than happy to go along with this particular part. It's too hot to do much in the afternoon, but this bed is nicely shaded and perfect for an afternoon nap. (Although the nap itself isn't exactly the main event. It's what comes after.) Our days have fallen into an easy, lovely pattern. Active stuff in the morning while it's still cool – usually a long walk on the beach, although we've also gone out sailing a couple of times – then lunch back in our garden. Once the maid's cleaned up, and the butler's brought us drinks and fruit, we have the place to ourselves. Sometimes we end up just snuggling and kissing, and sometimes it's a bit more interactive, and this ends up being one of the more interactive times.

After, while I'm still floating dreamily in my own little rose-coloured, marshmallow-edged world, Heero finds a box of tissues and gives us both a perfunctory clean-up, and then settles drowsily against me, head in the crook of my shoulder.

'Sleepy time, cookie?'

He's doesn't answer, since he's already asleep; something that would be totally cute if it didn't worry me, just a little bit. Then again, it's probably good that he's catching up on so much lost sleep.

'Love you,' I murmur, and press my lips to the top of his head. I'm probably imagining it, but I think his mouth tilts slightly upward, at the words or the gesture. Then again, he does sometimes respond to things I say when he's asleep, so who knows? 'You're an idiot,' I say experimentally, and I swear, his nose scrunches up a little bit.

'Well, you are,' I murmur softly, settling one arm carefully around him.

Heero's officially-designated status as an idiot is why we're here, why I'm letting him blue what has to be a fortune on this two-week holiday. (I have no idea how much it was, and I'm absolutely refusing to go on-line to check prices for this place. I know that they have to be astronomical.)

Even when we're at home, there are times when I feel a teeny bit like Heero's kept man. (I'm only five years younger than he is, so I don't think I can count as his toyboy.) My books do sell fairly well, and they're published in several languages, but let's face it, detective stories with two gay heroes are something of a niche market. I'm never exactly going to be making any bestseller lists. I make enough to keep myself and Smokey and have the occasional splurge, but I'm never going to be remotely in Heero's league, financially.

We've had a few pretty major rows over money, specifically over Heero thinking he should support me. It's all a part of his general over-protectiveness, I suppose, and we've more or less smoothed out the financial wrinkles at this point. I live in his glorious house, although I do insist on contributing to the bills and we take turns to pay when we're out. This holiday, though, is something I could never have afforded in a million years; the only reason I'm letting him pay is because he's the one who needs to get away, and be spoilt for a bit.

A few months ago, his boss quit suddenly, for so-called 'personal' reasons, and Heero ended up doing her job as well as his own. I assumed it would be a short-term thing, 'til they hired someone else, and a new someone was duly hired, but he was locked into a contract and couldn't start immediately, and in the interim, he ended up being headhunted by another firm, so the whole interview process had to start all over, leaving Heero stuck with everything.

I gritted my teeth and didn't say anything for the first few weeks, then spent a fortnight calling into his office every second day, with picnic baskets full of treats, and take out from his favourite restaurants.

I wouldn't have minded quite so much if he'd been enjoying himself, but part of the boss's job required meeting clients, socialising, having to talk to strange people, and none of those are really Heero's thing, and he hated all of it. I could have done it with my eyes shut, and actually I did go to a couple of dinners and events with him. (He'd deny it, saying he just doesn't like most people, bt I think maybe he suffers from some mild form of social anxiety) He claimed it really helped, having me there to run interference for him, and make small talk with all these people. Anyway, he was stressed, not sleeping or eating properly, leaving at some obscene hour to go to the gym before work, and coming home at an equally insane hour to fall into bed.

We came so close to breaking up over it, it still scares me a bit. I don't even like thinking about it. I spent the first few weeks trying to be understanding and supportive. I really did. Then I tried coaxing, nagging, calling him to say I was waiting for him in bed, naked and covered in maple syrup or melted chocolate. He would apologise and promise to change, but things just got worse, and then we started having these awful arguments.

On the worst night, he didn't come home, wasn't answering his 'phone. I called the police, who essentially laughed at me and told me not to worry that my boyfriend was a couple of hours late getting home. I drove into his office, sure that he'd fallen asleep on the way home, and crashed. Instead, he was face down on his desk.

I took him home, forced him to eat something, and he slept for eighteen hours straight. I gave him an ultimatum the next day; that if he wanted to work himself into a nervous breakdown (just like his former boss) I wasn't going to stay around and watch, and that if he didn't stop killing himself with overwork and start delegating some of his workload, I was moving out. There was a minor clause that he also needed to take a holiday sometime soon. I hadn't stressed that one because you need to fight one battle at a time.

