Unconditional Gifts
Part 17
The start of the second morning of their stay at the beach house found the
remaining three Gundam pilots quietly going about their day to day lives.
Duo and Heero were in the kitchen sharing some coffee and quietly
strategizing the best approach to the day. As they talked, Quatre wandered
into the room looking a little messier than usual, still wearing his rumpled
silk pajamas.
"Yo, Q?" Duo asked with concern, "What's wrong, buddy? You look ragged."
Quatre frowned and scratched his head, "I didn't sleep well, Duo, no big
deal."
"I'll be the judge of that," Duo insisted, rising to stand by his blond
friend and he asked, "Nightmares again, Quatre? Or something else? You're not
getting sick, are you?"
"No, I'm not getting sick, I just had these weird dreams all night long,"
Quatre sighed deeply and then reached for the box of tea bags then turned on
the tea kettle. "I think it's guilt over that whole thing with Zechs
Merquise."
Heero's head rose at the sound of the Lightning Count's name, "Merquise?
What's he got to do with anything?"
Duo snorted softly, "Oh please, Heero! Don't tell us you forgot that he's the
reason we had to leave the apartment a couple days ago."
"Of course I haven't forgotten, baka," Heero answered with a shrug. "It's
really not an issue, Quatre. We told you that before and this is a much nicer
safehouse than that dinky little apartment ever was. It was a mistake any of
us could have made, let it go."
"That's easy for you to say, Heero," Quatre groused. He wasn't completely
awake and the erotic images of the tall bishounen hadn't faded from the
Sandrock pilot's mind just yet.
Duo nodded and moved over to sit back down with his lover. "Yeah, it's easy
for us to say since it's true. There's nothing to worry about now, he's
hundreds of miles away and I doubt you'll bump into him again anyway."
"That's the problem," Quatre complained, pouring boiling water over the tea
bag and setting it aside to steep. "I finally got a date and it just *had* to
be with him of all people! Now I feel bad for never apologizing and even if
he *is* the enemy, he was kinda cute and all."
"Oh ho! Is *that* the way of it? Gettin' hot and bothered for the wrong man?"
Duo smiled to take the edge off his words. "Lighten up, Q-Ball, like I told
ya, you're a real sweetheart of a guy and there's someone for everyone. Who
knows? Maybe there's some cute surfer dudes around here you can go out with?
We *are* at the beach, ya know!"
"I rather doubt that he'll meet a surfer, Duo," Trowa offered as he walked
into the room, hair still damp and brushed back so that both emerald eyes
sparkled attractively in the morning sunlight. "There's no surf to speak of
in North Carolina."
"Hey, Tro!" Duo chirped happily, getting back up expecting to see the teen's
dark-haired love right behind him.
As he moved to pour a cup of coffee, Trowa asked, "Where's Fei? I thought he
was down here with all of you." He sipped at the "black" coffee thinking how
the drink reminded him of his lover's eyes, a deep brown so dark as to be
considered black, shimmering and infinitely attractive.
Trowa was about to add his usual cream and sugar as Duo answered, suddenly
concerned, "Isn't he with you, Trowa? I've been down here for over an hour
and I haven't seen him."
"What?" Trowa turned, green eyes narrowed dangerously as he assessed the
situation, deciding he didn't much care for the conclusion he was arriving
at. Dropping the full mug negligently into the sink, he turned on one heel
and went towards the door to the deck, saying, "He was gone when I woke up. I
assumed he was down here and I grabbed a shower without even thinking about
it. Damn it all, I thought he and I had an understanding!"
"Shit!" Duo cursed, flying into motion as his own mind filled in the blanks
in what Trowa had said and leaving some rather frightening possibilities
staring him in the face. "You look out there and I'll double-check upstairs."
"I'll see if he took the car and left," Heero offered, halfway to the door,
concern written across his usually impassive face.
Quatre glanced at the others and wondered what he might do to help and then
realized something the others might have missed. Without speaking, he went to
the front closet and pulled out the binoculars he had spotted. He assumed
they were placed there to allow renters of the beach house to watch the ships
on the horizon, but he planned to use them to scan down the beach in case
Wufei had simply gone for a walk.
