Rating: PG-13
Pairing: 1xR
Category: General. Romance. Angst Lite.
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended, I'm not legal-suicidal. No profit being made, used and written for entertainment purposes only.
sometimes.
by d2ragnarok
Heero doesn't realise he's awake until he feels the gentle tug of arms and a low murmur, offering quiet comfort. He turns his head, eyes blind and uncomprehending to the person beside him. He isn't quite sure he understands what he's looking at. Every nerve in his body is thrumming, tense, coiled and ready to spring.
He doesn't understand. Where's the blood, the pain?
"It's okay," the voice is low with sleepiness, hands soothing along his arm. "It's only thunder. It's raining."
Oh. That's what that sound is.
Not gunfire, not explosions, not—
He allows himself to be pulled back into the comfort of warm bed sheets and blankets, feeling an arm settle over his chest and a body pressing close, alive, warm, a breathe skittering along his throat. There are fingers in his hair, caressing his scalp.
He feels his body relax a fraction.
"You're okay, Heero. I'm here. Feel that? That's my heartbeat. Listen to that."
Heartbeat...
He pulls Relena closer. In his head, there's still explosions in the sky and a young girl with her puppy and Gundams and guns and five fifteen-year-old boys who aren't really boys...
He closes his eyes and wills the images away, losing himself to the reassuring sound of someone still alive.
&&&
It takes him nearly a month to get used to sleeping in a bed with someone else. Other instances have made him anxious, knowing that he can't bridle his defences, even in sleep—especially in sleep. Heero frowns unconsciously, pensive. The one-time incident with Maxwell during wartime proved that Heero was incapable of sharing a bed (and how he managed to get talked into it still eludes him, although he acknowledges that Maxwell's doe-eyed stare probably had something to do with it).
Heero could wake now without tensing so hard that it feels as though his muscles would lock and without his hand snaking up instantly to his Glock—tucked between the mattress and headboard. This actually brings him a smug sense of accomplishment, because he distinctly remembers Winner teasing him about how Maxwell ended up in a coma as well as a concussion.
If that isn't some sort of miracle, as Maxwell so claims on occasion (despite that he isn't particularly religious, appearances notwithstanding), then Heero isn't sure what category it falls under. Other than 'Miracle' his favourite phrase 'Mission Successful' seems a bit inadequate at this point.
Her face is pale when masked with sleep, like porcelain or white wax. Heero often finds his eyes moving, despite knowing the pointlessness of the act, over the contours of Relena's sleeping face. Again. He does it sometimes when he wakes up, studying the curves and lines without a purpose behind the action.
He thinks of it as stupid and unnecessary. Sometimes.
But Heero still finds his hand tracing the underside of her jaw.
&&&
Relena leaves half-empty glasses forgotten on the coffee table in the living room, smudges of lipstick giving away the perpetrator. Beads of condensation slide down to leave circular marks on the table's surface. He often wipes the wetness with his palm and absently rubs it away on his jeans. When he goes to the kitchen to deposit the glass in the sink, Relena's often there scratching her head in wonderment over the misplaced glass.
She never remembers to turn off the bathroom light when she comes to bed, leaving him to wake in the mornings to find a yellow glow underneath the doorway in the dim hallway—which usually prompts him to fall into identify-threat-and-remove-if-necessary mode. He hadn't understood why she'd gotten so flustered when he kicked the door down the first time this happened. After all, regardless that they were in a relationship, his first priority is to insure her safety—and half asleep as he was, he had been on automatic pilot. He saw a possibility of a threat and neutralized it before it had a chance to escalate into anything serious. Maxwell had found the incident amusing when Relena related it to him at a Christmas party last year, as did Winner, though neither commented on it since Heero had glared them to silence. He doesn't see what was so funny.
