Title: Play of the Fates (15 of ?)

Author: Paola

Disclaimer: Play of the Fates is based on characters and situations that belong to Sotsu Agency, Bandai Studios, and TV Asashi (and other production affiliates that have the right of ownership). No money is being made, and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Considerations: Similarities to other stories/events/passages and people, dead or alive, are purely coincidental unless otherwise cited. Characters not found on any official Gundam SEED/Gundam SEED Destiny character list belong to the author unless otherwise disclaimed. Citations and references will be found at the end of every chapter should they be made. Beliefs and points of view found in the story do not necessarily reflect those of the author's.

Historical figure/s, real company/ies, and other personality/ies used is/are for literary purposes only. Their use in this story should not be taken as facts.

The idea to make the chapter titles begin with "The One…" is from the TV show, F.R.I.E.N.D.S

This may, in all possible intent, be differently written compared to any of the author's previous literary ventures.

Rating: Rated M for language and adult situations. You have been warned.

Play of the Fates

Chapter Fifteen

Secrets have a way of being found out, and one as off-character as hers couldn't stay hidden for very long, so now she was driving her Justice to one of Damien's steakhouses situated just at the edge of the city to have dinner with him and Miriallia, and to undoubtedly be harassed about her new relationship — if it could even be called that — if she were to judge the tone of last night's phone call. The other night, she'd dined with Athrun and his friends in one of the newest classy restaurants that had begun to litter North Avenue in the CBD, and she had to admit that she was impressed with all of them, not particularly with their status in life, but with their way of handling it. She'd had her share of aristocratic parties, of snooty dinners, of casual luncheons, and of over-the-top shindigs with celebrities and other elite, but Athrun's group of friends was something else all together.

Athrun had surrounded himself with couturiers and models, with golf pros and agents to the stars, and even though he himself was on the business side of things, his constant appearance in his friends' parties and galas caught the media's attention, and soon he was raised to the pedestal famous celebrities were placed on. He was also very business-savvy, so the attention he garnered, Cagalli thought, probably wasn't solely based on his connections. With his neat, semi-preppy good looks sprucing up magazine covers, it wasn't a secret that the cameras loved his face, not to mention all those females, both young and old, who, under normal circumstances, wouldn't pick up a copy of Forbes magazine.

They were a formidable lot, he and his friends, but it was downplayed by their personal breach of upper class propriety, kind of like a violation that wasn't so overly crass that it warranted sneers from the stiff alta sociedad or cheers from perpetual violators such as blue-blood rock stars who indulged in earthly wares hawked by teenage millionaires out to score as many studs as possible. They were a group of people who handled wealth with an easy hand that wasn't wont to flaunt, and they behaved so cruelly normal, aside from a few luxuries — like silly golf — they couldn't part with.

They were the male and female counterparts of her own Damien — young and living a sybaritic life handed to them in a silver platter when they were born. Cagalli almost wanted to laugh at their glossy-magazine lives.

As Cagalli drove through the building traffic, she picked out the oddest of the odd group. Kira was a professor in a prestigious university, too young for his profession but too bright for other things. She liked Kira, she found. He was of modest means, of humble savoir-faire, but he seamlessly acted so in place, his deportment the same towards each individual in the group, like a child unimpressed by the money of his friends and found nothing wrong with playing with the master of the house's son in the mud on rainy days. He simply belonged, and having jobs that usually dealt with different kinds of people, Cagalli knew what she was talking about.

The radio announced the traffic situation, and Cagalli was glad she was almost out of the busiest streets of the city. By the time she reached the restaurant, a fine drizzle had started to fall. The weather was really getting crazy; it was summer and kids vacationed to different beaches, but all they'd had in the past weeks were windy overcasts and drizzles that put a damper on summer frolicking. It was crazy.

Being lucky to have spotted an empty parking slot quite easily, she stepped out of her car in dark jeans, a white cable-knit sweater with a folded-over ribbed collar, and flat, modest gladiator sandals. Rain pattered on her umbrella, and she cradled the umbrella shaft between her shoulder and cheek as she pulled on the sleeve of her sweater to check her watch: fifteen minutes late for their dinner. The walk from the graveled parking lot to the patio was short, and when she opened the doors to the foyer, the receptionist lifted her head to greet her before recognition dawned on her face.

"Ms. Athha," she smiled familiarly, "Mr. Lewis and Ms. Haw have a table out in the marquee." She eyed her umbrella and offered to take it to be placed on the rack.

"Ah, thanks," Cagalli replied, and soon after, she was seated with Miriallia and Damien. Dinner was already waiting and it was scrumptious.

