"I can't believe she's already ready to give me a fitting," Oliviana said, practically skipping as they approached the steps to Alessandra's brownstone. Her hair bobbed along with each step, the loose braid drawing Heero's eye irresistibly. He had to hold back the urge to tug on the end of it. Oliviana always teased him for behaving like an elementary school kid with a crush when he did.

When he pointed out that he did have a crush on her, she had giggled and blushed prettily, which surprised him. He hadn't said it to tease her, but because it was true. He'd told her that too and gotten a kiss in reward.

"I told you Alessandra would sell her firstborn for a chance to dress someone for the MET Gala," Heero reminded patiently. "Why are you surprised she's dropped everything to work on it?"

"I'm not… surprised, exactly," Oliviana replied. "Just… I didn't expect her to be this excited about it, or to work this fast."

Shrugging, Heero said, "She's one of your best friends, and she's made dresses for you in less time before."

Oliviana rolled her eyes. "That was different, and this is a gown for the MET Gala," she said like that would somehow suddenly make it more meaningful to Heero. He simply raised an eyebrow at her in return, and she huffed at him, though a smile pulled at her lips before she added, "But we are paying her for it."

"I don't know that she'll accept it."

"Bare minimum I'll accept is three times the cost of materials, and even then, I feel like I'm committing highway robbery."

Heero had been around both Oliviana and Alessandra enough to have some idea of how Alessandra usually charged for her work, which tended to be some combination of cost of materials and time spent, sometimes adjusted for the difficulty of techniques and sometimes for especially bitchy clients, but at the moment, she mostly did dresses on the side. Her father tolerated her hobby as long as she was still in law school and still getting good grades, so most of her clients were friends anyway.

"You gave her carte blanche to make a dress for the MET Gala," he reminded her, mimicking her own stress on the event name, which made her give him a playful glare. "I would be surprised if she accepts any payment at all."

"And since it's a dress for the MET Gala," she pointedly said it more normally this time, "I think it would be unconscionable not to pay for it." She didn't say that of course, she was a Fitzhugh-Stroh and could more than afford to pay for it.

Heero had an odd relationship with money and people who had it. He honestly didn't care how much money anyone had, and only really cared about his own finances to the extent that he was comfortably able to pay his bills and had enough leftover to be able to indulge—within reason—if he desired. Oliviana's casual wealth rarely bothered him, and being involved with her meant being surrounded by a great deal of it—and a great deal of people who never did quite believe that he wasn't interested in them for their money, little orphan law student or no—but sometimes Oliviana would do something or reference buying something that was more expensive than his entire yearly tuition, and some deeply-buried reflex would wince. It was odd, almost like it wasn't even him who winced, but something like sympathy for someone he knew who would.

He didn't know many who would these days. In Oliviana's (and now his) social circle, he was the poor charity case. Not that anyone who wanted to remain in Oliviana's good graces dared treat him like it in any overt way, but that didn't mean he was unaware of their social differences.

They approached the door and rang the bell. It only took a few moments for Alessandra to come down and let them in. She looked a little tired, the beginnings of circles under her eyes that Heero recognized as a sign of her burning the candle at both ends a little too often, but they weren't quite bad enough to be worth commenting on yet, and, honestly, he would have been more surprised if she didn't have the bags than that she did.

Despite looking a little worn around the edges, she beamed when she saw them. "Oliviana!" she said, saying the name with a Spanish pronunciation, something she only did with people she was close to. She gave Oliviana a big hug, then turned to greet Heero. "Heero," she said in perfectly unaccented English. He didn't rank special pronunciation. Alessandra had never been his biggest fan, so he wasn't really offended. She liked him enough to give him a hug though.

When she reached out to offer the hug, he had a heartbeat where he considered grabbing her wrist to stop her. He had barely processed the impulse when Alessandra's arms were around his shoulders, and a sharp pain lanced behind his eye.

"Are you all right?" she asked, stepping back having barely touched him while Heero pressed on his brow above the pained eye.

"Fine," he said between gnashed teeth. "Just… gimme a minute."

"Can we come in?" he vaguely heard Oliviana ask. He had to stop himself from recoiling when he felt her hand take him by the elbow.