Relena always has a cup of water at her bedside, one she never drinks out of. When he comments on it being a waste of time, she replies that her father often left her a cup of water when she was younger because she had been terrified of the dark. Heero doesn't understand that logic. How could one be scared in a home that assures one's safety? He thinks of assassins and rebels with death threats, and concludes Relena had been aware of the danger around her. He drinks out of the cup instead when he arises each morning. Relena complains, though it's but token objection. He knows this because she smiles each and every time she turns away after making a show of her grumpiness. Sometimes, when he watches her do that, he feels a strange clench and unclenching in his chest; a compression he can't comprehend. He puzzles over it on occasion, as there's nothing physically wrong with him.
She has the left side of the closet, but sleeps on the right side of the bed. He often wakes to find her curled next to him, face soft and blank in sleep. Sometimes, he wants to pull her closer; other times, he wishes she would just sleep on her side. She rises from bed five minutes after the alarm goes off, never before or after. Heero's usually up a full hour earlier to go through her schedule, calling up the bodyguards who would be on duty for this event or that, and double-checking his security parameters though he knows that no one will get through his details in anything short of a tank or mobile suit, or both.
He's usually in the kitchen making coffee when Relena finally comes down, dressed in a conservative ensemble, chestnut hair pulled back with a hair clip, scanning the daily headlines in the newspaper he leaves for her in the bedroom. On her days off, she chews on the end of the pen when she does the crossword, muttering to herself. But on her days on the job, she only reads enough to know what's going on in the world. They discuss things quietly over breakfast, her foot touching his beneath the table, occasionally rubbing his inset with her toes when he makes a deadpan comment that she finds funny. She drinks coffee two sugar and one cream, sipping carefully while she goes over her day's schedule in her palm pilot. Relena gives him a quick kiss every time before she leaves to start her day without fail, bodyguards already awaiting her arrival in the main foyer.
It's the little everyday things like that that fascinate him. The rituals, the quirks, even the things that seem to serve a purpose that's just beyond his understanding, like the brief kisses goodbye. It's alien. Heero doesn't understand needless gestures like that, and though he tries to there are times when it needs no explanation or outline, it just feels nice. Sometimes. He doesn't know when he started returning the kisses, probably when he stopped thinking that the light under the bathroom door was an assassin.
&&&
He touches her sometimes.
His hands are unhurried with a gentleness he hadn't thought himself capable of, watching them ghost over her bare skin with a detached sense of wonder. She feels warm and soft, body made up of curves and dips that feel strange against his hands, for when has he ever dealt with anything other than unyielding metal or machinery? When his hand slips over her waist to the small of her back, she arches against him. It jolts his skin when their bodies come into contact. He touches, she reacts. Sometimes, when he holds her like he does now, he feels that he could never tire of that realisation. When he touches her, something seems to come alive in his body.
Her legs curl around his hips, thighs tense in anticipation as his hand eventually drifts down between them, and she lets out a hot jagged breath against his ear when he presses into her. Her arms tighten around his torso, face buried in his neck. It doesn't cease to amaze him, how she just seems to meld into his frame during this intimate act.
She whispers his name when they move together. He responds by touching her.
&&&
Things are not always this way, however.
Failure, even in the beginning, was something that he expected and waited for. It became clear to him that he had involved himself in something more when he stopped going to his Spartan apartment to stay the night in Relena's guestroom—where he usually did go after having a late dinner while going over tomorrow's agenda. There was some lingering sensation that he couldn't identify when he was in Relena's presence—that detached part of himself that tries to break through the iron wall he built around himself, and at one point it did, but only for a moment. He stopped sleeping in the guestroom, as he suspected he would, and had complicated the definition of their friendship. But he hadn't minded, because Relena had been happy. Then, at least.
Relena stopped smiling a few weeks ago, save for that cultivated smile of the pacifist meant for the public and other functions. Heero doesn't know what to do to bring it back.
In the beginning, he'd already unfolded and mapped out the eventual outcome of their relationship. Relena means something to him, but he's unsure of how to define her to himself. She's more of an enigma to him than her intentions towards him.
