Disclaimer: Sailor Moon belongs to Naoko Tekuechi and DiC and Gundam Wing belongs to Sotsu, Bandai, Sunrise, and anyone else that I am unaware of or did not mention.
As always, credit goes towards DevilsDarling, Usagi Asia Maxwell, Lady Artemis, and Autumn Hime for the editing of the chapter below. ^______^
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Morning crept up to her with hope at hand. The desperate kind. The type of hope one clings to even when one knows her dreams are falling apart around her in a confused mixture of tinkling glass and glimmering shards. How many mornings had she woken up this way? Feeling as if she should cry but just couldn't?
Lying there and staring up at the sun-streaked ceiling, she resigned herself to thought. Whatever did she do wrong to deserve this kind of fate? She closed her eyes mournfully and wondered back to the time when she and Hiiro had first, truly met.
Geometry. A.k.a. her worst class this year. She heaved a sigh of distaste before sinking into her chair and picking out her homework from the messy stack of papers shoved haphazardly into what might have passed for a binder half a year ago.
"All right, class, we'll check the proofs first. Miss Tsukino, how many steps did you get for the first problem?"
Usagi scowled darkly at the teacher. Why did he have to always pick on her?! "Five?" she squeaked, smiling uncertainly.
"Do you realize, Miss Usagi, that this proof was not possible with anything less than fourteen steps?" His voice was pleasantly nice, instantly alerting the danger alarms in her mind.
She glanced at him nervously, wondering whether or not that was a rhetorical question. "No?"
"That was a rhetorical question." She had guessed wrong. Again.
"Mr. Yui. How did you complete this proof?" The professor turned and smiled adoringly at his best student.
"First step is the given. Then Angle Addition Postulate to come up with angles ABC and BDE..."
His voice droned on monotonously as the professor shot her pointed looks, obviously telling her this was what a real student was like. She tried to ignore him to the best of her ability and instead glared for all she was worth at Mr. Perfect Student. He just had to embarrass her every single day, didn't he? For once, could he not get a problem wrong? Likewise, could that monster of a professor not question her on a problem she got right?
While glaring at the back of his shirt, she saw him turn and smirk at her before receiving the teacher's praise with a straight face. Usagi narrowed her eyes and fumed.
One day, she was going to get him.
Was it not ironic that he had managed to get her? Letting a small pout touch her lips, she got up and traveled to the bathroom.
…………………
It was a nice day out – sunny with blue skies. She should be enjoying it like that couple holding hands, laughing, like that hotdog man in the corner, like that woman who had just dumped a can of soda down some poor defenseless man's shirt, like that girl tugging on … Hiiro's sleeve.
She blinked hard and did a sharp double take. So much for her theory that Hiiro had class on Thursday mornings. A smile automatically covered her face, hiding the frantic darting of her thoughts underneath the façade.
Taking shelter under a nearby willow tree, she glanced over at the two periodically. The, admittedly beautiful, couple had claimed a bench near her hiding spot and, from the looks of it, were talking. Duh.
A frown took residence on Relena's face before tears welled up in her eyes, resplendent under the effusive sunlight. Hiiro looked as guilty as Hiiro could ever have and placed a hesitant hand on the blonde Vice Foreign Minister's shoulder, speaking. Relena kept nodding her head at his statements. If the girl hadn't been interjecting a phrase here and there, Usagi would have thought she was barely listening.
Then, to the sound of children's laughter, she walked away from him briskly, one hand shading her face from the morning sun. Dark, oceanic eyes followed the departing figure before Hiiro, too, stood and strolled in the direction of the apartment, chin to chest.
Suddenly left with only her own thoughts, her mind filled with hypothetical scenarios of what had just happened. Arching her neck and leaning back onto the knobby trunk, she gently pushed the hanging tendrils of the aged willow and watched them sway to her touch. The sun's rays streamed through green leaves, dappling cool grass and ivory skin … Ever so slowly, she found herself drifting into dreamland…
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He glanced out the window at the gathering storm clouds and frowned to himself. Where the hell was Usagi?
All she had offered on her note to him was that she had gone to the park around nine-ish. The clock's solemn face displayed four o'clock p.m. to him. Was she at a friend's house? Shopping? But then again, more than once, she had "forgotten" to inform him of her whereabouts. Didn't she know he worried?
Grumbling about his roommate's irresponsibility, Hiiro grabbed his coat and exited via the door, wondering how many years this unnecessary concern was taking off of his life.
He instantly turned in the direction of the park and jogged there. Just as he arrived, a soft drizzle blurred his surroundings, forcing him to narrow his eyes as he scanned all the benches before disappointedly concluding that they were all empty.
Trees? …willow? Aha! Her favorite tree! Smirking at his own ingenuity, he half-jogged half-walked to the oldest tree in the park and found Usagi sleeping under the shelter of vine, mentally laughing at her predictability.
His eyes drank in the sight of her, noting the curled lashes and gentle rise and fall of her chest. They traveled to her cute nose and then downward to her slightly parted lips. Lips good enough to … He shook his head frustratedly and reluctantly moved to wake her.