"Oh, yes, yes, of course," Alessandra said, and they were ushered in. Heero was hurried over to the kitchen and shoved in a chair. Rather unceremoniously, he had to note. Already the migraine was beginning to back off a little bit, and he slumped in relief as the worst of it subsided.

The pain backed down enough to pay attention to his surroundings again, Heero realized it was eerily quiet. He looked up at the two women. "What?" he asked.

"They're getting worse still?" Alessandra asked.

"Definitely more frequent," Oliviana replied, with obvious concern in her voice that was mirrored by the grim expression on her face. Heero was sorry to have his pain erase her excitement.

"I can just go home," he said. "I don't want you to worry about me—"

"I have a suit for you too," Alessandra said.

Heero blinked and stared at her for a moment. He ran the words back in his head to try and make sense of them, but it seemed like he heard her correctly. "You have a suit for me?"

"Of course I do," Alessandra said, looking at him like she thought he was stupid, which was a very real possibility. "You didn't think I'd go to all this work to put Oliviana in a glorious gown, fit for the MET red carpet and then let you… what, rent a suit?"

Maybe if his head hurt less and he were in a better mood, he'd find her horror at the possibility of him doing something so faux pas as renting a suit to wear to the MET Gala quite funny. He may not really care about this fashion stuff the way Oliviana did, but he wasn't so oblivious that he didn't know how embarrassing that'd be for her.

"I assumed Oliviana would pick out a suit for me," he admitted, trying to ignore the throbbing behind his eye.

"I did," Oliviana said, almost guiltily. "I just didn't pick you something off-the-rack."

"You're going with her. If you're not going to make a statement yourself, then you should be a beautiful frame for hers," Alessandra said, using the exact same tone she did to argue with professors she thought were patently stupid. An eager gleam came into her eye. "Unless you do want to make your own—"

"No," Heero interrupted flatly. Statements were for people who cared about this stuff. He was going to be there because Oliviana wanted him to, and he wanted to be able to share something that meant so much to her with her. He didn't want to be in the spotlight.

Alessandra sighed, obviously disappointed. "Ah, well, it was worth a shot."

"Does anyone actually care what the guys wear unless it's a dress?" Heero asked, the throbbing making him a little irritable.

Alessandra and Oliviana trade a look then had to shrug. "It depends on the theme, but most of the time, not really," Alessandra admitted. "But we'd still like you to be a lovely complement to her. I want to show off my range and I want you to both look stunning together." She glanced between them pointedly, then conceded, "Not that the two of you ever look anything less."

"Thanks," he replied dryly.

She shrugged again. "If I tell you that you're anything less than gorgeous, you'll know I'm lying. But I don't want you two to be your ordinary levels of beautiful. I want you to be a spectacle that people will talk about for months."

Heero would greatly prefer not to be a spectacle. Suddenly the idea of a rented tuxedo seemed a very appealing way to fade into the background.

Then again, with his luck, he'd somehow end up as a meme for the guy who dared wear a rented tux to the MET Gala. He was probably better off sucking it up and just caving to Alessandra's heavy hand.

"Do you need water? I have the basics as far as painkillers go, though nothing stronger than Excedrin," Alessandra offered, sounding at least a little bit concerned.

He shook his head—slowly, with great care—but although the pain still throbbed behind his eye, it was mostly irritating at this point. "I'll be fine," he said, pushing to his feet. "So are we actually here to let Liv have a fitting at all, or was this all for my benefit?"

"Oh, I actually do have a basic form that I want Oliviana to try on for me. But mostly, you're here for you. She was able to give me your general sizes, but this is a tailored look, and I want it to fit you like a glove."

"Are you sure you're okay?" Oliviana asked, a frown still marring her brow. He stood and reached over, pressing a thumb to the furrow.

"It's not a full migraine," he said, assessing the discomfort honestly. "Just a nuisance. I'll lay down when we get home." For the smaller headaches, sometimes the best medicine was just rest.

Alessandra began to walk further into the house, then turned and glanced them. "Coming?" she asked pointedly.

Heero motioned for Oliviana to go first. There was a pinched look still around her eyes that he didn't like and desperately wished he hadn't put there, but there wasn't a lot he could do about it. At least not at the moment. They followed Alessandra up to the top floor where her personal studio was.

