Well, I would like to apologize to everybody who has been waiting for the next chapter of this little number. I know I've been terribly slow about getting it out. Right now I'm tripping merrily through the fandoms, which means that when my muse stops by, I can never be sure what I'm going to get out of her. But I finally managed to catch her and sit on her until I finished this. I hope you enjoy it.
Disclaimers: Gundam Wing and its characters do not belong to me. Warnings: shounen ai, language in later parts, Relena bashing? (I'm not trying to, but some people will hate her anyway.) Author's Notes: For those of you who care (which is probably very few of you), I've had to change the little scene break symbols because the evil site won't upload things like asterisks for some weird reason. Scene breaks will now look like this: /-/-/-/
Courtship Rituals
By Rapunzel
Chapter 4: Physical Appearances
"Duo, remind me. Why are we doing this again?"
"Practice," Duo answered easily as he maneuvered through the crowd.
Heero grunted in response as he hastily sidestepped to avoid colliding with a large bag being carried by a woman walking past them. He was immediately forced to jump to the side again in order to avoid hitting a young man walking the other direction. Gritting his teeth with annoyance, Heero doggedly made his way forward in an attempt to keep up with Duo. He was beginning to despair at ever being able to catch up with his roommate when he noticed that Duo had stopped a little ways ahead and was waiting for him under the relative shelter of a store front.
"I hate shopping centers," Heero grumbled when he'd finally reached the other.
"They're a necessary evil," Duo said with a shrug. "But you have to admit, they're a great place to run into people you don't know."
"Yeah," Heero muttered. "Literally." He was not in the most pleasant of moods at the moment. Being in crowds always made him rather edgy. Duo didn't seem to mind, but then crowds tended to have the opposite effect on him. Being surrounded by large numbers of people almost seemed to provide him with a sense of security, probably due in part to his ability to disappear easily into them. It was an ability that Heero lacked, and without it he felt nervous and tense, as if expecting to be attacked at any moment. Perhaps that was why Duo had brought him here, he mused, to help him get over that somewhat irrational feeling. Then he dismissed the idea; Duo wouldn't be so cruel.
"Come on," Duo said, taking him by the arm and steering him gently away from the store front and back out towards the flow of people. "Let's find a place to sit down."
Once they had secured a table at the food court and were out of the way of the river of people flowing around them, Heero felt more at ease. He even felt emboldened to ask, "So what exactly are we here to practice?"
Duo gave him a mischievous smile. "A skill you possess very little of right now: the ability to talk to women."
Heero frowned at him. "I can talk to women. I've talked to Relena."
Duo's smile didn't falter, and he didn't look put out by the observation, but neither did he jeer at Heero for misunderstanding him. Instead, he said, "Let me rephrase that then. We're going to practice complimenting women. Because they do like to be complimented, you know."
Heero snorted. "Who doesn't?"
"Exactly," Duo said, beaming at him. "So you understand my reasoning. If you don't mind my saying so, Heero, your ability to give casual compliments is... um... well..."
Heero snorted. "Non-existent?" he supplied.
"Well, I wouldn't go that far, but it is somewhat lacking," Duo said, his smile looking a bit sheepish. "I'm not trying to say that you never say nice things to people, because you do, but... not all that often. Of course, then when you do, it's a big deal, and everyone knows that whatever you complimented them for must be really special, so I'm not saying it's entirely a bad thing, but... well, you get the point."
Heero nodded. "So where do we start?"
"Well," Duo said, "I was figuring that we could just wander around and see who we bump into. If we run into any women about our age, we can try the whole compliment thing out. You know, make a few complimentary remarks about their physical appearance or something. I'll demonstrate on a few first so you can get the idea, okay?"
"But what will the women think of this?" Heero wondered.
Duo grinned. "Why, they'll think we're flirting with them, of course, and technically, we will be. As for how they'll react, well, that'll depend on the woman. Some will probably high tail it, some will just smile and nod, but I'm betting that at least a few will flirt back."
"I thought you said we were practicing compliments, not flirting," Heero pointed out with a slight frown.
Duo shrugged that aside. "The two go hand in hand. Anyway, you really should learn both; flirting is a useful skill. Very handy in certain social situations. And it's another one of those skills you kind of... lack."
"And you have it," Heero said dryly.
Duo grinned at him. "Heero, my man, when I want to be, I am the king of flirting."
"And do you want to be?"