Cowboy Classic was one of a kind, and it was the only different steakhouse from Damien's chain of steakhouses that bore the name Sky Grasper for their impressive skylights. Cowboy Classic was elegant in front and a true wooden steakhouse in the back, a combination of wooden refinement and smoky, laidback roadhouse feel — it was the only steakhouse she knew that had an anteroom made of polished wood and glass, with a grand reception desk of the most lustrous malachite she'd seen used as a tabletop.

With its double-faceted presentation and prices above the usual steakhouses, Cowboy Classic unsurprisingly became one of the city's hotspots, the novelty attracting the glitterati and all the other right people that gave it a good boost of publicity. God, she thought, people are so pretentious. And Damien was a shrewd bastard of an aristocrat who knew how to use that to his advantage. Business acumen, he'd called it. She'd laughed at him once, but she'd known the truth behind the principle: People love everything that's shiny and bright and expensive; when Marlboro once lowered its prices, its market sales dipped instead of soared because people who bought it thought the quality and the social ranking that came with an expensive indulgence had dropped. Pretentious.

She'd been surrounded by these very same pretentious people more times than she'd like, and Athrun's crew was surprisingly refreshing even though she had really only known them for a short while. Lacus was sometimes polite to a fault, but her quiet conviction won Cagalli over. Kira, she'd already decided, she liked, similar to how she would like a brother if she had one. Yzak was a natural ball bouncing on two different courts, offensive in a minute then defensive the next, and he amused her immensely. Dearka she'd known the longest, and she loved him dearly despite his quirky arrogance. Of course, it was a given that she liked Athrun — she had to or she wouldn't be sleeping with him. And the last one, Lessiane, she was a black-haired Barbie doll that used her sexuality not to attract men but to get things done the way she wanted them done — a talent she used to make herself an efficient agent to the most famous celebrities, Cagalli discovered; she'd heard of a certain Lessiane Amalfi before, but she hadn't met or seen her until they'd met at the park the other day. Cagalli had witnessed something in her that she hadn't seen the first time they met at the park, and she'd seen it in the way she interacted with the men in the group during dinner.

"She's amazing, and if I were a guy, I'd definitely go for her," Cagalli told Damien and Miriallia around a forkful of prime rib roast. She and Miriallia were regular customers of Cowboy Classic, and although the parking lot was always full and all the tables always occupied, they always dined with Damien so reservations were never a problem. At first, Damien spoiled them with free dinners, but after a while, she and Miriallia naturally settled on paying for their own.

"You're uneasy about her, aren't you?" Miriallia easily said, taking a bite of her grilled prawns.

"What?" Cagalli was totally perplexed. She could only remember praising Lessiane in the past minute, so how did Mirialia come up with that?

Damien looked at her disbelievingly, and in his deliberately rumpled shirt and dark, tousled hair, it seemed like he'd propositioned her and she'd just refused the best sex promised. He was a terribly good-looking fiend, and he took the best from both worlds. Even though she'd seen something of him in Athrun and in his friends, Damien was set apart by something none of them could touch; his easy assurance of how he carried himself was unparalleled — he looked at the world in the eye and had long ago told it to fuck itself.

"What?" Cagalli was getting defensive.

"Cagalli, chérie, you pile on the praise for people you're uneasy with," Damien explained, using a tone he would use on a child.

"That doesn't make sense," Cagalli deadpanned, clearly sending the message that, for her, what they said was simply nonsensical.

Miriallia waved a sudden, dismissive hand. "So, who's Athrun? You've told us how insistent he is and dinner with him and his friends, but we hardly get a picture of him." Then Miriallia grinned. "Except, of course, from all the covers we've seen him on. God, he's gorgeous! How'd you meet such a piece of art?"

The abrupt change in topic confused Cagalli somewhat, and although having to depart from the subject of her so-called unease towards Lessiane was a relief, the new one Miriallia steered them towards wasn't any better. The first meeting was everything she stood against, and the conditions of their relationship were something she didn't believe in before, so how would Miriallia and Damien understand her breaking her moral code?

Around the serving of dessert, Cagalli was about done telling them how she and Athrun met and how their relationship was nothing but consensual sex until he had to leave Orb. That last, she didn't necessarily have to share, but they were her best friends and she felt that omitting it would be lying.

"No judging, okay?" The looks Miriallia and Damien gave her suggested that they thought it impossible not to judge and that she was crazy to even ask that. True friends told each other shit and described shit they'd done as shit, Damien had once told her and Miriallia in his rare bourgeois mood.

