Chapter 15

Quatre is an absolute treasure. Somehow, he'd pulled a string here, gently terrorized an official there, and voila! The Gundam pilots were on a vacation for six days in the middle of the war.

I decided I wasn't going to feel guilty about that. Our side could deal without us for a damn week.

Besides, we were approaching the point of what you could call burning out. We were due for a break anyway.

Where were we going?

The celebrated Caribbean Islands on Earth. Business still booming there too. Even during war.

I'd never actually been to the beach for fun before. I knew how to swim, yes, as a freakin' survival technique. Learn to swim or die just doesn't have the same ring as Let's go surfing at the beach!

Of course, I didn't know how to surf either…but I could always learn, right?

We even had our own private jet. One of those cool new ones, that if you sneeze, you're at your destination before you even open your eyes.

Needless to say, our trip was not a very long one. We caught a cab, squeezed the five of us in with our suitcases, and arrived at a spiffy new hotel with flags all over the place and perfectly pruned bushes.

We got joined suites. Quatre and Trowa in one room, me and Heero in another (I wondered if that was a not-so-subtle hint for us, or if it was just routine), and Wufei in another.

He was always kind of the…loner, and I wasn't sure how he felt about that.

There was one giant Jacuzzi in the middle of it all, and I was duly excited about the prospect of actually having a bubble bath.

Do I really have to tell you that our suites were enormous? A TV, a comfy sofa that was not a bed, a bed that had sheets so soft they felt like silk and was big enough to fit all five of us twice over, two huge bathrooms, you name it.

Quatre's room had a kitchen too, because, well, for the most part, we'd decided that we preferred his cooking over anybody else's. Trowa was a lucky, lucky man. However, we'd also agreed to try one of those numerous five star restaurants on the resort, since it was already paid for.

Quatre's pockets were beyond deep. They stretched across the galaxy.

It was barely afternoon by the time we'd all gotten settled in, so…off to the beach we went. We slathered on tons of suntan lotion, and entirely by accident, ended up wearing exactly the same kind of clothes: tank top and shorts. Though Heero's was spandex.

The beach was magnificent. The sand seemed almost a dazzling white, and the ocean was a blue that almost rivaled Heero's eyes. Almost. Anything that ever did would probably strike me blind with its beauty.

I bent over to trail two fingers in the water, and then somebody shoved me in.

I burst out of the water, coughing, and said, "Wufei! Come here, you bastard!"

He tore off, laughing like a loon. Grimly, I ran after him, resolving to dunk him under the water until he begged for mercy.

I caught up to him, because I am nothing, if not the fastest of our group, and made good my promise.

We headed back, water streaming off our clothes, only to find that the others had somehow obtained some towels and umbrellas, and were lying in the shade, perfectly dry.

They glanced up at our arrival, noted our completely soaked state, and grinned.

Heero, taking pity on us, retrieved a couple towels from behind him, offering them to us.

I took the blue one haughtily, leaving Wufei the yellow one that had flowers dancing around the edge.

"You pushed me in the water," I said snippily, "you get that towel."

"And how many times did you push me?" He looked at me in disbelief.

"I only pushed you after you pushed me." I pointed out logically, spread my towel onto the sand halfway over Heero's, and promptly rolled up against him, who if he could be found doing something so undignified, yelped.

"You're supposed to dry yourself with the towel first," he told me sternly.

"You're warmer. Besides, you're dry, and I'm wet. I needed to remedy the situation." I grinned up at him cheekily, undeterred by his frosty glare.

He picked at his sodden tank top in distaste, and sighed dolefully. "You're not going to move until you're dry, are you?"

"Nope," I said cheerfully.

He sighed, and resignedly put an arm around me.

I closed my eyes, smiling, and dozed off.

I was rather rudely awakened, though.

I snapped out of sleep with a sharp exclamation of surprise, as my world was suddenly flipped around. I scrambled up, only to notice Wufei gleefully prancing away with my towel in his hand.

"Wufei!" I charged after him. It was like he was getting me back for all those little jokes I'd played on him.

All right…this phrase might be a little overused, but…this means war. Uh…that begins after our vacation. I didn't feel up to getting up early to prepare something really involved when we were supposed to be sleeping in and all that.

We trooped back to the hotel, Wufei and I totally exhausted from racing around the beach, leaping over prone bodies, dodging volleyball games, and zooming around sand castles.

I dragged myself to the bathtub for a quick rinse, and came out, feeling a little refreshed.

I dropped into a chair next to Heero, and stared at Quatre hungrily. "Food," I insisted.

"Dinner's almost done," he informed me breezily.