Duo paused, seeming rather taken aback by the question. His face grew more serious, but his tone was casual as he answered, "No, not really. Not most of the time, anyway." Then he seemed to shake off whatever mood had gripped him in that instant and he grabbed Heero's arm, hauling the other up out of his seat. "Well, let's get started, shall we? We won't accomplish anything if we just sit there all day."
And so Heero submitted and allowed himself to be towed around the shopping center. At first, he was rather skeptical about the efficacy of Duo's plan, but skepticism soon gave way to grudging admiration. He wouldn't have thought it possible to meet so many women in such a short space of time, but it seemed that Duo had spoken true when he had called himself the king of such things. He would select a woman at random, point her out to Heero, and then move in. Then he would start off with some small but gentlemanly gesture, be it holding a door open or getting something down from off a high shelf. From there, he would strike up a conversation and would inevitably throw in a casual comment on some aspect of the woman's appearance, be it her hair, her eyes, or the clothes and shoes she was wearing. A few of the women just smiled and thanked him and went on their merry way, but most of them reacted with much more enthusiasm. Some of the younger ones giggled, and almost all of them blushed slightly and began posturing, almost unconsciously making gestures designed to accentuate whatever feature he had complimented them on. For those ones, ending the conversation seemed to be the hardest part, but Duo managed it deftly enough. By the time an hour had gone by, he already had a few scraps of paper containing phone numbers.
"All right, Heero," he said at last, pausing to dump the paper slips into a nearby trash bin, "it's your turn."
It was the moment Heero had been dreading. He had tried to tell himself that it wouldn't be so bad (after all, Duo did it easily enough), but he kept on being brought up short by the cold reminder that this was Duo. He made everything look easy. However, it was too late to back out now, so Heero squared his shoulders and took the lead.
Alas, his forebodings proved well founded. He tried hard to follow Duo's strategy, but to no avail. The small, gentlemanly gesture was easy enough, but he had a lot of trouble striking up a conversation afterwards. His compliments always seemed to fall flat somehow, and he began to consider himself lucky if the women smiled and thanked him politely. Most of them simply shot him a nervous look and edged away.
"It's because your facial expressions are all wrong," Duo told him after one girl had practically run from him. "You're supposed to smile when you give them lines like that, not glower or look like you just swallowed a very bitter cup of poison."
"Hn," Heero snorted.
"All right," Duo said, running a hand through his bangs, "if you won't smile, at least try not to glare, okay? And maybe if you duck your head a little bit, they'll think you're just shy."
Heero glared, but decided not to bother voicing his opinions on the ridiculousness of associating the word "shy" with him. Instead he turned around and stalked off, searching for a new person to practice on.
Finally, it seemed as if his luck might turn. A small, rather pretty young lady with short brown curly hair had dropped one of her shopping bags and was now kneeling on the ground trying to collect all the various items that had spilled out of it. Duo took one look at her, then grabbed Heero by the shoulders and gave him a little shove. "Go on!" he said.
Reluctantly, Heero moved over and knelt down next to the woman to assist her. The bag had apparently contained an assortment of various scented candles and soaps, and Heero started grabbing items off the ground at random and handing them back to their agitated owner. The young woman had apparently been very flustered by the loss of her bag, and she was almost pathetically grateful for Heero's assistance.
"Thank you for helping me," she said, smiling shyly up at him after they had finished collecting the items and risen to their feet again.
"It was no trouble," Heero said automatically, having learned that that was the appropriate response in such situations. He desperately cast about for something to add before she got bored and wandered off like all the rest. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Duo making little encouraging gestures as discreetly as he could.
/What the hell,/ he thought desperately, /I might as well dive straight in./ "You know, you have very nice eyes," he heard himself saying.
To his surprise, the young woman blushed and ducked her head modestly. "Do you really think so?" she asked, looking back up and batting said eyes at him.
Heero felt a stirring of accomplishment. Finally, one of the women he had talked to was reacting the way she was supposed to. Encouraged, he made himself actually look at her eyes as they peered up at him from behind her glasses. They were a rather murky hazel color. "Yeah," he said, "they look like two muddy ponds."
Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Duo bang his head against a nearby wall.
The young woman's face changed rather abruptly. Her smile disappeared, and she looked both bewildered and angry. "Oh," she said simply before hefting her bag up and stomping off.
Heero turned and shot a confused glance at Duo, who rubbed his temples and said, "I think you need to work on this some more."
/-/-/-/
Heero sighed heavily. This was it. The dreaded Friday night. The time for him to prove himself had come. He swallowed hard, trying to convince his stomach to untie itself from the knot it was currently twisted into. He imagined that this was how a high school student must feel before a really big test. Of course, he wasn't entirely sure, since at the times he had attended high school, tests had been the last thing on his mind, but he had memories of his former school mates from the various boarding schools bemoaning their fates.
