A/N: Maeve suggested this idea and it was too big for the 31 Days of Smut. Duo and Relena fail a test, decide to blow off their day and drive to the beach where they encounter beach!Trowa. This also features one of the 31 Days of Smut prompts worked in, courtesy of AmberlyinViolet (I have way more than 31 prompts and this one was one of my favorites: 2x3xR with Trowa holding down Duo tickling him… and things).
A/N 2: I love reviews. I crave them. They make me smile and they make my fingers fly when I sit down to write. They introduce me to wonderful people who I become friends with and who give me all kinds of headcanons and ideas that will not go away until I sit down to write them (true story: Unexpected happened because of Luvsanime02; Entanglement because of Miss Murdered; countless one-shots from other amazing people). So, please, take the time to review.
A/N 3: I've got a bunch of ref images for this on my tumblr page "at" claraxbarton that you might want to check out.
A/N 4: Wake Forest, Duke, Davidson= great private schools in NC. Oak Island=lovely beach on the coast of NC. Davidson is about 20 minutes north of Charlotte, NC as a reference point.
A/N 5: Title from the lyrics of Peaches by In the Valley Below
Warnings: angst, smut, language
Pairings: 2x3xR
Working on a Feeling
"Wake up, princess."
Relena stretched as she opened her eyes.
She had no longer they had been driving, had no idea where they were even headed - she had stopped asking once they drove past Charlotte and had fallen asleep not long after.
She breathed in a deep breath and smiled as she sat up straight.
"Where are we?" She asked, looking at the sand dunes in front of her and the sea oats dancing in the wind.
"Oak Island. I figured we could revisit the setting of the best spring break ever."
Duo got out of the car and smirked at her.
Relena nodded in enthusiastic agreement.
They had come here last spring, booking a beach house for a week with Relena's then boyfriend Quatre and Duo's girlfriend Hilde. It had been an amazing time, partly because Relena and Duo had been mostly sober, unlike the year before and the break they spent in Cancun and partly because Duo and Relena had spent almost the entire break alone together, despite having their dates. Quatre had spent the entire time working on a research paper and Hilde had arrived with a broken ankle and, by her own very loud admission, could only take so much of Duo waiting around on her hand and foot. It had not been even a little surprising to Duo and Relena when, a month after both relationships had ended, Quatre and Hilde started dating.
Relena got out of the car and sighed.
It was cold, the wind and sand biting into her skin, but it was also perfect.
The sun was just starting to set, the blue sky bleeding into the orange and red light on the horizon.
"This is perfect," Relena told him.
Duo grinned and reached out his hand. She took it and together they started running towards the shore.
The water was freezing and both of them were shouting in horror and amazement as it splashed around their ankles.
"Fuck!" Duo shouted, but he was still grinning and Relena bent down to splash water at him.
He shouted again and started to run through the water. He was clumsy and slow and Relena easily kept pace with him.
They were laughing and shouting and completely oblivious to everything around them until a dog came barrelling out of seemingly nowhere, barking as it raced towards them.
Duo yelped and put himself in front of Relena as the dog dove through the waves and jumped at them.
The dog's weight landed on Duo's chest and all three of them fell backwards into the water.
Relena gasped as the icy waves washed over her, swallowing a mouthful of water in the process.
She flailed about but finally managed to surface, coughing and struggling for air as she crouched in the water.
Duo was right there beside her, trying to catch his breath as well.
And the dog -
The dog was licking Duo's face and wagging its tail in delight.
Duo tried to turn his head away.
"You okay?" He asked Relena.
She nodded when she was finally able to draw in a normal, if slightly raw breath.
The dog barked again and turned to lick the other side of Duo's face.
"Ugh, get off!" Duo tried to push the dog away but the dog seemed to think it was some kind of game and started splashing around in the water, barking and wagging its tail.
Relena helped Duo up to his feet and they both eyed the dog warily.
"Are you two okay?"
Relena looked up to see a tall man standing in front of them, the sunset illuminating one side of his body in golden light.
The man was… he had to be some kind of model or something who had just wandered out onto the beach. Dressed in jeans and a sweater, his auburn hair windswept and covering half of his face, obscuring one green eye and the spray of freckles across his nose.
She was staring. She had no idea how long she had been staring, but the look on the man's face made it clear that it had been long enough to make him question her sanity.
And then Relena realized that, beside her, Duo was silent.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and he seemed just as transfixed as she was.
"Fine," Relena managed, speaking around her suddenly dry throat and hammering heart. "We're just fine."
"Yep, couldn't be better," Duo added.
The man arched an eyebrow.
"It looks like you couldn't be wetter," he countered.
Duo laughed at the pun, a forced, nervous laugh that had both Relena and the stranger rolling their eyes.
He caught her doing it and his full lips tilted into a smirk that did all kinds of things to Relena's stomach.
"I'm sorry about Cathy," the man said. "The beach is usually pretty empty this time of year, so I just let her run free."
The dog in question was currently jumping through the waves, barking delightly at the them.
Relena couldn't help but smile a little.
"Ah, no worries," Duo said. "We were planning on going swimming anyway."
Trowa arched an eyebrow.
"It's forty degrees out here."
"Yeah, I mean, when you say things like that it seems like a bad idea," Duo allowed.