Wufei came in then, and said in a desperate voice, "Something to eat. Now."

"Wait a minute," Quatre said, his head stuck into the fridge.

"Now," he persisted.

Quatre emerged with some sodas, and gave one to both of us. "Drink that while you wait," he said commandingly.

We weren't about to argue.

We were still slurping greedily when Quatre set a plate of some kind of Indian style food in front of us.

"Our hero," we chorused and Quatre rolled his eyes.

Trowa came in and sat at the table. "Something smells good," he said approvingly.

Wufei chomped through his rice voraciously, and Quatre reprimanded, "Wufei, eat with your mouth closed."

He closed it obediently.

I started to gobble my food up, and Heero said sharply, "Duo…don't eat so fast, you'll choke."

I sent him a rebellious look, but stopped to actually chew between bites.

"Honey, how's the food?" Quatre'd taken to calling Trowa 'Honey' sometimes, when he learned of the reason I called him Bumblebee. He usually wasn't really aware of it; it was just like a pet name that popped out every once in a while.

Anyway, the whole scene just suddenly struck me as hilariously funny, and I started laughing until there were tears coming out of my eyes.

"Duo!"

My laughing attacks always scared them for some reason, probably because they were usually accompanied by hysteria.

"Gods, I'm sorry," I gasped, "it's just that," I snickered again, "we seemed like the typical little household family just then." Another peal of laughter broke through, and I had to pause for a moment. "With Wufei and me as the little kids, and Heero our big brother, and Trowa and Quatre as the parents." They looked at me, a little bit of humor coming into their eyes, and I continued, "Wufei, eat with your mouth closed, and, and," I almost burst a gut trying to get this out, "Honey, how's the food?"

I slid off the chair, laughing uproariously.

They seemed to realize the absurdity of their actions, and dimly, over my own laughter, I could hear the sounds of their mirth.

Finally, my laughter petered off, and I was totally spent. The running, the dunking, the laughing…too much.

I flopped an arm Heero's way, and mumbled, "Help me get up?"

He lugged me up, and positioned me like you would a doll in the chair.

Raising an eyebrow, he asked, "Would you like me to feed you?"

"No," I said, and struggled into an upright position.

I chewed my way listlessly through the rest of my plate, and somehow made it to our bedroom without crashing into any walls.

Then, I pulled out a pair of clean boxers, and stumbled towards the shower.

Retaining enough brain to turn the water full blast and icy, so that I wouldn't fall asleep in the shower, I stepped past the shower door, and woke up a little.

Shivering, I scrubbed at myself hurriedly, and sluiced water through my shampooed hair.

I dried myself, tugged on the boxers, and sat on the bed, the sheets pulled back, struggling to comb my unruly hair.

I'd just gotten through the last tangle when Heero finished his shower, and came in, also in his boxers, his hair spiky and pointing in all sorts of directions.

I think I giggled.

I crawled over to where he sat, and flattened his hair a little with the comb. He didn't really even need to comb his hair, it was short enough that it was practically impossible for it to acquire any of those monster knots, and besides, the strands just kind of slipped past each other without sticking. Not like mine.

We curled up in the middle of the bed. I felt tiny.

"'Night, Heero," I murmured, and fell asleep.

The next morning, I woke up, suddenly, entirely too aware of the fact that there was nothing separating our bodies but two flimsy sets of boxers.

My body's reaction was not…unexpected, and I had to think of Heero leaving me to still it.

Of course, that made me wrap myself even more tightly around his body, which started it up again, and I sighed. It was a never-ending cycle. Silently, I warned Other Duo not to say a word.

Brushing Heero's face lightly with a wistful finger, I disentangled myself.

I walked out onto the balcony – we have a balcony! – and stared out at the ocean for a while. It was kind of…a humbling sight. The water seemed to stretch on forever.

"Duo?" Heero sounded a little uncertain…a little frightened. I realized that he probably couldn't see me with the curtain billowing across the balcony door.

"Here," I called, "on the balcony."

He pulled the curtain away, and I smiled at his tousled appearance.

His eyes seemed to calm as he took me in, and then grow a little…hot.

I fidgeted under his searing gaze, and tucked my flyaway hair behind my ears self-consciously.

Suddenly, he strode towards me swiftly, and hugged me fiercely.

"Hey," I said, pinpointing the source of his distress, "I'm not going anywhere. That promise of yours goes both ways, you know."

He didn't say anything, but then, I didn't really expect him to. Our morning conversations usually consist of grunts on his side, and monosyllable words on mine. We both get up early a lot, but only by necessity. I got the feeling that if we weren't involved in this war, neither of us would get out of bed until it was nearly lunch.