I didn't really have any expectations that it would actually happen, and then he came home one night and said he'd booked us a fortnight in Malaysia. I would have gone to the moon with him, even to the uninhabited island he talks about sometimes, so I wasn't really in any position to cavil at the cost. (Plus, Wufei sat me down and gave me a pep talk on how Heero needed my company far more than he needed a large sum of money sitting in his bank account.)

And it's been wholly wonderful. Just the two of us in our own personal slice of Paradise. Heero gives a little snort in his sleep, as if he's agreeing with me, and I smile down at the tousled dark head resting on my arm. (The poor flower didn't survive, but there's one petal caught up in his hair.) Adorable.

I reach down and find my own phone and take a quick picture of him, and then check my emails. There's an update on Trowa's blog from Namibia – photos of a family of adorable baby cheetahs, and a couple of the boyfriend du jour; a Swedish biologist called Henrik. He's dreamy, naturally; every bit as blond and Viking-like as you'd expect a Swedish guy to be. The guys Tro takes up with are always divine. (Not that he'll last; they never do. I'm used to it now.)

There's also an email from 'Fei, who's pet sitting for us, with some photos attached. In the first one, Smokey is sitting obediently, with Wufei's little pug Shennie between his paws (so cute!), and beside them there's a blur of black and white fur that's presumably Storm. In the second picture, she's asleep, sprawled all over one of our sofas, which is strictly forbidden when I'm there but I guess 'Fei's a bit softer than me. (Or else she's worn him out and he didn't feel up to wrestling with a hyperactive and very stubborn Australian Shepherd.) Then there's a short video of the dogs playing in the snow; the crazy animals actually seem to be enjoying the stuff. I shiver a little bit, and then laugh at the last photo, which is of Shen sitting at our back door, looking at the white world outside, and clearly not at all impressed by it. Sensible little thing, not like my two crazy snow monsters. I flick back to the indoor pictures and shake my finger at Storm.

'You just wait 'til I get home, young lady,' I threaten the image on screen. 'Back to normal rules once your Uncle Wufei's not there any more.'

'Duo?' Heero mutters groggily. 'Who're you talking to?'

'Hey, sleeping beauty!' I grin down at him. 'You OK there?'

'Mm.' He rolls over, looking up at me. 'What are you doing?'

'Checking emails. Look, 'Fei sent us these. There're some of your baby for you.'

Storm is officially my dog, Heero's present to me for my twenty-sixth birthday, but he's the one she's really bonded with, in that she has him wrapped around her little paw, not that her paws are all that little, at six months old. He thinks everything she does is adorable, however destructive or damaging (and a lot of what she does falls into those categories; she got her name for a very good reason.) I've ended up having to be the disciplinarian in-chief, which was sort of unexpected.

Predictably, Heero coos over the photos, even the snowy ones, (I have a dark suspicion that he actually likes cold weather) and then starts waxing lyrical about teaching me to ski.

'No, thank you,' I say, polite but very firm.

'I bet you'd like it, if you tried it,' he tempts me.

'Bet I wouldn't, remotely.'

Heero has all sorts of lovely romantic ideas about the cold; hot chocolate with marshmallows and aromatic log fires and those hideous puffy jackets people wear. As far as I'm concerned, cold can kill people.

'I've decided something, actually. I'm going to stay here. At least for another couple of weeks. The snow should have melted by then.'

I'm joking, more or less, but he gives me a direct look. 'You really want to?'

'In my dreams. I know we can't, really.' As well as his job, I have meetings lined up with my publishers, and media interviews arranged. 'We have too much stuff to do, right? And 'Fei's going to Korea next week, so he won't be there to pet-sit.'

'I'll keep you warm,' Heero promises, kissing me. Very warmly. 'And we still have four days.'

'Mmm, yeah.' I stretch against him, luxuriating in sensation; warm air, and silk sheets, and Heero. Specific parts of Heero.

'You should maybe think about putting that 'phone somewhere else,' Heero murmurs.

'Maybe I should,' I smile back at him. 'You can read 'Fei's email later. It's all about that exhibition he's working on.' I roll my eyes; Heero's not the only workaholic in our little group, but I think 'Fei's maybe a bit better at taking care of himself. 'Oh, just let me show you one thing; Tro posted some more pics. Look, how cute are they? Can we get a baby cheetah? Please, Heero?'

He just laughs at me. 'Trowa would never speak to us again. You know how he feels about people keeping exotic animals as pets.'