Easily two dozen mannequins for draping and displaying were set up around the room, most of them with either completed works or works in progress on them. A wall was dedicated to shelves of cloth, as if Alessandra had her own personal shop in her home. Three different types of sewing machines were set up, not that Heero had any idea of what the different machines did or why Alessandra needed three when surely one could do, but she had three. Two large dormers let in copious amounts of light, and sketches and swatches were tacked up on nearly every available surface. Heero had to wonder if her father had any actual idea as to how much time and energy Alessandra put into her "hobby," given that the attic space was a space he thought many an aspiring fashion-ist-person would kill for.

Laid out over a large white table was pieces of what looked like a black suit. He looked at it, then at Alessandra, raising an eyebrow in a silent question.

"Yes, yes," she said dismissively, grabbing the pieces and revealing that it did, indeed look like parts of clothing, not just pieces of fabric held together. She walked to him and said, "I know it's black, but the theme of the event is Life and Death, and you're both going to be both, so, black for the base is appropriate. Now strip."

He waited for her to tell point him at a bathroom or a screen or a curtain, but glancing around, he didn't see any of them. "Do I need to go downstairs to change?" he asked.

She rolled her eyes. "No, just strip." When he didn't move, she sighed. "I'm not going to be ogling you. I am going to get all up in your junk to make sure these pants fit you exactly right, so unless you decided to go commando today, you may as well just strip here."

Glancing over at where Oliviana had set herself down on a stool, he said, "May as well?"

"May as well," she agreed, a little bit of her enthusiasm coming back. "Alessandra's more likely to ogle me than you."

He'd forgotten about that. Sighing, but not really bothered—Heero really didn't have much in the way of body shame—he started with slipping his jacket off before unbuttoning his shirt.

When he pulled off the shirt, Oliviana wolf-whistled at him, which always caught him off guard. "I don't know, Less," Oliviana said. "Heero might be an exception."

Alessandra snorted. "You know I'm all about beautiful hair, pretty faces, and eyes," she said, taking Heero's jacket and shirt from him in no-nonsense fashion, holding out a buttondown to replace it for a moment before pulling it back. "Actually, pants off first. I threw the shirt together and I don't want you to risk ripping it apart if you bend too much."

"Heero has two of those three."

Humming in agreement, Alessandra replied, "He also has a dick. I'm afraid that's a dreadful turn-off." She turned to look at Oliviana. "And why are you trying to sell me on your fiancé anyway?"

Oliviana gave her a smile. "Because I have excellent taste."

"Or you want a threesome," Alessandra said.

Heero almost tripped as he tried to step out of his pants. Alessandra's hand on his arm to help steady him was not especially appreciated under the circumstances.

Or maybe it was. This might be more embarrassing if he faceplanted, but it might also derail this conversation.

"I didn't know you knew how to blush, Yuy," Alessandra commented as he handed her his pants. When he straightened, he saw her staring at his crotch.

"Are you sure you're not interested?" Oliviana teased.

Blinking as if startled, Alessandra looked at her. "What?" She looked back at what seemed to be Heero's crotch, then back seemed to realize what she was doing. "No!" she blurted, with enough honest distaste that Heero thought she was being sincere. "It's just… I didn't realize you'd been shot, that's all."

It made Heero remember the scar on his thigh, and he twisted to see it better himself. "I always forget about that," he admitted.

"You've got… more," Alessandra said, all the teasing and amusement gone from her voice now.

"He was a Preventer before he lost his memory," Oliviana reminded her, but caution crept into her voice.

Alessandra frowned, looking down at it again. Heero thought he'd rather she were just ogling him. Staring at a scar he had no memory of, no history behind, somehow felt oddly more invasive than an intimate touch would. "Do Preventers get shot that much?" she asked in an almost timid voice that Heero had never heard her use.

"I don't remember," Heero said, sharp and short enough to make her flinch. His migraine was growing again. "If we have to do this today, can we get it over with?" he demanded, far more harsh than he usually was, but the pain tended to make him a little more blunt than usual.

"Right," she said, not quite an apology, but Alessandra wasn't the type to apologize anyway. "So, do you need help stepping into these? Be careful, I still have pins in them."

"Why am I trying on something that still has pins in it?" he asked, despite the probably futile question.

"They should mostly be on the outside," Alessandra reassured. "I wouldn't want you to get blood on the fabric anyway."