Eventually, everything unravels like cords supporting a weight too heavy to bear. The kisses goodbye stops first. It had been the first sign, but Heero chooses to keep his silence, yet there are times when he finds himself almost missing the gesture, like missing a customary move in a workout—everything seeming weird and out of place without it. Routine, perhaps. Their intimate moments become far and in between, as Relena begins spending more and more time working. She's so exhausted at the end of the day that she doesn't even think about dinner, she just trudges upstairs and all but passes out on the bed.
He holds her when she curls up to him, and as her breathing begins to follow a deep and soothing rhythm, he wonders why the embrace feels so empty. Relena seems but a doll in his arms, lifeless and unreal. He tightens his arms around her and tries to hear her heartbeat, feeling again that unfamiliar clenching and unclenching in his chest.
How far until the end?
&&&
Heero wakes up every morning at 0600 hours—with an apparent disregard for how many hours he actually spends asleep—to check over security related issues about Relena's daily agenda and arrange the bodyguard details accordingly. But on Saturdays he allows himself an extra hour of sleep, because apart from the fact that people think of him to be the Perfect Soldier he's still biologically human. Until he could figure out how to set the oven clock and function without sleep, he would concede the ridiculous title. The toll his everyday routine took on his body would make itself known when he burns out like an overheated wire in an MS and shoots someone out of reflex, which is an incident he'd rather avoid.
He is not a machine, as Relena often tells him. Though, it must be admitted, it took nearly three years for that concept to sink in.
So when he stirs from sleep to find the bed empty save for himself, his gut reaction is to grab his Glock and sweep the mansion to find her. It takes exactly one minute to quash the sudden rush of alarm and the paralysing thought that she could be lying dead somewhere. Heero realised very early on that he doesn't like waking to find Relena already gone to begin her day. There's some comfort in knowing that at the very moment he opens his eyes she's right there. Relena is secure in his presence. That's all he needs to start his day off on a positive note. When she isn't it triggers his innate paranoia and makes him nervous, which is a feeling that he doesn't like every much. He doesn't know whether this was a norm between couples, but given the fact that Relena is The Face of Peace (capitalization intended, because that's the way it sounds to him when people say it), there are still certain kinds of people who would rather see her dead, and he thinks that reason alone justifies his paranoia quite thoroughly.
Heero dresses quickly, pulling on a pair of worn fatigues and tugging on a rumpled t-shirt to cover the firearm tucked into the back of his pants. A minor precaution, he tells himself as he leaves the bedroom for the kitchen—it's the most logical start to a search party.
One hallway, a staircase, and a couple of rooms later, Heero relaxes as much as he's capable of (which is to say that his hand stops twitching for his Glock) when he finally detects the scent of eggs. While Relena's incapable of cooking anything decently, she seems to have a knack for eggs. Heero rarely lets her cook anything else, seeing as how Relena could burn soup. She often protests that it only happened once, but it "only happened once" because he doesn't trust her to be left alone anywhere near a kitchen for an extended period of time. He almost misses the servants. At least they could insure that Relena doesn't accidentally poison herself when Heero isn't around.
Relena hovers over the stove, dressed in striped flannels and a white top, hair piled atop her head with one of those hair-claw things that it looks about as attractive as a rat's nest. Heero feels a huge wave of simple affection at the sight of her scruffy appearance, a feeling that comes from that detached part of himself that he keeps locked away in a box. He finds that he doesn't really feel threatened by it. Relena is eying the eggs with her full concentration, poking the yokes with her spatula. A small smile manifests itself on his face and seems set on staying there, but the feeling doesn't last long. The moment his foot drags across the kitchen floor as he steps towards her, she spins around with the spatula in front of her as though it were a weapon of mass destruction.
He raises a sardonic eyebrow at that. "A butter knife would have sufficed as a better weapon than a spatula."
Relena lets out a nervous laugh. "You startled me," she says in lieu of apology. She waves the spatula towards the small dining table that Heero insisted they buy. He hadn't seen the point of having their meals in an oversized room with an oversized table when there were just the two of them. They would have to talk loudly than they normally would just to be heard.