'Mm.' I pretend to consider for a minute, looking at the cheetah cubs on the screen. 'Yeah, but on the other hand, it would be the most adorable pet ever,' I tease, 'and Trowa's actually away in Africa for a few months every year, so it's not like we get him as a full-time friend or anything. We wouldn't really be missing out on a lot. It's not as if he even talks that much when he is speaking to us.'

'I'd still like to keep him as a friend,' Heero admits, and I make a face at him.

'Just as a friend?'

'Yes, Duo dearest, just as a friend,' Heero says, smirking at me. 'You're not jealous, are you? I thought that was my job.'

'Well, you're the one who had a thing with one of your besties, not me. I'd say that entitles me to be a teeny bit jealous.'

'You know you don't have to be.'

'Yeah, I know,' I admit, dropping a kiss on his lips. 'Just joking.' It's true, really. I can joke about it now, probably because I know them both well enough. And I can't really get jealous of something that happened over thirteen years ago, when they were both teenagers.

'How about a normal kitten?' Heero suggests. 'A Scottish Fold? You think they're cute, don't you?'

'Storm would probably eat it,' I say ruefully. 'She eats everything else she can get her paws on.'

Heero opens his mouth, presumable to defend his little princess, and then stops. There's not a lot he can say, in fairness. Storm genuinely does eat everything that doesn't move fast enough. 'We should maybe wait 'til she's a bit older,' he concedes. 'While we're waiting, maybe we could go and look at some real cheetahs. Would you like that?'

'Us, go to Africa? Seriously? Can we even afford it?'

'Luckily one of us happens to be an incredibly successful author.'

'I hate to disappoint you, cookie, but my books don't actually make that much.'

'The new one will,' he says positively.

Hmm. Well. Maybe. It's quite a bit different from the first three books I've written, which really focussed on the growing romance between the two heroes, with a mystery in the background. In my latest, the guys are in an established relationship and there's an actual, insanely convoluted, plot, mostly supplied by Heero, all about embezzlement and corruption in the world of high finance. Unlike my other books, each of which I reeled off in few months, this one's taken me well over a year. My publishers were having conniptions at one point, but then they read the first few chapters, and raved about them. Apparently, it's a topic that's fairly big at the moment, (thanks to real life cases that are in the media spotlight right now) and my publishers are pretty excited that I've written something that's almost mainstream.

'You think? Really?'

'I know. Duo, seriously. It's good.'

'OK, then. Assuming sales are halfway decent, let's go on a trip. We can ask Tro to recommend some places. It'd be amazing!' I say with a sudden flare of enthusiasm. 'We can go on a safari!'

The rest of the evening more or less goes according to our usual routine. (Eventually.) Dinner on our little terrace, then a long walk along the beach. When we get near the bungalow, there ends up being a new addition to the programme. We've joked a few times about having sex on the beach (actual sex, not the drink since I don't really drink alcohol), but it's never gone beyond teasing (well, maybe a little bit beyond.) But tonight, it goes past that. It starts off innocent enough, with the two of us sitting on the sand to admire the moonlight reflected in the water, and then there's a little bit of kissing, and then the moonlight gets forgotten, and there's only Heero, loving me.

It's glorious, like we're the only two people in the universe, with the tides ebbing and the stars wheeling just for us. (Although washing the sand and seawater and even a few icky strands of seaweed out of my hair do diminish the romance somewhat, once we get back home.)

Heero ends up having to do most of it; the poor guy practically has to carry me to bed after our shower, since I'm utterly exhausted. Heero finds washing my hair (or, indeed, anything to do with my hair) a serious turn on, so the actual shower ends up taking quite a while, with a long digression totally unrelated to personal hygiene. And then the actual washing part.

I think I conk out before I'm even properly in bed; I'm not sure what wakes me up. Heero's a light sleeper, but once I'm asleep, I'm usually pretty dead to the world. Something does wake me though, and I'm in bed by myself. Waking up alone is pretty normal for me. Heero's a bit of an insomniac and at home he usually gets up first and goes running or works out before work; even here, he's sometimes got up and gone for a swim or a jog on the beach.

It's pitch dark though; I don't think he'd really go out by himself in the middle of the night. I fumble for my phone to check the time, wincing when I move just a bit too suddenly. (Sex between us tends to be pretty vanilla, especially compared to some of the stuff I've done in the past, and Heero's always very careful, but he's still pretty active in bed. And lets's face it, we've had quite a lot of sex in the past twelve hours.) Tbe phone rings, almost as soon as I flick it on.