/"Oh, man, I'm so nervous I think I'm gonna throw up!"/
/"I just want to get this over with!"/
/"It can't be that bad, right? I mean, it's only worth 40% of our grade, right?"/
/"40%?! That's it, I'm going to the nurse! Maybe I'm running a fever and she'll let me leave early!"/
For a moment, Heero toyed with the idea of telling Relena he wasn't feeling well and had to cancel, but quickly dismissed the thought as cowardly. Now was his chance to prove that he had taken Duo's lessons to heart. He could do this, really he could. It wouldn't end like it had the last time. With that thought in mind, Heero squared his shoulders and knocked on the front door of Relena's house.
"Heero, how wonderful to see you!" Relena gushed as she opened the door. Again he noticed that Pagan was nowhere in sight, but told himself that those details were unimportant. He wasn't supposed to be focused on the surroundings, he was supposed to focus on Relena, and so he did.
"You look nice," he said.
"Really?" She gave him a thousand watt smile and twirled around for his inspection. "Do you like my dress?"
Heero's brows furrowed as he studied the clothing item in question. "It looks familiar," he said slowly.
Apparently that was the correct response, for Relena beamed at him all the more. "Yes! It's the dress I wore on the night of my birthday party all those years ago, the night I followed you to the docks, remember?"
Heero remembered. That was the night he had gone to destroy his Gundam and had ended up meeting Duo. And Duo had shot him. He remembered that part vividly.
Relena was still talking. "Of course, it's not the actual dress I wore then, that one got ripped up so I could bandage your wounds, but it's one just like it."
Heero nodded, still half lost in memories. Then he shook himself out of his reverie. "Shall we go?" he asked.
She seemed a little startled by the abrupt comment which had interrupted her reminiscing, but after a moment she smiled and nodded and reached out to take his arm, since he hadn't offered it to her. "Lead on," she said, shutting the door behind her.
They had barely left the safety of the front doorstep, however, when a sudden noise made Heero freeze and tense up. It started out as a sputtering sound, then continued as a hissing noise that steadily increased in volume. Instinctively, Heero leapt back, trying to pull Relena along with him, but she resisted his tugging. "Heero, what on earth is the matter with yo- aie!"
Her comment ended abruptly in a squeal as jets of cold water shot up from the lawn around her and drenched her suddenly. Heero, who had managed to back up all the way to the doorstep and had thus avoided getting wet, frowned. "It's a rather inconvenient time to have your sprinkler system go off, don't you think?"
Relena retreated to his position, looking very wet and very unhappy. "They're not supposed to go off for another several hours!" she protested. "Someone must have turned them on."
"But why turn on the sprinklers for no reason?" Heero asked logically. "What a waste of water."
"Is that all you can think about?" Relena cried incredulously. "I just got soaked!"
"I'm sorry," Heero answered. "I tried to get you out of the way. But no harm done. It's just water, and it's not so cold yet that you're in any danger of catching a chill."
"But my dress is ruined!"
The door suddenly opened, and Pagan was standing there with towels, one of which he handed to Relena. "Ms. Relena," he said in that calm, imperturbable manner he always adopted, "please come inside and dry off. I'm terribly sorry for what happened."
"Why are you apologizing?" Relena asked, gratefully accepting the towel and drying her face with it. "It's not like you were the one who turned on the sprinklers."
"No Ma'am, but I'm afraid that I'm at least partially responsible," Pagan informed her regretfully. "You see, I was the one who let slip to the gardener that Mr. Yuy would be stopping by tonight."
"The gardener?" Relena repeated, sounding surprised.
"Yes Ms. Relena, the gardener, who I believe still bears a slight grudge against Mr. Yuy."
Heero resisted the urge to groan aloud. He should have known that his previous screw up would find some way to come back and haunt him.
"Really," Relena said, looking angry, flustered, and altogether close to tears, "this is too much! She's ruined my date!"
"Now, Ms. Relena, don't be upset," Pagan soothed, placing another of the towels he carried around her shoulders. "I've already sent one of the maids up to your room to lay out another dress for you, and I believe that if you change quickly, you and Mr. Yuy may still make it on time for whatever events you had planned."
Relena sniffled a little, but managed a grateful smile. "Thank you, Pagan. Heero, would you like to come upstairs with me?"