Right, because that was Heero's greatest concern, getting blood on the fabric.

"Maybe I should try mine first?" Oliviana suggested.

Heero shook his head. "I'm already undressed, might as well get it done with." He could almost hear someone's voice in the back of his mind, almost strained to hear the words that whispered in his memory. He resisted the urge, knowing that the migraines that came from trying to follow those echoes, trying to hear what they were saying, were usually some of his most debilitating.

"… gave you…"

The lights seemed suddenly bright and searing, and he leaned on the table heavily to let Alessandra help him into the pants, without a single pinprick, though he wasn't sure how. The shirt followed next, and he closed his eyes, doing the buttons by touch memory rather than by sight. He moved to automatically tuck it in, when Alessandra's voice stopped him.

"Don't," she said. "I'm custom making the shirt—you won't be tucking it in."

He nodded, fumbling for the cuffs only to find no buttons.

"I've got some cufflinks for you. No buttons," she said, stepping away. "Damn it. They're downstairs. Hold on just a moment." Her heels clacked on the old wooden floors and then down the steps.

Heero kept his eyes closed.

"Heero?" Oliviana asked softly, an inquiry, a check-in.

Stomach beginning to twist, Heero said, "I'll go lay down as soon as my fitting's done. Sorry I can't stay to watch you—"

"No, of course. It's fine. You'll get to see it sooner or later," she reassured.

Alessandra's steps came back up the stairs, and she spoke before touching him. "I've got them," she said, letting him know where she was, even though he'd been tracking the sound of her footsteps. "I'm going to put them on, okay?" she asked.

"It's fine," he said, wishing his voice wasn't so tight, not liking how it betrayed his pain. It was pain he didn't even understand, pain he hated.

The fitting goes by in a professional blur before he's dressed back in his own clothing.

"I'll just go downstairs and lay down," he managed to say.

Oliviana was at his side. "Let's get a cab and head home," she said.

He tried to shrug her off. "No, it's fine—"

"It's very clearly not fine," she said. Her voice only raising a hair, but it was enough to make him double over in pain.

"Do I need to call an ambulance?" Alessandra asked, but her voice seemed distant.

"I just need to lay down," he ground out. "You need to do your fitting—"

"The fitting can wait," Oliviana said, her voice lowered to that perfect, soothing tamber.

"Of course," Alessandra said, loud, painful, far too much. His stomach roils.

"Less, can we borrow your spare room to let Heero lay down?" Oliviana asked, careful to keep her voice at that particular even level. "He can't walk, and if we try to put him in a cab right now, he's going to be sick."

"Yes. Yes, of course."

Heero lost track of them while Oliviana helped him down to a room. She helped him lay down, then rushed to close the drapes and darken the room as much as possible.

The bed dipped as she sat on the edge. "That better?" she asked.

"A little?" he managed to say, but it sounded more like a question. He didn't mean for it to be that honest. "Sorry to interrupt your fitting."

"What? No," she said quickly. "It's…" she ran a hand over the back of his, which was about all the touch he could stand at the moment. "You have nothing to apologize for. I'm sorry we triggered one."

The odd phrasing made him risk opening his eyes and look up at her. Her thumb played over the back of his hand, but her gaze was distant. "Triggered?"

Her shoulders rise and fall but he doesn't hear a sigh. "The neurologist didn't find anything physically wrong," she said. "So if it isn't physical, it must be mental. Anytime your past comes up, you get debilitating migraines. Whatever your mind is protecting you from… it means business."

"I hate it," he said in a small voice. "What did I do that was so awful?"

She looked down at him. "Why do you think you did something?" she asked. "It's just as likely—maybe even more so—that something happened to you as anything."

He closed his eyes again, trying to twist his head up to look at her even that little bit made his head swim. "It's just a feeling," he said. "I… just don't think I was a very good person."

"I don't believe that," Oliviana said, barely more than a whisper. "You're good, Heero. You are."

He wanted to believe her, but he didn't know if he could. How horrible could his past be that his mind felt this was worth protecting him from it?

Relena's phone rang just as she was about to step into an indulgent bath.

"Don't do it," Dorothy said from the bed where she was curled up with her book.

Rather than answering her, Relena leaned over and grabbed the phone, surprised to see Duo's face on the phone. She flashed the screen at Dorothy, triumphant, and answered it. "Duo! It's so good to hear from you."