Starting out with shaking her shoulder gently, a frown formed on his face as she didn't even stir. He shook it harder, and she, as if teasing him, turned over, moving her arm under her head as a makeshift pillow. Scowling, he yelled her name out loud but received no promising response. With narrowed eyes, he glared bleakly up at the dense foliage of slender leaves before suddenly remembering a time when Duo had joked about Usagi's sleeping habits. He frowned but then thought of the alternative choice – carrying her home – and grimaced.
Oh well. Worth a shot. "Pancakes," he stated, very not amused.
"With syrup," she mumbled in response, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. She pondered why the sheets of her bed had suddenly grown grass while yawning and studying the vast green underneath her. Hold on … this wasn't her room! And … come to think of it, Hiiro never made pancakes. Something about unhealthy and troublesome.
Cerulean eyes blinked harder as Usagi tried to clear off the fog clouding them. She looked up to met the smug face of the person just recently occupying her thoughts.
"Pervert!" she yelped, jumping back and holding her arms around herself. Bemused thoughts flew around in her mind as the impact of her back against a tree trunk registered in her groggy mind.
He glowered at her. "This is the park."
Eyes wide, she relaxed and uttered a deflated, "Oh."
"You're awake."
Briefly glaring at his sarcastic expression, she craned her neck to look around. "It's raining..."
"We sure are observant."
Anger running through her veins like venom, she smiled sweetly and batted her eyelashes, uttering a quick, "Who's we?" before jumping up and running off into the now pouring rain.
He started at her sudden movement as shock dulled his reflexes. "Hey!"
The still hardening rain poured down like cats and dogs and … BOOM! … abruptly turned into a thunderstorm. Past the not-so-gentle pattering of the drops of water, his sensitive ears detected a small shriek as he urged his legs to go more quickly.
Scared out of her wits, Usagi raced back in the direction she knew Hiiro was in and before long, the striking nineteen-year-old found himself being clung to by a whimpering girl dashing past the curtain of gray rain in a blur of color. He mentally sighed and tried to loosen her grip around his numbing arm but to no avail.
Frustrated, he warned, "If you don't let go right now, we're going to be staying outside in the rain, with the thunder for quite a while."
This triggered an instant reaction, and he soon felt his slowly reviving arm hanging limply at his side. He grimaced and shook it out before glancing back up at Usagi, eyes and heart softening.
Once glorious golden hair was rain-soaked and hanging limply in front of deep, jittery azure eyes and clinging to the curves of her pale face. Lips he had just previously been studying trembled in fear and the cold as her bare arms wrapped around her chest, not mitigating the bitter assault of the rain upon delicate shoulders. He sighed to himself and gently pulled her close, walking homewards.
Another bout of thunder followed the first and the girl within his tight embrace shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut, instinctively tightening her hold around him. He had to smirk before mentally rolling his eyes at his roommate's incessant fear of thunder and led her through the apartment door.
"I would take a shower if I were you," he advised offhandedly before walking into the only bathroom of the apartment and pressing the lock down with a click.
She stood outside of the bathroom, wide-eyed, as the sound of running water was heard over the distant drumming of the rain. Gritting her teeth and forming fists at her sides, she made a face at the closed door and, walking carefully so that the carpet escaped as much soaking as possible, she entered her bedroom and changed.
Wringing her long and wet hair out, she frowned and wondered how Hiiro could be so understanding and sweet one moment and absolutely horrid the next.
Must be a guy thing.
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Hiiro allowed the hot water to run over his body and closed his eyes ponderously, thinking. How was it possible for a person to fall asleep under a willow tree and not wake up for seven hours? Turning to rinse the shampoo out of his hair, he quickly concluded, Must be a girl thing.
Correction: Must be an Usagi thing.
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Grabbing a towel and wrapping it around his waist after drying his wet hair, Hiiro exited the bathroom and met the eyes of a glaring and expectant Usagi, shivering from the raindrops that had not yet evaporated.
"Cold?" he smirked before brushing past her and traveling towards his own room.
Fuming, Usagi stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door with an earth-shattering bang, mentally wondering if that ad she had written up a while ago on finding a new roommate had escaped the trash can…
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Dinner was a quiet and simple affair, as usual. The rain had subsided a bit and provided a soothing, natural background.
"I'm leaving this Saturday."
"Another business trip?"
"Hn."
She had learned by now that it was a waste of breath to comment on this brief reply.
A moment of silence followed before, "Relena already knows. If she happens to come by, you can either let her in or ignore her." His voice sliced through the silence before he got up and walked to the sink, dumping empty dishes in with a slight clatter.
Ah, so that was the reason behind Relena's tears. She had been foolish to believe otherwise. But then again, why would Relena cry over a simple business trip? Even she couldn't be that obsessed, right?
"I see."
"Goodnight," he mumbled before exiting.
The sound of his door closing reached her ears before Usagi echoed, in a whisper, "Goodnight."
She picked up her own dishes and decided to leave them in the sink for Hiiro to wash the next morning. Walking up the stairs, slowly taking them two at a time, she entered her room, not bothering to flip the lights on.
Crawling under the covers, she held still, listening to the rain outside and blindly staring out the window, streaked with water.
Hiiro's business trips are occurring more and more often her sleepy mind noted before heavy lids dipped over light blue, and she surrendered herself to slumber.
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Thanks for reading! Please leave a review or email me at angelight97@yahoo.com. Yours, Angel. ^_______^