For the next half hour, Cagalli told them about their first meeting — sans the description of the real activity, of course — how they kept bumping into each other in unexpected places, including her very own house, how he'd unabashedly propositioned, and how she had now accepted.

"Closet slut," Miriallia said in neutral tone that made Cagalli bristle.

"More like a hard-to-get, two-hundred-dollar whore," Damien quietly argued, but before Cagalli could take proper offense, he continued, "Good for you!"

The grin on both their faces were so genuinely pleased that Cagalli deflated and felt foolish for thinking that they were insulting her. "God, I thought you were discriminating against me!"

"Chérie" — that tone again, like she was an ignorant child he had the misfortune of teaching, and Cagalli suppressed the urge to laugh — "it's what you call 'recreational sex.' God knows you need it." He signaled to a passing waiter for another bottle of Carlsberg Hof before returning his attention to Cagalli. "Hooking up isn't only for falling in love, you know."

Cagalli had never had a casual relationship because she didn't believe in it, at least, not until Athrun. That was the reason she didn't do one-night stands or didn't get boyfriends easily. She wanted to fall in love, fall in love so deeply that she'd be willing to give all of herself, but the right man just hadn't come along yet. Maybe after Athrun she'd find whom she was looking for.

Damien continued to preach the finer points of recreational relationships, and in the secrecy of Cowboy Classic where Athrun was far away from, Cagalli sighed and relented. "He's is a heckuva good-looking son of a bitch." Even though she'd resisted his charms long and hard, it didn't mean that she thought him plain-looking; in fact, she would admit that he was one of the handsomest men she'd seen. Not that she'd tell him that, of course. "So," she took a deep breath as though she'd just completed a taxing activity, "that's it. That's everything, less the more private parts you don't need to know." Finishing the remainder of her beer in one gulp, she stood up before they started firing more questions. "Now excuse me while I go to the ladies." If she were lucky, they'd take that as a sign that she was finished with her story and would be very glad to come back to a different discussion.

When Cagalli was out of sight, Miriallia speared a slice of Damien's steak. "I just wish she won't hurt herself on this one. She's already getting jealous of that big shot agent to the stars."

"From the way she told her story, you can tell how close Lessiane Amalfi is to Athrun, and everyone would get jealous of someone clinging to their man, no matter how free and easy the relationship is. Ah, but she's a big girl. She can do casual."

Miriallia laughed. "I hope you're right, Damien, I hope you're right."

o-o-o

Cagalli wondered about what Miriallia and Damien had said when they had dinner last time at Cowboy Classic; she hadn't pursued their line of thinking because that would've opened up new avenues for discussing her private life, and she hadn't been quite fond of the idea.

Lessiane was a great girl, and they had gotten along well when she'd dined with them, so what were her two friends talking about her being uneasy with Lessiane? It just didn't make sense. Maybe she leant just a little too familiarly on Athrun on occasion, or touched his arm when they talked, or kissed him goodbye on the cheek when they parted, but then again, she did all that with the others, too. She was confident, and Lacus laughed right alongside her. There couldn't be anything wrong, could it? A little green demon spoke in her mind, but she quashed the voice and told herself she wasn't at all jealous. That was just stupid. Lessiane Amalfi was Lessiane Amalfi, hot shot agent to the stars who just happened to be close friends with Athrun.

Shaking her head to rid it of nasty thoughts, she began to type her report, only to pause and look at Athrun who was walking back and forth and talking on the phone. Since that time she finally went to bed with him almost two weeks ago, they hadn't had another romp in the sheets. Either she was out for a late meeting or he was too busy to come over. She wondered quite detachedly how he had the time to bother her before when now that they were together he could hardly squeeze her into his schedule. One thing they didn't miss out on though was having lunch together; Athrun simply insisted on it.

"Hey," she called his attention when he hung up, "who were you talking to?"

Athrun cocked his head to the side and smiled. "Do you really want to know?" He laughed when Cagalli shrugged. There was something new he discovered about Cagalli, and he'd learned it over the days that passed: silence was something she didn't thrive in so she always tried to break it when it crept over, and more often than not, even tried to prevent it by segueing into another discourse when things were showing signs of dying down. She was quite a talker once she got comfortable. She'd regale him of things that happened to her — quite animatedly at that — and although the exchange was nothing very personal, he'd learnt little things about her. Little things like she'd rather have coffee than tea, and cocoa rather than coffee; she liked writing although she shared that it was always a drag for her to start; and she ritually slept in on Saturdays, except when one of her friends decided to get her up.