Considering that the alternative was probably just to wait down in the entrance hall until she was ready, Heero agreed and trailed after her, noting absentmindedly that despite the towel wrapped around her, she was still leaving a dripping trail of water behind her. When she reached her room, she asked Heero to wait outside, but left the door open just a crack so that she could still talk to him.
"We won't be late because of this, will we?" she asked, her voice muffled by the panel of wood that separated them.
Heero glanced at his watch. "Not if we hurry."
From inside the room came the sound of rustling cloth. "I'm hurrying," Relena assured him.
Heero opened his mouth to answer, but whatever reply he might have made was cut off by a startled shriek, followed by a muffled thump.
"Relena?" Heero asked, startled. Pushing the door all the way open, he went inside. "Are you all right?"
Relena, who had evidently slipped on a spot of hardwood floor that had gotten wet, made an odd squeaking noise when he came in. She was sitting as she had landed, half sprawled on the floor, wearing her slightly damp underwear and nothing else. A red flush quickly covered her face, and she averted her eyes, ducking her head. Her reaction rather reminded Heero of the young woman he had talked with at the shopping center, and as he had in that case, he found himself saying the first thing that popped into his head.
"Relena, did you know that your breasts are slightly uneven?"
CRACK
/-/-/-/
"Boy, for a total pacifist, she sure hits pretty hard, huh?"
Heero grunted, but made no further reply, only pressing the icepack his roommate had supplied him with a little more firmly against his face.
"Not that you didn't deserve it, because you did," Duo went on. "I can't think what possessed you to say such a thing."
"You said to make remarks on physical appearances," Heero grumbled.
"Complimentary remarks," Duo corrected him firmly, sitting down on the couch next to him. "Telling a girl her breasts are uneven is defiantly not complimentary."
"Well, how was I supposed to know that?"
"Because if you ever look at the girls in magazine ads, none of them have uneven breasts," Duo answered.
"But no real woman can ever look like that, so why should she take it so hard that she doesn't?" Heero asked, confused.
Duo sighed. "Good question. But you're asking me to try and understand the way women think, which some would say is a hopeless endeavor for any man."
"Hn," was all Heero had to say to that. He readjusted his icepack again.
"Well, another date botched," Duo remarked. "Your track record so far hasn't been that great, so what do you say to maybe giving it a rest for the time being? Until you've had a little more practice or something," he suggested cautiously.
Heero stared at him. "Give up? Fail?"
"Now, don't think of it as failure," Duo said quickly, trying to placate him. "Think of it as time off to gather the necessary information to carry out the mission. Reconnaissance work and all that."
"We tried that," Heero pointed out. "It didn't work. Now I don't know what to do."
Duo looked unhappy. "I hate to say it, buddy, but after a slip-up like that, there's only one way you're gonna get back into Relena's good graces."
"How's that?" Heero asked, sensing that he wouldn't like the answer.
"Grovel," Duo said flatly. "Call her up tomorrow and beg for forgiveness."
He'd been right; he didn't like that answer at all. Still, he'd invested quite a bit of time and effort into this dating thing, and the thought of failure galled him. Dammit, he'd prove that he could interact socially if it killed him! Of course, he still needed a lot of help from Duo... That thought made him feel a wash of guilt. What a lot of trouble he was putting his friend through, and for little or no result.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly.
"Sorry?" Duo repeated, surprised. "For what?"
"For being such a poor student," Heero said. "It must seem like I'm just wasting your time."
The surprised look on Duo's face softened in to what could only be described as tenderness. "C'mere," he said, hooking an arm around Heero's shoulders and tugging him until he had laid the unbruised side of his face against Duo's shoulder.
"You're not a poor student," Duo said soothingly, keeping him within the one-armed hug. "These things just take time. I don't think Relena realizes how much time. And anyway," he added, resting his cheek against Heero's hair, "time spent with you is never wasted."
Heero found his lips twitching almost involuntarily into a small smile. Both the hug and Duo's words managed to warm him thoroughly, which he supposed was a good thing because the icepack had slipped off his face and landed in his lap when Duo had hugged him. Absently, he pushed it off and let it fall to the floor. Just for that moment, it didn't matter that his face hurt or that he had quite possibly wrecked his relations with Relena for the foreseeable future.
It ended all too soon for his tastes. Duo shifted slightly, then drew away, leaning down to retrieve the icepack from the floor. "Here," he said, handing it back to Heero. "You should keep that on your face. As it is, you're probably going to have a noticeable handprint there for a while."
Heero nodded slightly and put the icepack back against his face. He said nothing, but in his mind he replayed Duo's earlier words over again.
