Unknown to the sleeping boy, curious eyes watched him from a short distance away. Another person had been out in the early morning sunshine and had caught sight of the black haired boy ambling down the road. Drawing back into the shadows had been instinct for the watcher, but it had allowed him to enjoy the sight of the beautiful boy without interrupting.
He had watched as the youth had settled himself into the roots of the tree, wiggling to get comfortable. Normally he wouldn't have spied on someone unless they were the enemy but he couldn't bring himself to interrupt the boy's enjoyment of his meal. He acted as if peace and quiet were a rare luxury. Early shafts of sunlight lit up the tousled black hair and sparkled through a water droplet that hovered at the tip of shaggy bangs until with a quick flick of his head, the moisture was sent flying. The movement revealed a short braid that was quickly tossed back over a shoulder to hang down a slender muscular back.
The watcher moistened dry lips when the meal was finished and each finger carefully licked clean. The movement was incredibly erotic, especially so for being innocently done. The black-haired boy leaned back until he was cradled by the hovering tree and watching blue eyes slid across the planes of a beautiful face that was tipped to catch the sunlight on closed lids.
A slight frown crossed the watcher's lips as the youth slid seamlessly into sleep. Moving a bit closer, he could see dark shadows under closed eyes and the lines of stress on the young face. The yellowish stain of a fading bruise colored the side of one cheek and matched similar ones on bared arms. The combined impression was one of fragility. Which the watcher revised to vulnerability after measuring the strength and muscularity of relaxed limbs.
Slight sounds from further back on the road impelled the watcher to withdraw once again. Turning, he watched as a cheerful girl in a blue dress whistled while she swung down the walkway. Any impression of sweetness was ruined however, when the girl caught sight of the nestled figure asleep at the base of the oak, anger marred the pretty face and a screech that caused the watcher to wince emerged from her mouth.
Interestingly, the watcher noted that the sleeper didn't wake up to the scream normally. He expected the boy to jump and look around confusedly, what he didn't expect was for him to jump straight up and scale several limbs of the tree before he even opened his eyes. He watched as the startled expression on the beautiful face faded to resignation that changed immediately to a smile. The boy's voice when it emerged was cheerful and upbeat.
"Hey Akane, good morning."
The friendly greeting had no appreciable effect on the girl in question who continued to yell. "Don't good morning me, Ranma Saotome. Where have you been? You missed supper last night, which I spent an hour preparing, and breakfast as well."
The watcher noted the boy's name and smiled approvingly when Ranma settled lazily on a large branch answering with a careless smile.
"Sorry, I had something I needed to do."
"Something you needed to do." Akane's voice was imbued with sarcasm and rose with irritation. "And just who were you doing it with, you pervert. You weren't in your bed last night. You were with Shampoo, weren't you? Weren't you?"
Ranma's eyes lost some of their brightness but his cheerful smile didn't falter. "No. I slept alone, just not in my bed. I wanted some peace and quiet for a change."
"Why can't you get peace and quiet in your own bed? Your father was worried sick, he must have cried for hours last night."
A faint glitter of hardness entered blue eyes and the bright smile stiffened slightly. "My father was probably worried that his meal ticket had escaped. He cries when the water isn't hot enough, or the rice isn't sticky enough, or the morning comes too early, or whatever other stupid reason he comes up with. As for peace and quiet in my own bed, what usually happens when you come to wake me in the mornings? I'll tell you what happens." Ranma continued without pausing to let Akane speak, "You barge into the room, scream at me, decide you're mad for some reason, pull your mallet out and knock me through the window and into the outside fountain."
The girl, Akane, was almost incoherent with rage at this point and her face had lost any of its prettiness as it twisted with anger. Watching eyes had starting icing up as Ranma spoke and they glittered dangerously as he saw the aforementioned mallet pulled out of thin air and thrown at the lounging figure in the tree. The watcher began gliding silently towards the girl, only to halt as Ranma nimbly dodged the mallet and jumped out of the oak tree to land on top of the fence that edged the sidewalk. With graceful ease, the dark boy began to run along the top of the iron railing and his mocking voice floated back as he disappeared from sight.
"I hate to dodge and run, but we're going to be late for school."
Baleful eyes followed the fuming girl as she began to run also. Once Akane was out of sight, the watcher slid out of the shadows and swiftly followed in the wake of the other two. He was busy processing the facts learned this morning and he didn't like the conclusions that were being drawn. The boy was tired, bruised, apparently used to being hit by the girl, Akane, and his father sounded useless. The situation bore further investigation.
A cheerful voice broke into his musings. "Hey Heero, hurry up man. The first bell is about to ring."