The words reminded Relena of just how cold and wet she was. Her leggings felt as if they were painted on - and still wet, her boots were full of water and her sweater clung to her like a wet, heavy weight. Beside her Duo looked just bad, the Davidson Rugby sweater he had liberated from an old boyfriend's closet clinging to him, his khakis molded to his legs and his hair sticking to his face in wild clumps. She was sure her own hair looked just as bad.
"Can I give you a ride somewhere - are you staying close by?"
"We just drove down for the day," Relena told him.
The man looked them up and down.
"I can't let you drive back like this," he said. "I can wash and dry your clothes for you."
Duo looked over at her, a question in his eyes.
Years of being told not to trust strangers, of being lectured to never go somewhere with a boy she didn't know, had Relena shaking her head no.
"We'll be fine," she insisted, mentally praying she or Duo had left a sweater or something in the trunk of her car recently.
"I promise I'm not a creep or an axe-murderer," the man said. "I just - I want to do something for you after my dog ruined your day."
"Day was already ruined," Duo waved the man off and started to slog out of the water, holding out his hand to help Relena do the same.
"If your day was already ruined then I really have to make it up to you," the stranger said. "Cathy!" The dog bounded over to his side. "Please - my house is a block away."
A gust of wind made Relena shiver.
"I mean, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy to kidnap people and tie them up in his basement," Duo leaned in close to whisper to Relena.
"That's probably because people take one look at him and beg him to tie them up. He doesn't need to kidnap anyone," Relena retorted.
Duo snorted a laugh.
"Plus we're at the beach. He probably doesn't have a basement."
"So what I'm hearing is we're going to say yes, right? Because I am not looking forward to a four hour drive in cold, wet, sandy clothes."
Relena wanted to say no, really, really wanted to say no. But the mental image of them having to sit in her car like that, for that long, made her feel even worse than she had that morning.
She sighed, giving in.
Duo smirked.
"We'd love to," he told the stranger. "I'm Duo, by the way," he added and held out his hand.
"Trowa," the man said, shaking his hand and then holding his hand out to Relena.
"Relena," she shook his hand, quickly, trying very hard not to think about how warm and large his rough hand was or the tiny spark she felt at his touch.
"Shall we?" Trowa asked and gestured up the beach.
They followed him, Relena feeling colder and colder with each step as the sun finally set and the wind bit at their skin and clothes.
Beside her, Duo wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.
"It's not as bad as that time we went snow swimming," he muttered and Relena didn't know if he was trying to convince himself or her.
The walk to Trowa's house felt painfully long, but it was only a few minutes after they left the water that they walked up to a small green cottage on stilts, the paint chipped off the siding lending it an almost romantic air in the fading light.
"I need to wash the dog off," Trowa told them. "Let me run in and grab you two some towels and - some clothes to change into while I wash yours?" He offered.
Relena nodded, though it felt weird, bizarre even to be accepting this from a total stranger.
"Can you hold her for a moment?" Trowa asked and held out the leash he had put on Cathy when they left the beach.
Relena took the leash when Duo stared at it, clearly a little traumatized from having the dog jump on him in the first place.
They watched Trowa take the stairs two at a time and disappear out of view as he went up to the cottage, leaving them standing in the floodlight just under the porch.
"Okay, he's like the hottest guy on the planet," Duo said as soon as they heard the door open above them.
Relena gave him a look.
"What? I'm just saying - he's really, insanely hot. You don't think so?"
"Of course I do - but I'm not going to start drooling over him."
"Please. I saw you back at the beach. You were a heartbeat away from swooning into his arms."
Relena smacked him on the arm.
"I was not! And I don't swoon!"
"Uh huh," Duo gave her a knowing look.
"It was one time and I tripped - I was lucky Alex was there to catch me."
"Lucky. Yeah. I'd use the more appropriate word conniving, but we'll go with lucky if it makes you feel better."
Relena hit him in the arm.
"Ow. You get violent when you're around a hot guy," Duo muttered.
"He's not that hot," Relena responded.
"You been hanging around some Calvin Klein models without telling me or something - because this guy is hot. As in the kind of hot that makes me want to ask him very nicely if he will tie me up and do all kinds of dirty things to me."
"You need to get laid," Relena retorted.
"Amen, sister, which is kind of my point."
Relena arched an eyebrow at him.
"You have a point? You aren't just going to ramble about your sexual fantasy with the hot stranger until he comes back and hears us talking about him at a horribly inappropriate moment?"
"My point is," Duo said, speaking as if Relena hadn't, "we should seize this opportunity."
"Seize what opportunity? The chance to get warm and dry?"
"No, the chance to have a sex with the hot stranger."
"Duo, what are you even -"
"Look, it's been a really, really shitty day. And then, like a knight in sexy freckles, this guy comes out of nowhere and saves us from being cold and wet -"
"After his dog made us cold and wet," Relena interjected.
Duo waved.
"That's beside the point. The point is - the universe is telling us to seize this chance. Tell me honestly Relena, that you don't want to have sex with this guy?"
"Honestly I don't! I'm not so desperate that I want to fall into bed with some hot stranger!"
"Okay but what if this is our chance to have a threesome - what if this is our chance to -"
Trowa came down the stairs, arms laden with towels.
"Here," he said, handing the towels to Duo and taking the leash back from Relena. "I left some clothes for you two upstairs - just inside the door. If you want to change and just pile your wet things on the towels I can wash them for you."
"Are you really sure this is okay?" Relena had to ask again as she took one of the towels from Duo and wrapped it around her shoulders.
"Of course - I wouldn't offer if it wasn't."
-o-