/"Time spent with you is never wasted."/
He smiled.
Tbc...
::blinks:: Wow, this chapter came out a little longer than expected. I hope it makes up at least partially for the long interlude between posts.
Disclaimers: Gundam Wing and its characters do not belong to me. Warnings: shounen ai, language in later parts, Relena bashing? (I'm not trying to, but some people will hate her anyway.) Author's Notes: For those of you who care (which is probably very few of you), I've had to change the little scene break symbols because the evil site won't upload things like asterisks for some weird reason. Scene breaks will now look like this: /-/-/-/
Courtship Rituals
By Rapunzel
Chapter 4: Physical Appearances
"Duo, remind me. Why are we doing this again?"
"Practice," Duo answered easily as he maneuvered through the crowd.
Heero grunted in response as he hastily sidestepped to avoid colliding with a large bag being carried by a woman walking past them. He was immediately forced to jump to the side again in order to avoid hitting a young man walking the other direction. Gritting his teeth with annoyance, Heero doggedly made his way forward in an attempt to keep up with Duo. He was beginning to despair at ever being able to catch up with his roommate when he noticed that Duo had stopped a little ways ahead and was waiting for him under the relative shelter of a store front.
"I hate shopping centers," Heero grumbled when he'd finally reached the other.
"They're a necessary evil," Duo said with a shrug. "But you have to admit, they're a great place to run into people you don't know."
"Yeah," Heero muttered. "Literally." He was not in the most pleasant of moods at the moment. Being in crowds always made him rather edgy. Duo didn't seem to mind, but then crowds tended to have the opposite effect on him. Being surrounded by large numbers of people almost seemed to provide him with a sense of security, probably due in part to his ability to disappear easily into them. It was an ability that Heero lacked, and without it he felt nervous and tense, as if expecting to be attacked at any moment. Perhaps that was why Duo had brought him here, he mused, to help him get over that somewhat irrational feeling. Then he dismissed the idea; Duo wouldn't be so cruel.
"Come on," Duo said, taking him by the arm and steering him gently away from the store front and back out towards the flow of people. "Let's find a place to sit down."
Once they had secured a table at the food court and were out of the way of the river of people flowing around them, Heero felt more at ease. He even felt emboldened to ask, "So what exactly are we here to practice?"
Duo gave him a mischievous smile. "A skill you possess very little of right now: the ability to talk to women."
Heero frowned at him. "I can talk to women. I've talked to Relena."
Duo's smile didn't falter, and he didn't look put out by the observation, but neither did he jeer at Heero for misunderstanding him. Instead, he said, "Let me rephrase that then. We're going to practice complimenting women. Because they do like to be complimented, you know."
Heero snorted. "Who doesn't?"
"Exactly," Duo said, beaming at him. "So you understand my reasoning. If you don't mind my saying so, Heero, your ability to give casual compliments is... um... well..."
Heero snorted. "Non-existent?" he supplied.
"Well, I wouldn't go that far, but it is somewhat lacking," Duo said, his smile looking a bit sheepish. "I'm not trying to say that you never say nice things to people, because you do, but... not all that often. Of course, then when you do, it's a big deal, and everyone knows that whatever you complimented them for must be really special, so I'm not saying it's entirely a bad thing, but... well, you get the point."
Heero nodded. "So where do we start?"
"Well," Duo said, "I was figuring that we could just wander around and see who we bump into. If we run into any women about our age, we can try the whole compliment thing out. You know, make a few complimentary remarks about their physical appearance or something. I'll demonstrate on a few first so you can get the idea, okay?"
"But what will the women think of this?" Heero wondered.
Duo grinned. "Why, they'll think we're flirting with them, of course, and technically, we will be. As for how they'll react, well, that'll depend on the woman. Some will probably high tail it, some will just smile and nod, but I'm betting that at least a few will flirt back."
"I thought you said we were practicing compliments, not flirting," Heero pointed out with a slight frown.
Duo shrugged that aside. "The two go hand in hand. Anyway, you really should learn both; flirting is a useful skill. Very handy in certain social situations. And it's another one of those skills you kind of... lack."
"And you have it," Heero said dryly.
Duo grinned at him. "Heero, my man, when I want to be, I am the king of flirting."
"And do you want to be?"
Duo paused, seeming rather taken aback by the question. His face grew more serious, but his tone was casual as he answered, "No, not really. Not most of the time, anyway." Then he seemed to shake off whatever mood had gripped him in that instant and he grabbed Heero's arm, hauling the other up out of his seat. "Well, let's get started, shall we? We won't accomplish anything if we just sit there all day."