We stayed like that for a while, totally unaware of the world outside each other. It was times like these that made me imagine that Heero might actually love me.

I lived for these moments, these flashes of time that sustained me through the long hours, like the sips of water a man might take while hiking through a desert with no end in sight.

Usually I was the one who ended them.

Like I did now.

"Hungry? Let's go have breakfast. I bet Quatre's making something."

And he was. Clothed in a T-shirt and shorts, I opened the door, and caught a whiff of the distinctive smell of frying bacon.

"Hey little brother." I sat down and watched him bustle around merrily.

The others trailed in, all drawn by the savory scent of Quatre's cooking. How the guy manages to make something as commonplace as frying bacon in oil smell so good is totally beyond me. It's a great motivator to get up in the morning though.

We ate our bacon, some fruit, very healthy, Quatre says, and decided we'd go back to the beach again. Guess what I wanted to do? I wanted to make a sand castle!

Yes, I know I'm a crackpot. We go to the beach and what do I decide to do? Spend hours playing around with sand.

Heero and the others just kind of grinned at me fondly, and went and bought a whole set of buckets. For me. They really are the best friends a guy could have.

And what were they doing? Learning to surf. I was tempted, really, but that sort of thing just reminds me a little too much of the time I'd spent hiding behind a boulder in the middle of the ocean. Water all around me and the land a distant line on the horizon.

Nuh-uh. Let the other guys go and ride the bucking waves if they wanted.

I, on the other hand, scooped up sand with my little yellow shovel, and watched them go splat into the water with great amusement.

Trowa got the hang of it first. I wasn't surprised. He was the most graceful of us all. The others all kind of caught up after a while, much faster, I'm sure, than the teacher had expected, and swooped around at each other, yelling incomprehensible babble. To me, at least.

Back to my castle. It was coming around nicely. Keep in mind that all I've seen of castles are the ruins I've passed every once in a while, and once in a book.

There were four great big towers, forming a square, and to connect them, since nothing else worked, I got my tiny, tiny little bucket, barely bigger than my hand, and made walls with those small bucketfuls of sand, very delicately doing one row with exactly eighteen bucketfuls, then placing more on top of that row, until each wall was as tall as the tower. It took a hell of a long time, but the finished product was just…wow. Ever done one of those things that are just made up of the tiniest little pieces, most of them flawed in little ways, and then when you put it all together, it looks like a work of art? I'd even been able to carve out this door in the middle of a wall, perfect for crawling through. Don't ask me how I did it…I have no idea.

The whole thing was a square that measured eight feet by eight feet. I could sleep in the thing. With shade too. I was as excited as a little kid over his first bicycle.

The biggest bucket went past my knee. It was huge. This enormous yellow monster. That was the one I used for the first portion of the towers. Then I piled bucket on top of bucket…four levels in all. I spent an hour making sure all the turrets were perfectly shaped. Then I added to the walls. Freakin' four feet tall. That's just creepy.

The middle looked kind of empty, though, so I'd have to stick something in it, I guess. I felt a little sad about that…it'd mean I wouldn't be able to lie in it anymore.

I kind of napped there, inside my castle, for a while, until Wufei woke me up, his face peeking over the edge, and saying, "Hell, Maxwell, how long did it take you to make this thing?"

I blinked at him, and he turned around, calling, "Yuy! He's in here, the castle!"

Heero came pounding up, and his head appeared above the edge of my castle walls.

I rolled my eyes. "Guys get freaked out 'cause you couldn't see me anywhere?" I asked deprecatingly.

"Maxwell," Wufei said a little despairingly, "don't go and disappear on us like that. You'll give us a heart attack some day."

"All right, next time I take a nap in my castle, I'll be sure to run over and tell you," I pledged a little sarcastically.

"You do that," Wufei said severely. Heero pinned me with that look that told me he was equally serious.

I sighed at them, then perked up. "You like my castle?"

"It's incredible," Heero said, eyeing the walls I'd slaved over for at least a couple hours.

"What time is it?" I squinted at the sun. Usually, I could read time from its position, but this whole Caribbean thing was messing me up.

"A couple hours before dinner."

"Oh." Wow. Either I'd been napping for a long time, which I doubted, because I bet Heero noticed that I'd vanished within seconds, or I'd really spent around six or seven hours on my castle.

I edged out of my castle, and stood up, dusting myself off.

"Think I should leave it as is?" I asked.

"It's fine," Wufei assured me. "Much better than most of the other sand castles I've seen."

"So…you guys have fun surfing?"

"Yes, it was great," Heero said sincerely. "Why didn't you want to try it?"

"Memories," I said. We all knew not to pry when someone mentioned that kind of thing.