'Ungh?' I manage, squinting at the caller ID. 'Heero? Wha's wrong?' It's a testament to how much of his life I've managed to absorb that the first thing to come into my mind is some sort of world financial catastrophe. 'Did the Euro crash?'

'What? Did you see something on the internet?' he demands, sounding as panicked as me. 'What happened?'

'No! Nothing..I just, Heero, what's going on? Are you OK? Where are you?'

'I'm fine,' he reassures me. 'Go and read the bathroom mirror. That should give you a clue where I am.'

Read the what?

'What are you talking about? Is this some sort of joke?'

'You have an hour, Duo. Bring your phone with you.'

An hour? What the fizz? What will happen then? Will I spontaneously combust? Will he? I scramble into the first clothes I can find, and dash for the bathroom.

Sure enough, there's a red, heart-shaped post-it stuck in one corner of the the mirror, and the message inside reads: When you came up to me in that bookshop, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Oh.

Well, that pretty much evaporates any negative feelings I might possibly be feeling toward my darling boyfriend. OK, I'd really like to go back to bed and sleep my brains out, but...This is Heero, planning something. And telling me how much I mean to him.

It's not a clue though. There's no bookshop close by, and I really doubt that he's gone back to Sanq, to where we first met. I turn the little paper over, and sure enough, there is a clue on the back.

Dear Duo, go and swim with the fish.

I immediately think of the sea, and just as quickly reject it. I can swim a little bit; I like splashing around in our pool, and I'll go into the sea if Heero's with me, but he wouldn't ask me to go swimming alone, in the darkness. Where else do fish live? Aquariums? Ponds?

Ponds.

There's a pond at the main reception area, full of goldfish and fringed with orchids. It's the first thing we saw when we got here, as soon as we stepped out of the taxi, and we'd just beamed at each other because it was so utterly, sublimely perfect, and then he'd kissed me. (I think we'd mildly scandalized the two staff members who'd been waiting to hand us cold towels and glasses of fruit juice, but they were too well-trained to say anything).

Sure enough, my next clue is there; a small laminated card hanging from a branch over the pond.

I love you more than anything in the universe.

It's not like he hasn't said it; actually, he's way better than me at the romantic gestures (as, for instance, sweeping me off to this place as a surprise) but it's different somehow, seeing it written down.

But the clue is on the other side is tricky. Specifically, it's a group of Japanese Kanji. My first thought is to use Google translate, but that seems a bit too easy. Think, Duo. Heero knows I don't read Japanese. (Or speak it, even. I have no knowledge of any form of the Japanese language.)

So, maybe it's a symbol for something Japanese?

Oh, fudge. Work, brain.

Heero loves puzzles, the more complicated the better. But he knows that my brain doesn't kick in 'til I've been awake for a while, and ideally inhaled some form of caffeine. He wouldn't have made the clues too complicated.

OK, brainstorm.

Things I know about Japan.

Cherry blossoms, Samurai warriors, Mt. Fuji, sushi, Tokyo, manga, bullet trains, sudoku. None of which are likely to be found at a luxury Malaysian resort.

Oh.

Except – on our first night, the little resort restaurant had a sushi buffet. We hadn't eaten in the actual restaurant; we'd filled a couple of plates, and taken them back to our bungalow, and sprawled on the daybed, and hand-fed each other, and found some very entertaining ways to eat sushi that aren't in any food guides, and then the food kind of got forgotten in favour of other forms of entertainment. I'd cried a little bit, afterwards, with Heero wrapped around me, just because we were together, and so happy, and the world had suddenly looked like a much better place.

Outside the restaurant, on the blackboard which usually has the daily specials, there's my message.

Last April, you took me for a walk on a beach, and changed my life.

Last April...It's January now, so it's about twenty-one months since we first met. The walk on the beach was something we'd done on the first day we'd met. It had been a fairly cold afternoon, bright and sunny but with a definite wind coming down from the north, so there hadn't been many other people on the beach, just the two of us and Smokey bounding around. We hadn't even talked that much; at least, I'd had periods when I'd twittered on about whatever nonsense came into my head, and he'd made the occasional comment, but mostly we'd been quiet. And at some point our hands had swung together, and caught, and we hadn't let go until we got back to my car.

It's one of my happiest memories ever.

Since I can't exactly carry a blackboard around with me, I take a photo of the message, and then one of the clue, which is actually a picture of a chess board, with a sequence of moves written underneath. This one's a doddle to solve. Heero and I play chess a lot, and it's easy enough to work out that we're the black and white kings, respectively. The chessboard's meant to be our bedroom, and there's a little note under the mattress.