"Hey, Princess. Hope I didn't catch you in the middle of anything," he said.

"No, no, not at all," she said, sitting on the bed. Dorothy gave her a pointed look, and Relena made a shooing motion at her. "What can I help you with?"

She could hear his smile in his voice when he said, "Is it so predictable that I only called because I need something?"

"What? No!" she said.

"He who doesn't like lying doesn't really like being lied to either," she said in a singsong voice.

Relena covered the phone and said, "I'm not lying!"

"Lena?" Duo's voice came through the phone.

"Here!" she assured. "And it's not that you only call when you need something, it's just…"

He chuckled softly, not like he used to laugh, but hearing any laugh at all was a relief. "It's just that I only call when I need something," he said.

She opened her mouth to try to tell him no, that's not true, but her thoughts went to the last time Duo called that had been truly social, and it was before the Jackson-Stryker Building fell. It was before Heero left all of their lives, and she was afraid that mentioning that would be worse than confirming he lie in his words.

"I'm sorry to be doing it again," he said, and he sounded like he meant it, a little more like his old self. "Do you happen to still have that suit I wore when I escorted you to the MET Gala stashed somewhere?"

Relena blinked for a moment before the words registered. "I'm sure I do." She looked at Dorothy. "Do you think we still have Duo's MET Gala suit?"

"As if I would have trusted Maxwell to take care of that suit," she replied with a snort. "Yes, we still have it. It's at the New York apartment."

"It's at the New York apartment," Relena told him. "What do you need it for, if I may ask?"

"Oh," Duo said, sounding a little abashed. "I, uh, might be going this year, again. Stark invited me."

"That's wonderful!" she said, then turned to Dorothy. "Duo's going to the MET Gala with Stark."

"Keeping it in the family this time, Maxwell?" Dorothy called, loud enough to carry to Duo. He laughed, more like his old self, and Relena's heart loosened.

"Tell Dot that he's single if she needs a date."

"He may be, but she is not," Relena chided gently. "But we are going to the Gala this year, and I'm almost certain that Dorothy will have Aaron burn that suit before she lets you wear it on another red carpet."

"You know me so well, darling."

"C'mon, Princess. It's not a big deal."

"Is he protesting?" Dorothy asked, setting her book down, giving up pretending she wasn't eavesdropping. "Put it on speaker. Really."

"Hold on," Relena told him, pulling the phone away and turning it on speaker.

"Maxwell," Dorothy began, drawling out his name, "you know you're my favorite pilot, but you're going to a MET Gala with Tony Stark. I will make you go naked before I let you wear a used suit."

"I've worn it exactly once!" Duo protested. "And I told you to donate it, I just know you well enough to guess you hadn't."

"One does not donate bespoke suits, Maxwell," Dorothy said in her most haughty voice.

"But you won't let me use said bespoke suit," Duo pointed out.

"Not to the same event twice, I won't," Dorothy agreed, as if it were the most obvious and rational thing imaginable. Relena had to repress a laugh. "If you were attending as someone's bodyguard again, I'd consider it, but you're not. You're attending with Tony fucking Stark, and you're going to have more than half the earthsphere's attention on you. You won't be doing it in a merely nice suit. For the love of God, Maxwell, this year's theme is Life and Death. You can't honestly tell me you're not going to take advantage of that?"

There was a sense of a sigh, and Duo said, "It's just a… hoity-toity thing," he said.

"I hate to intrude, Duo, but I have to agree with Dorothy. Besides, it'll be the ideal opportunity to go wild."

"What? With a white sheet and playing the part of a ghost."

"Please," Dorothy said sarcastically. "You know some lowbrow comedian is going to do that. You can do better than that."

"I'm thinking agreeing to go was a mistake."

"Well, now you've not only agreed, you've told us you're going. I'm not letting you back out," Dorothy said pointedly.

"Fine," Duo said with exaggerated patience. "If you're so brilliant, why don't you tell me what I should do? Especially since you won't let me wear a perfectly fine, custom suit."

Dorothy sat up and actually set her book aside, and Relena had to smile, knowing they were going to be at this for a while.

Ah, well. Hearing Duo sound like himself again for the first time in years was more relaxing than any bath could be.