Quatre and Trowa appeared; I guess they were tired from surfing too.

"Duo! Your castle is great!" Quatre said enthusiastically.

"Thanks, little bro." I reached up to ruffle his hair, and discovered my hands were caked with sand.

"Uh, I think I'll go stick my hands in the water."

"All right, we'll just lay here and dry ourselves." He set off to grab some towels.

I walked up to the edge of the water, and dipped a finger in. The water was actually kind of warm, probably from the sun. A wave of water surged toward me, and I yelped, leaping away.

Eyeing it warily, I crept closer in until the water was up to my ankles, and cleaned the sand off my hands.

Then another wave rushed forward, and I ran away again. It kind of became a game; I'd stand in the water, and run from the frothy edge of the wave as it came, trying not to let it catch me.

It got to the point where I was treading water, and watching a twenty-foot tall wave rear its head above me, before I would turn tail and dash away.

And then I really started getting a little far from the beach, a good few hundred feet, at least. There was a rather intimidating wave looming above me, and I felt the most childish urge to stick my tongue out at it.

It was…exhilarating, knowing that any moment, a huge wave of water might crash down on me. Yep, I'm an adrenaline-junkie. All us pilots are. Okay…maybe not Other Duo. Currently, he was past the frightened stage and progressing onto the mind-shutting-down stage.

This time, I couldn't escape the wave, and boom! It was kind of scary, being pushed down and down and down and not being able to see the bottom of the ocean floor. The pressure was getting a little too much, and I was starting to panic, when that force on my chest lifted. A school of fish darted away from me, their gleaming little scales flashing.

I struggled back up for air, spitting water and laughing breathlessly, just because it hadn't killed me, and swam back for land.

Heero was waiting for me, his face set in stone, and as I staggered out of the water, still grinning like mad, he grabbed me, saying in an unyielding voice, "Enough. That one was too close."

"All right, enough," I agreed. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson after knowing what waves can do to you, especially when there are big, ugly rocks in strategic places to smash you into, but I guess you have to tell me things more than once for me to get it. More than twice, preferably.

He embraced me almost violently, and I protested, "Heero! I'm getting you wet!"

"I'll dry," he said.

So I hugged him back quickly, and then pulled back.

"You can hug me while we're lying on the towels," I suggested.

And that's what we did for half an hour, before Quatre proposed that we go in, spend some time in the massive Jacuzzi, and then eat dinner.

Wufei filled the thing up. It was decided, wordlessly, that we'd all keep our swim trunks on, for which I was glad. I didn't want to know what my body would think of seeing Heero naked.

It was hard enough to control it just seeing him in boxers, or his spandex shorts.

Quatre and Trowa were already in the tub, sitting close next to each other, and Heero was relaxing into one of those massaging gushes of water.

I unbraided my hair, grimacing at its stiffness, and stepped in. Damn, it was hot. Well, if you want to acclimate yourself to something, best to do it all at once.

I submerged myself, and then stood back up into the steamily humid air. Okay, now the water felt good.

I just kind of drifted, really, to Heero, whose features seemed to be carved out of granite again, and I wondered what he wanted to hide in his expression.

"Mmm…" I murmured to Heero, "This is wonderful."

I snuggled next to him, because all this warmth got me into a cuddly kind of feeling, and he put an arm around my shoulder. "Can we stay like this forever?" I asked, vaguely aware of Wufei coming into the Jacuzzi room.

Heero didn't say anything, but his hand clutched at me.

"All right, all of you guys, break it up," Wufei said from somewhere in front of us, "the love in this room is making me woozy."

And then he cannonballed into the water. Did we get splashed? Yes, we did. Were we happy? No, we were not.

I cracked open an eye, and said forebodingly, "'Fei, prepare to be thoroughly pranked after this vacation."

"All right," he agreed.

Nothing could get this guy down.

I scowled at him, and dropped my head back onto Heero's shoulder.

The lethargic murmurs of Quatre and Trowa chatting quietly, and the soporific rolling of water against my body was enough to make me fairly drowsy, and I kind of lost track of time, so it seemed like bare minutes before Trowa called an end to it all.

Reluctantly, we heaved ourselves out, and Quatre went to go stir something up, with Trowa as his assistant.

Dinner was pasta, with a kind of creamy sauce that seemed a bit bland when you first tried it, but got better as you slurped up more noodles.

We skipped the shower, because Quatre had sprinkled some kind of bath salt into the Jacuzzi, and we'd stayed in long enough that our skin was lobster red by the end of it.

Sleep was a welcome thing, and I embraced it as hard and swiftly as I would Heero.