Looking up, Heero saw his friend Duo at the front gate of the school. Duo was bouncing in place, his entire body vibrating with energy, even his braid was swaying gently as the black dressed boy motioned him in impatiently. Quatre was standing beside Duo, smiling affectionately at the braided baka. Heero felt his own lips twitch slightly at the sight and obligingly moved at a faster pace.
Duo kept pace with him bouncing and talking all the way. "Did you have a good walk? We missed you at breakfast this morning. I hope we like this school better than the one we went to before. Hey, if we ever do get home, do we have to repeat this grade again? I don't think they can transfer records across dimensions, can they?"
Heero and Quatre exchanged amused glances and the blond headed Quatre laughed gently as he reached out to take Duo's hand. "We'll worry about that if it happens, habibi. But I'm sure computer genius here," a quick teasing glance at Heero, "can forge us any documents we need."
The slight frown on the braided boys face brightened back into a smile. "Oh yeah, that'd be cool." And Duo's mouth was off and chattering again.
Silence wasn't regained until they were seated in their first class and Heero felt his attention drift as a calculus problem was discussed. Duo's chattering this morning was as welcome as it had been missed. They had all taken their exile to this alternate world hard but Duo had been the worst. Beneath that laughing exterior had been someone who had taken their duty seriously and the guilt of unintentionally deserting the fight against OZ had nearly broken him. It had taken all of them to keep him reasonably sane, but Quatre had drawn him back from the edge. The blond Arabian had surrounded the nearly suicidal boy with care and affection. A friendship slowly deepened into love, and with a steady foundation to lean upon, Duo eventually released his guilt and rejoined life.
"Yuy-san," startled, he looked up at the sensei's suspicious face as the overly sweet voice continued, "maybe you can tell the class what's wrong with question two?" Low snickers were heard throughout the room. Very few had sympathy for the black haired boy that had been caught staring into space, they had all felt the sharp side of Yomo-sensei's tongue before and looked forward to someone else being the focus of her attention.
Calmly, Heero studied the problem on the board for several seconds and then pointed out the rather obvious miscalculation on the seventh line. He ran the problem through his head quickly and then detailed a second mistake on the eleventh line. Ignoring the silence that fell, he felt a spurt of amusement at Duo's muffled giggle, before returning to his thoughts.
Trowa had for the most part taken the change with his usual equanimity and had been a steadying influence on the entire group, especially the volatile Wufei. The Chinese boy had dragged them from one honorable cause to another for months, almost getting them all killed several times before he had starting calming down. Heero felt his lips twitch as he reflected that the calmness might simply be exhaustion. Trowa's answer to Wufei's rants was to distract the boy by dragging him to the nearest bedroom.
The fact that his four friends had paired off was both surprising and inevitable. They had spent months fighting to put their lives back together, and after the nightmares, tears, fights, and healing, the bond between the five that had been forged in the heat of battle had strengthened and become unbreakable. The relationships among them had shifted but the friendships were stronger for the testing. After nearly a year, they had finally adjusted to being in a new world and enjoyed the chance to be civilians rather than combatants.
Heero was happy that his friends had found soul mates in each other but it left him a bit lonely. When he had been the 'perfect soldier', he would never have allowed himself to admit a weak emotion such as loneliness. He had to be better than human and any weaknesses were to be eradicated. He had reacted to this new world by withdrawing and holding himself aloof from his surroundings and friends.
It had taken nearly six months before the first cracks in his façade had begun. Nightmares that he had thought banished in childhood had returned, waking him up night after night. His broken rest had resulted in irritability and an even shorter temper than usual. He must have snapped at his friends once too often, because one night he suddenly found himself tackled by four bodies and grim, determined faces stared down at him promising he wasn't going anywhere until he told them what was wrong.
He had ranted and struggled but was no match for the other four together. Finally, he had given up and ashamed had confessed his nightmares. That night he had found himself held in a warm embrace and comforting hands were there to soothe him back into sleep when he woke shaking. The arms and soothing hands changed from night to night until finally he was able to sleep alone again. He still occasionally shared a bed with one of the others when the loneliness became too much, but he wanted someone of his own, a soul mate, not just a caring friend.
Unbidden, his mind drifted back to the beautiful boy he had seen this morning. Something about Ranma drew him, a nebulous feeling that the tired boy with the mocking smile could understand him and would believe their fantastic story of crossing dimensions. He was making plans to approach Ranma when the bell harshly jerked him from his thoughts. Sighing he gathered up his books and absently answered Duo and Quatre as they moved to their next class.
o00o