And so Heero submitted and allowed himself to be towed around the shopping center. At first, he was rather skeptical about the efficacy of Duo's plan, but skepticism soon gave way to grudging admiration. He wouldn't have thought it possible to meet so many women in such a short space of time, but it seemed that Duo had spoken true when he had called himself the king of such things. He would select a woman at random, point her out to Heero, and then move in. Then he would start off with some small but gentlemanly gesture, be it holding a door open or getting something down from off a high shelf. From there, he would strike up a conversation and would inevitably throw in a casual comment on some aspect of the woman's appearance, be it her hair, her eyes, or the clothes and shoes she was wearing. A few of the women just smiled and thanked him and went on their merry way, but most of them reacted with much more enthusiasm. Some of the younger ones giggled, and almost all of them blushed slightly and began posturing, almost unconsciously making gestures designed to accentuate whatever feature he had complimented them on. For those ones, ending the conversation seemed to be the hardest part, but Duo managed it deftly enough. By the time an hour had gone by, he already had a few scraps of paper containing phone numbers.
"All right, Heero," he said at last, pausing to dump the paper slips into a nearby trash bin, "it's your turn."
It was the moment Heero had been dreading. He had tried to tell himself that it wouldn't be so bad (after all, Duo did it easily enough), but he kept on being brought up short by the cold reminder that this was Duo. He made everything look easy. However, it was too late to back out now, so Heero squared his shoulders and took the lead.
Alas, his forebodings proved well founded. He tried hard to follow Duo's strategy, but to no avail. The small, gentlemanly gesture was easy enough, but he had a lot of trouble striking up a conversation afterwards. His compliments always seemed to fall flat somehow, and he began to consider himself lucky if the women smiled and thanked him politely. Most of them simply shot him a nervous look and edged away.
"It's because your facial expressions are all wrong," Duo told him after one girl had practically run from him. "You're supposed to smile when you give them lines like that, not glower or look like you just swallowed a very bitter cup of poison."
"Hn," Heero snorted.
"All right," Duo said, running a hand through his bangs, "if you won't smile, at least try not to glare, okay? And maybe if you duck your head a little bit, they'll think you're just shy."
Heero glared, but decided not to bother voicing his opinions on the ridiculousness of associating the word "shy" with him. Instead he turned around and stalked off, searching for a new person to practice on.
Finally, it seemed as if his luck might turn. A small, rather pretty young lady with short brown curly hair had dropped one of her shopping bags and was now kneeling on the ground trying to collect all the various items that had spilled out of it. Duo took one look at her, then grabbed Heero by the shoulders and gave him a little shove. "Go on!" he said.
Reluctantly, Heero moved over and knelt down next to the woman to assist her. The bag had apparently contained an assortment of various scented candles and soaps, and Heero started grabbing items off the ground at random and handing them back to their agitated owner. The young woman had apparently been very flustered by the loss of her bag, and she was almost pathetically grateful for Heero's assistance.
"Thank you for helping me," she said, smiling shyly up at him after they had finished collecting the items and risen to their feet again.
"It was no trouble," Heero said automatically, having learned that that was the appropriate response in such situations. He desperately cast about for something to add before she got bored and wandered off like all the rest. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Duo making little encouraging gestures as discreetly as he could.
/What the hell,/ he thought desperately, /I might as well dive straight in./ "You know, you have very nice eyes," he heard himself saying.
To his surprise, the young woman blushed and ducked her head modestly. "Do you really think so?" she asked, looking back up and batting said eyes at him.
Heero felt a stirring of accomplishment. Finally, one of the women he had talked to was reacting the way she was supposed to. Encouraged, he made himself actually look at her eyes as they peered up at him from behind her glasses. They were a rather murky hazel color. "Yeah," he said, "they look like two muddy ponds."
Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Duo bang his head against a nearby wall.
The young woman's face changed rather abruptly. Her smile disappeared, and she looked both bewildered and angry. "Oh," she said simply before hefting her bag up and stomping off.
Heero turned and shot a confused glance at Duo, who rubbed his temples and said, "I think you need to work on this some more."
/-/-/-/
Heero sighed heavily. This was it. The dreaded Friday night. The time for him to prove himself had come. He swallowed hard, trying to convince his stomach to untie itself from the knot it was currently twisted into. He imagined that this was how a high school student must feel before a really big test. Of course, he wasn't entirely sure, since at the times he had attended high school, tests had been the last thing on his mind, but he had memories of his former school mates from the various boarding schools bemoaning their fates.