Thirty minutes later, either the clues are getting easier, or my brain is starting to work a bit more quickly. It does help once I realise that all the locations are somehow meaningful for us, and each one refers to a place where something special happened. (The only one I can't work out is the frangipani tree in our garden.) There are nine in and around our bungalow alone, but I suppose we have spent most of our time there. They're in chronological order, so I could probably cheat a little bit, but I dutifully follow the clues, racing around with one eye on the time.

In total, I've amassed eleven messages so far. They're all adorable; by now, I'm practically a walking puddle of sap. Basically, they add up to a brief history of our relationship. Me asking him out; that first walk on the beach, when we'd hardly known what to say to each other; our first night together; the first times he said we each said we loved each other. (I'd actually thought he'd been asleep since he's never mentioned it, but apparently not.)

I truly am a puddle of marshmallow-flavoured goo at this point, but not quite so sappy that I'm not trying to work this out, in the back of my mind. I know Heero. He wouldn't just drag me out of bed in the middle of the night to run around the resort reading loving messages, when he could just write me an email, or tell me in person. There's an end game here.

It has to be in the messages. The clues themselves are just too random; some in words, admittedly, but also the Japanese kanji; the chess board; a map reference; a (fortunately very easy) equation, and a diagram (of our garden at the bungalow). There's no common denominator that I can see.

Anyway, Heero knows that words are my thing, while numbers are his. There's something hidden in the messages somehow, except that codes only work if at least two people have the key, and it's not as if Heero and I have some sort of secret code. I pull up all the messages and squint at them, trying to see if I can find any pattern, and come up with weird combinations.

Duo April beach piano strawberries dinner Valentine's Day fire pancakes hammock

None of that remotely makes sense.

Huh. Maybe there isn't anything, and I'm just overthinking it. No. Heero's the logical one in our relationship. There has to be something that I'm missing. I glance at my phone; cripes, only ten minutes left. Right. Time to get serious. I bring up all the messages again and try to think logically. Heero set this whole thing up with me in mind, so I have to be able to crack it.

This is something I can do, I tell myself firmly. Something Heero and I know, but no one else does. Something special between us.

And then, quite suddenly, I get it. Heero and I do have our own secret code, sort of, except it's not really a code.

It's an acrostic. Of course it is. I even know where he got the idea; it's in my second book, it's how Connor asks Gil out. It's like the poem I wrote him on Valentine's Day. It's our thing, and I can't believe I'm only just thinking of it.

When you came up to me in that bookshop, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Duo, I love you more than anything in the universe.

Last April, you took me for a walk on a beach and changed my life.

WD? No, that doesn't work. OK, drop the Duo; that's just a distraction.

W

I

L...

Oh.

Oh.

I don't even bother with any more clues, because I suddenly know exactly where he is, and what the message is. I shove my phone back in my pocket and run.

He's on the stretch of beach directly opposite our bungalow. Well, yes, of course. He's in the exact spot where we made love last night, sitting and looking out to sea.

'Hey.'

'Hey.' He pulls me into his arms, and proceeds to kiss me breathless.

'Yes,' I gasp when he lets me go. 'Heero, yes.'

'Sure?'

'Duh,' I say scornfully. 'Did you seriously think I'd say no?'

'I hoped not. Look.' He settles me against his chest, and points at the faint glow in the horizon. 'I wanted us to watch the sunrise together.'

'Ah. That's why I got hauled out of bed at some ungodly hour?'

'Partly,' he admits. 'I thought it would be easier to set it all up when there was no one else around.'

'True,' I comment, leaning happily against him. 'So, what was the deal if I didn't find you in time?'

'Plan B; I would have called you. That's why I asked you to take your phone.'

I snort. 'What, you thought I wouldn't work it out?'

'I know it takes you a while to wake up in the morning,' he teases. 'I thought I might need a back up strategy.'

'Since you were waking me up in the middle of the night and all?' I tease back. 'You're lucky I didn't just go back to sleep.'

'I'm glad you didn't,' he says fondly. 'I really wanted us to watch the sunrise. I thought it would be a nice memory.'

'Oh, it is,' I assure him. 'It's amazing. And what about – the other thing? If I hadn't worked it out? Was there a Plan B for that as well?'

'Of course.' He kisses the back of my neck and points towards the water's edge. 'Go and see.'

The sky is starting to brighten; streaks of mulberry and kingfisher and molten gold painting the horizon. Just enough light to see by.

There's a heart – a little bit lopsided – drawn in the sand, with the full message in the centre.

Duo, will you marry me?