"I forgot to tell you. My stay's been extended for another two months. There's something else I've been assigned to do since I'm already in Orb," he changed topics, knowing full well that Cagalli had no interest in whoever called him; it was just one of her ways to get a conversation going. His original stay had already been extended because of some problems with the negotiations, and to add a couple more months of extension meant he was already looking at almost half a year's worth of extended leave from the PLANT office. Although his stay in Orb was nothing close to being a vacation, it surprised him to realize that his work load wasn't as heavy as when he was sitting in his office back in PLANT.

"Lucky me," she replied sarcastically, rolling her eyes before letting her fingers fly over the keyboard of her laptop.

He wandered over to her, brushing her hair to one side before kissing her nape and smiling when he felt a shiver run through her. She was as sarcastic as ever, and nothing had really changed between them except that now she didn't try biting his head off whenever he kissed her.

"Lucky you indeed." He continued to feather her nape and the side of her neck with butterfly kisses intent on teasing, a deliberately lazy attempt at arousing desire rather than outright seduction.

He blew on the patch of skin he'd gently caught between his teeth and nibbled on earlier, feeling a mischievous grin crack his lips as he felt another shiver race through her. "I've been meaning to ask…" he trailed off, letting the request for permission hang in the air for her to pick up and grant. He extricated himself, moving towards the couch to lean on its backrest.

She brushed off any pretense of actually working hard on her report, then looked at him with an expression that clearly expressed her disbelief over his withdrawal — seriously? She knew he probably didn't intend to seduce her, but it had been half a month of repressed desires and she wanted him to make a move, even though she wouldn't admit to it since it had also been only half a month since she'd stopped fantasizing about him with guilt.

When it didn't look like she would pursue his line of thinking, he ploughed through with his question, "That guy, in the park, did you already meet with him? Will you meet up with him?" Her expression showed signs of closing off, so he quickly added, "It probably isn't any of my business—"

"It's not," she quickly cut him off.

"You'd looked afraid then," he stated matter-of-factly.

"I was surprised, more like it. Let's not talk about it, Athrun. Let's not talk about him. He's just an old friend."

Athrun was likely to believe that as much as he was likely to believe himself gay. He knew he didn't have the right to nose around her personal affairs, but something about that encounter had made him uncomfortable, and the days that passed didn't do much to shake off the feeling. "If he's just an old friend, then there's no harm in me knowing about him, is there?"

Cagalli looked irritated. "Why are you asking anyway? I don't question you about your friends. You keep yours, I keep mine."

"Why don't you ask me then?"

"What? No!" She walked towards him with arms crossed in front of her and eyes glaring.

Athrun almost smiled. There was something intrinsically amusing about Cagalli trying to intimidate him, this woman who stood only up to his shoulders at full height and trying to look at him down her nose because he was currently partially sitting down so their heights were brought a little closer.

"If we have to lay down one more condition for this relationship, it's staying out of each other's separate lives."

"You've met my friends. I haven't met any of yours."

"Only because you asked me to, not the other way around. You have your secrets, I have mine."

That was where she made a mistake because now that she'd implied that part of her life was a secret, the more curious he got. He didn't make it a habit to pry secrets out of other people, but he was sleeping with this woman and he might as well take what he could. Besides, she made things interesting, more so when she dangled information before him only to decide to keep it away.

"Go on, ask. There's got to be something you're curious about."

She stayed silent.

"I wear briefs instead of boxers. But you already know that."

Despite herself, she blushed. "Athrun…" she tried sounding a warning note for him to stop this childish conduct.

"I met Lacus when we were teenagers, but our parents knew each other longer and had arranged for us to get married," he continued like she hadn't talked.

"I don't care. Why are you telling me this?"

"I bailed Dearka and Yzak out of jail once for disruptive behavior at a funeral."

His hands found their way to the hem of her shirt, his thumbs tracing invisible patterns on the skin underneath, his movements so casual it almost seemed as though their intimacy had always been there.

Cagalli huffed, pretending it didn't affect her. "Those aren't even really secrets."

She couldn't quite understand why he wanted to know. It wasn't as if it would do him any good if he knew; on the contrary, it might even prove disastrous, although she might only be the one thinking that. Not that she thought he would get jealous about it or anything. Of course not. But if truth were to be told, she did want to know something about his friends, but it would be foolish to confess that because there was only really one person she was curious about, and why that was was something she hadn't even admitted to herself.

"Kira wasn't always so smart. I had to tutor him."

Cagalli sighed exasperatedly. "Look, Ath—"

"Lessiane and I were married."

xxxxx

Reference/s:

"I bailed Dearka and Yzak out of jail once for disruptive behavior at a funeral." – This is a vague reference to two scenes (arrest and stained glass breaking) on House M.D., Season 5 Episode 4: Birthmarks