"I'll cook some more eggs for you. Did you want coffee? I made some."
Indeed, there's a steaming pot sitting in the coffee maker. It looks particularly inviting at the moment. Heero walks over as if pulled by a string and pours himself a cup, leaning against the counter and tucking his left hand under his armpit. He takes a careful sip—and suddenly Heero remembers why he makes the coffee around here. He promptly spits it back out into his cup, choking.
Relena's head snaps up. "Are you okay?"
"Yes. Too strong," Heero mutters when he could, turning to dump a load of sugar into his cup.
"Oh," her voice drops a notch in volume, almost inaudible. "Sorry."
"Don't be," he replies, trying to sound easygoing but failing horribly as his voice comes out flatly. "How many cups does it usually take me to wake up again? Two?"
"Three," Relena says firmly and without hesitance, smiling though it's a watered down version of her usual ones. A smile, nonetheless, one that he feels proud of have brought about.
He nods, somehow pleased about that. Maybe he isn't the only one who observed and noted the other's routines. "Well, this pot will only take me one cup. It's much more efficient." He takes another sip, careful not to let the inward cringe at the over-excessive bitterness show on his face. The sugar hasn't helped one bit.
"Mmmm," he manages.
Relena snickers. "You're the worst liar in the world, Heero."
"You're right," Heero agrees with a brief grimace and turns to dump his cup's contents in the sink.
He makes a new pot of coffee, while Relena finishes preparing the eggs and toast, quietly setting up their respective dishes and forks. It's the nervousness that worries him first, though its appearance is brief in the beginning now it's magnified tenfold by her silence. There are lines of tension in her body, but he chooses not to comment on this.
He doesn't want to know what it means.
When he sets down their coffee mugs with freshly brewed coffee, she still hovers back and forth between the refrigerator and the table, as though at an indecision over what to do. Relena ends up refilling the salt and pepper shakers, though neither of them were close to being empty. Heero puzzles over her behaviour, but instinctively knows that there's something tangible and important in the air.
He takes her hand when she moves off to find the ketchup.
"What's wrong?" he asks quietly, frustrated that his voice comes out emotionless when he's actually concerned.
"Heero…" Relena all but flops down gracelessly onto her chair, biting her lower lip, and her eyes dart everywhere but at him. "Sometimes…" she swallows, closing her eyes.
Then she opens them to stare him in the eye, but this is the politician's face. That stings Heero more than the non-smiles and the evasiveness.
"We need to talk," she says.
&&&
He moves out of her room that day, but moves out of her mansion a week later to an apartment some thirty-minutes away. It's the closest he could find under such short notice and concludes it to be adequate accommodations. Two bedrooms, one could be converted to an office if he so wishes, but it would prove to be too time-consuming, so Heero leaves it as it is.
She had begun crying when she told him that she wanted to break it off, since things weren't working out quite so well between them. It had confused him, since she was the one breaking up with him. Wasn't he supposed to be the one feeling betrayed and hurt? He didn't feel anything when she told him, just assessed whether or not this would affect his performance as her bodyguard and concluded that it wouldn't. He'd still take a bullet for her—hell, probably even more.
No one deigns to comment on the sudden break (though Heero knows that the "breaking" had been happening long before even Relena noticed it), yet there seems to be some surprise when Heero doesn't resign as Relena's personal bodyguard or as her chief of security. Relena had expected it too and Heero realises how little she actually knows him. He had thought she knew that he would never let personal feelings get in the way of his chosen profession. If anyone, she should have known that he could lock away feelings behind an unbreakable wall without even blinking.
It offends him to have anyone think otherwise.
His purpose now is to maintain the fragile peace, and to do that, he has to be beside Relena. If people think he still harbours... feelings for her, let them stew over their delusions since it matters little to him.
Sometimes, though, he misses waking up to her heartbeat.
/ end /