Tropical
"Miss Dorlian, you have an appointment at nine thirty tomorrow with Mr Winner of the Winner Corporation, shall I confirm the meeting?"
She smiled and nodded.
"You're meeting with the Vice Foreign Minister, are you Mr Winner?"
"What do you have to say about the rumours of you and Miss Dorlian?"
"Is it true that Miss Dorlian is pregnant with your child?"
"Is marriage in the picture, Mr Winner?"
The press buzzed around Quatre as he made the daily struggle into his own building. Ducking an over eager reporter's microphone, he cleared he throat.
Next to him, his press publicist gave Quatre a frantic, nervous look. Today was not the day for a scheduled meeting with press. You could never know what the young Mr Winner might do.
Quatre just smiled mysteriously and entered the Head Quarters of the largest corporations in the Earth Sphere and the Colonies. He was only twenty one.
"Oh dear. There's quite a few of them still there. Mr Yuy has cleared most of them away but, Miss Relena. Oh, the last of the reporters are gone, or are a suitable distance away." Relena's long standing anxious secretary murmured.
Relena had to smile again. Heero was very diligent in his duties as her bodyguard. "Good, this time they'll only see close up through their cameras," was her slightly bitter comment.
"Er, no. Miss Relena. It seems Mr Yuy had, er, forcibly removed the cameras from all concerned. They appear to be scattered on the sidewalk, broken."
"I see, well I suppose his Christmas bonus shall have to come early this year. Don't you agree, Etta? You think he deserves it?"
Etta lowered her eyes and nodded shortly, a mirrored smile creeping across her lips as Relena put on some large sunglasses, rimmed in pink.
"Delightful tea, as ever Quatre." Relena smiles at Quatre.
"I decided as a hobby, to make some tea for a year. I thought it would be interesting." Quatre who was looking out the window, returns his gaze to Relena.
"And this is it? Then perhaps you should give up being CEO and start up farming, this is delicious." Laughter hints in her eyes.
With a shadowed look in his eyes, Quatre shakes his head, "Er, well... The tea was a failure. It tasted absolutely revolting. My thumb may make economics grow, but with the garden it simply withers."
"Oh, so what did you do with?" She tilts her head to the side, questioning.
"I considered burning it, but then I realized that would be polluting the already fragile environment of L4. People would see me burn." A wry smile crosses his lips.
"Really? Quatre, come on, do tell!"
"I despise few people. Almost none, no, yes."
"Quatre?" She asks softly, placing a hand on his.
"Then I came up with the brilliant idea to serve it to the board. They dare not refuse, some actually seemed to enjoy it. Better liars than I figured, I guess."
"Yes." Relena looks down at the cup, and sighs, placing it down on the table. "We all surprise ourselves when we show ourselves to be better liars than we ever supposed we could be."
"I'm sorry, you know, about everything, I wish I could help more. But everything seems tied in red tape..." Quatre smiles weakly at her.
Biting her lip, Relena turns away. "It doesn't matter." The silence is overwhelming.
"Did you know, that when I first came in here, I was three years old? I was coming to visit my father at work for the very first time."
"No, I didn't know."
"Yes, well, then it was much noisier, you could always hear the traffic. The people entering in out, the phones ringing, my father was always talking to someone else. I hated the noise."
"Oh, I can't hear anything now. Not even the traffic. It peculiar. No phones in hear either, Quatre," Relena observes, her sharp glance taking in everything, especially Quatre.
Quatre shakes his head. "When I took this office as my own I sound proofed everything. No sound can ever exit or enter here without already being in here."
You can't hear anything, Relena realizes, sometimes it feel like you can't even hear yourself. "Do you like it Quatre? The silence?" Her voice is quieter than usual.
"I don't know, I hated my father's office, but I can't ever relax in my own." His voice seems to be louder than normal, making up for lack of noise.
"Yes." She can't think of anything else to say, but something needs to be heard.
"Relena?"
"What is it, Quatre?"
"Let's go some place else. For lunch. I don't feel like staying here any longer. That's all right with you, isn't it? I don't wish to offend." His eyes are lowered.
"Sure, I know just the place. Wufei knows the people there, they used to own a restaurant on L5, but were able to get off and now they have opened a new one. The food is delicious." Relena babbled slightly, as the cold look on Quatre's face seemed to deepen.
"Good."
"Um, Quatre..."
He's picking up his coat, and smiles at her, his face still hiding his true feelings.
"You do know, that we all care? That if you need to talk, there's always me, Dorothy, Heero, Trowa... We care for you, Quatre and we know you are hurting."
"I understand Relena, but please, not now. I don't think I could cope."
"Oh, well, okay, if that's how you really feel about all this then..." She stand up and grabs his arm, "Let's go to lunch then, we ought to get a good table."
Quatre smiles at her.
"It's not good is it, Relena?"
"No, Heero, he's really hurting and I don't know what to do. Dorothy called me, she has no idea why he's feeling this way. His father died this time during the war, but it seems to be more than that."
"How did lunch go? Did he say anything important?"
She shakes her head dismally, "No, I'm sorry, but Quatre needs our help and I can't help him, I don't know who can."
"A holiday."
"What?"
"Quatre needs to relax. Holidays are relaxing. You told me so, Relena, Quatre needs a holiday to relax and then he will get better."
"Heero, you have refused a holiday every year, you have taken only one day off in all the time you have worked for me. And that was because you were in a coma."
He looks at her, "What does that have to do with anything?" Heero nods determined, "He needs a holiday, my logic does not refute that."
"Oh, Heero, what are you planning to do? Please don't let it be too illegal, I have a horrible time explaining to everyone when you kidnapped that lion for Trowa's circus."
"Kidnapping... Holiday."
"I see it's going to be one of those days Heero, yes, one of those days." She laughs.
"It was an experience. One day I suppose, I will tell it to the grandchildren. How Grandfather Quatre got kidnapped by Heero Yuy and the Vice Foreign Minister was shuffled on to the cargo hold of a plane before jumping off into sky above the middle of the jungle."
"I told Heero you should have gone business class." Relena murmurs, "I know I did."
"Yes, well, unlike some pretty politicians who got driven in a limo to the hotel I had to hike through how many miles of jungle before reaching it."
"Grandchildren... Hear the rumours and they think I'm pregnant with your child," Relena giggles as she takes a sip of her alcoholic fruit drink. They are both under the beach umbrella, with their fair skin and the position of the sun they would surely burn to a unpleasant pink.
"Hmmm... I'd like to be a father one day."
"I would to. But a mother instead. I just have to find the time."
"To have sex?" He grins at her.
"No! Well... yes, that too," Relena admits, "But first I need the time for finding someone to have sex with. I think I need to do that first."
"To more time!" Quatre lifts his glass to clink against her.
"To more time!" She smiled and drowns the rest of the drink.
AN: Something random I wrote, originally for Relena, but this isn't a drabble, so an one shot it is! Hope you enjoyed reading it!