/"Oh, man, I'm so nervous I think I'm gonna throw up!"/
/"I just want to get this over with!"/
/"It can't be that bad, right? I mean, it's only worth 40% of our grade, right?"/
/"40%?! That's it, I'm going to the nurse! Maybe I'm running a fever and she'll let me leave early!"/
For a moment, Heero toyed with the idea of telling Relena he wasn't feeling well and had to cancel, but quickly dismissed the thought as cowardly. Now was his chance to prove that he had taken Duo's lessons to heart. He could do this, really he could. It wouldn't end like it had the last time. With that thought in mind, Heero squared his shoulders and knocked on the front door of Relena's house.
"Heero, how wonderful to see you!" Relena gushed as she opened the door. Again he noticed that Pagan was nowhere in sight, but told himself that those details were unimportant. He wasn't supposed to be focused on the surroundings, he was supposed to focus on Relena, and so he did.
"You look nice," he said.
"Really?" She gave him a thousand watt smile and twirled around for his inspection. "Do you like my dress?"
Heero's brows furrowed as he studied the clothing item in question. "It looks familiar," he said slowly.
Apparently that was the correct response, for Relena beamed at him all the more. "Yes! It's the dress I wore on the night of my birthday party all those years ago, the night I followed you to the docks, remember?"
Heero remembered. That was the night he had gone to destroy his Gundam and had ended up meeting Duo. And Duo had shot him. He remembered that part vividly.
Relena was still talking. "Of course, it's not the actual dress I wore then, that one got ripped up so I could bandage your wounds, but it's one just like it."
Heero nodded, still half lost in memories. Then he shook himself out of his reverie. "Shall we go?" he asked.
She seemed a little startled by the abrupt comment which had interrupted her reminiscing, but after a moment she smiled and nodded and reached out to take his arm, since he hadn't offered it to her. "Lead on," she said, shutting the door behind her.
They had barely left the safety of the front doorstep, however, when a sudden noise made Heero freeze and tense up. It started out as a sputtering sound, then continued as a hissing noise that steadily increased in volume. Instinctively, Heero leapt back, trying to pull Relena along with him, but she resisted his tugging. "Heero, what on earth is the matter with yo- aie!"
Her comment ended abruptly in a squeal as jets of cold water shot up from the lawn around her and drenched her suddenly. Heero, who had managed to back up all the way to the doorstep and had thus avoided getting wet, frowned. "It's a rather inconvenient time to have your sprinkler system go off, don't you think?"
Relena retreated to his position, looking very wet and very unhappy. "They're not supposed to go off for another several hours!" she protested. "Someone must have turned them on."
"But why turn on the sprinklers for no reason?" Heero asked logically. "What a waste of water."
"Is that all you can think about?" Relena cried incredulously. "I just got soaked!"
"I'm sorry," Heero answered. "I tried to get you out of the way. But no harm done. It's just water, and it's not so cold yet that you're in any danger of catching a chill."
"But my dress is ruined!"
The door suddenly opened, and Pagan was standing there with towels, one of which he handed to Relena. "Ms. Relena," he said in that calm, imperturbable manner he always adopted, "please come inside and dry off. I'm terribly sorry for what happened."
"Why are you apologizing?" Relena asked, gratefully accepting the towel and drying her face with it. "It's not like you were the one who turned on the sprinklers."
"No Ma'am, but I'm afraid that I'm at least partially responsible," Pagan informed her regretfully. "You see, I was the one who let slip to the gardener that Mr. Yuy would be stopping by tonight."
"The gardener?" Relena repeated, sounding surprised.
"Yes Ms. Relena, the gardener, who I believe still bears a slight grudge against Mr. Yuy."
Heero resisted the urge to groan aloud. He should have known that his previous screw up would find some way to come back and haunt him.
"Really," Relena said, looking angry, flustered, and altogether close to tears, "this is too much! She's ruined my date!"
"Now, Ms. Relena, don't be upset," Pagan soothed, placing another of the towels he carried around her shoulders. "I've already sent one of the maids up to your room to lay out another dress for you, and I believe that if you change quickly, you and Mr. Yuy may still make it on time for whatever events you had planned."
Relena sniffled a little, but managed a grateful smile. "Thank you, Pagan. Heero, would you like to come upstairs with me?"
Considering that the alternative was probably just to wait down in the entrance hall until she was ready, Heero agreed and trailed after her, noting absentmindedly that despite the towel wrapped around her, she was still leaving a dripping trail of water behind her. When she reached her room, she asked Heero to wait outside, but left the door open just a crack so that she could still talk to him.
"We won't be late because of this, will we?" she asked, her voice muffled by the panel of wood that separated them.
Heero glanced at his watch. "Not if we hurry."
From inside the room came the sound of rustling cloth. "I'm hurrying," Relena assured him.
Heero opened his mouth to answer, but whatever reply he might have made was cut off by a startled shriek, followed by a muffled thump.
"Relena?" Heero asked, startled. Pushing the door all the way open, he went inside. "Are you all right?"
Relena, who had evidently slipped on a spot of hardwood floor that had gotten wet, made an odd squeaking noise when he came in. She was sitting as she had landed, half sprawled on the floor, wearing her slightly damp underwear and nothing else. A red flush quickly covered her face, and she averted her eyes, ducking her head. Her reaction rather reminded Heero of the young woman he had talked with at the shopping center, and as he had in that case, he found himself saying the first thing that popped into his head.
"Relena, did you know that your breasts are slightly uneven?"
CRACK
/-/-/-/
"Boy, for a total pacifist, she sure hits pretty hard, huh?"
Heero grunted, but made no further reply, only pressing the icepack his roommate had supplied him with a little more firmly against his face.
"Not that you didn't deserve it, because you did," Duo went on. "I can't think what possessed you to say such a thing."
"You said to make remarks on physical appearances," Heero grumbled.
"Complimentary remarks," Duo corrected him firmly, sitting down on the couch next to him. "Telling a girl her breasts are uneven is defiantly not complimentary."
"Well, how was I supposed to know that?"
"Because if you ever look at the girls in magazine ads, none of them have uneven breasts," Duo answered.
"But no real woman can ever look like that, so why should she take it so hard that she doesn't?" Heero asked, confused.
Duo sighed. "Good question. But you're asking me to try and understand the way women think, which some would say is a hopeless endeavor for any man."
"Hn," was all Heero had to say to that. He readjusted his icepack again.
"Well, another date botched," Duo remarked. "Your track record so far hasn't been that great, so what do you say to maybe giving it a rest for the time being? Until you've had a little more practice or something," he suggested cautiously.
Heero stared at him. "Give up? Fail?"
"Now, don't think of it as failure," Duo said quickly, trying to placate him. "Think of it as time off to gather the necessary information to carry out the mission. Reconnaissance work and all that."
"We tried that," Heero pointed out. "It didn't work. Now I don't know what to do."
Duo looked unhappy. "I hate to say it, buddy, but after a slip-up like that, there's only one way you're gonna get back into Relena's good graces."
"How's that?" Heero asked, sensing that he wouldn't like the answer.
"Grovel," Duo said flatly. "Call her up tomorrow and beg for forgiveness."
He'd been right; he didn't like that answer at all. Still, he'd invested quite a bit of time and effort into this dating thing, and the thought of failure galled him. Dammit, he'd prove that he could interact socially if it killed him! Of course, he still needed a lot of help from Duo... That thought made him feel a wash of guilt. What a lot of trouble he was putting his friend through, and for little or no result.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly.
"Sorry?" Duo repeated, surprised. "For what?"
"For being such a poor student," Heero said. "It must seem like I'm just wasting your time."
The surprised look on Duo's face softened in to what could only be described as tenderness. "C'mere," he said, hooking an arm around Heero's shoulders and tugging him until he had laid the unbruised side of his face against Duo's shoulder.
"You're not a poor student," Duo said soothingly, keeping him within the one-armed hug. "These things just take time. I don't think Relena realizes how much time. And anyway," he added, resting his cheek against Heero's hair, "time spent with you is never wasted."
Heero found his lips twitching almost involuntarily into a small smile. Both the hug and Duo's words managed to warm him thoroughly, which he supposed was a good thing because the icepack had slipped off his face and landed in his lap when Duo had hugged him. Absently, he pushed it off and let it fall to the floor. Just for that moment, it didn't matter that his face hurt or that he had quite possibly wrecked his relations with Relena for the foreseeable future.
It ended all too soon for his tastes. Duo shifted slightly, then drew away, leaning down to retrieve the icepack from the floor. "Here," he said, handing it back to Heero. "You should keep that on your face. As it is, you're probably going to have a noticeable handprint there for a while."
Heero nodded slightly and put the icepack back against his face. He said nothing, but in his mind he replayed Duo's earlier words over again.
/"Time spent with you is never wasted."/
He smiled.
Tbc...
::blinks:: Wow, this chapter came out a little longer than expected. I hope it makes up at least partially for the long interlude between posts.