Stepping onto the windy deck and seeing Trowa shouting Wufei's name and
running towards the waterline with no evidence of the missing teen in sight,
Quatre pulled the binoculars to his eyes and searched the horizon.
By the time Trowa had convinced himself there was no sign of his lover near
the house on the oceanfront side, he had returned to find the blond teen
frowning unhappily into the glasses.
"We can't see very far from here, Trowa!" Quatre commented worriedly, voice
raised to overcome the noise of the wind and the surf, "The dunes are too
high!"
"Options?" Trowa demanded tersely, he knew that if Duo had found Wufei in the
house, they'd have been notified by now and he was becoming more frightened
with every passing moment. All of Duo's comments about Wufei's possible
suicidal tendencies had run through Trowa's mind at lightning speed as he
became convinced that the oriental teen truly was missing.
Quatre had already been thinking along these lines and he suddenly exclaimed,
"The widow's walk! This house has a widow's walk! Let's try that, Trowa!"
Without waiting for an answer, the pajama-clad boy turned and sprinted for
the door that led back inside the beach house.
Following, Trowa asked, "How do we get to it, Quatre?"
"On the third floor hallway, I saw an extra door I assumed was a linen
closet, but with some luck that'll lead to a staircase to the roof." Quatre
was taking the stairs two at a time and Trowa was right behind him.
"I hope you're right," Trowa remarked, voice filled with apprehension. As
panic built in his heart, the Mercenary personality began to slide forward
ready to respond if the worst case scenario came true and it effected his
mannerisms, rendering Trowa more like the silent soldier he became during
battle.
They passed Heero at the second floor landing and he asked, "Anything?"
"No," Trowa answered stonily and then moved past Quatre to take the remaining
flight of stairs three at a time. Heero and Quatre followed automatically,
the three of them making enough noise that the other searcher in the house
knew what they were doing even before he saw them all.
"Shit, shit, shit!!!" Duo exclaimed and fell into step as they made their way
to the end of the hallway on the top floor of the house.
The door that Quatre had noticed did indeed lead to a staircase, a spiral one
at that, and Trowa was up it and had the door at the other end open allowing
sunlight to spill down on all of them before Duo even set foot on the first
riser.
Bursting out onto the widow's walk, though, Trowa came to a sudden halt as
his eyes took in a scene that baffled him.
Sitting motionless at the far end of the generous deck that covered the
oceanfront side of the roof was his missing lover, dressed in the same shorts
and t-shirt he'd worn to bed, eyes covered by sunglasses, and black silk hair
loose in the heavy breeze. Wufei was seated on the floor of the deck itself
arms crossed and leaning against the railing, head down. What confused Trowa
was the fact that Wufei looked perfectly fine, yet hadn't reacted at all to
his presence, something the slender teen found extremely odd.
"Fei? Koi?" Trowa called out, but the wind caught the sound and carried it
away.
"WUFEI!!!" Duo screamed and launched himself at the unmoving boy, followed
closely by the other three teens.
Finally a reaction came from the seated figure as Wufei lifted his head
slowly, asking, "Nani?"
At almost the same instant, he was very nearly tackled by a braided American
who didn't bother to pause despite the evidence that the smaller boy wasn't
seriously injured or dead as Duo had immediately feared.
"What the *fuck* do you think you're doing, Wufei?!?" Duo demanded angrily,
running his hands across the other boy's body quickly, convincing himself
there were no weapons hiding from view as well as no blood from a previously
undetected wound. Hotly, he snapped at his friend, "I dunno if I should kiss
you or kill you for scaring us like that, babe, but I'm damned glad we found
ya! He's okay, Tro!!" Duo shouted before he realized that the tall teen was
crouched down beside the two of them already.
"So I see," Trowa commented, still confused even as he felt Quatre and Heero
join them in staring at Wufei.
Blinking into the bright sunlight, Wufei looked a little lost as he asked,
"What is going on here, Trowa?" His words, too, were scooped up and carried
away on the breeze. Noticing the fear and shock warring on the emerald-eyed
pilot's face, Wufei lifted his empty hands to him as if in supplication.
"Angel?" Wufei asked in growing concern, but Trowa suddenly took the offered
hands into his own and tugged the smaller boy forward and into a tight
embrace.
"You scared the *shit* out of me, dragon!" Trowa said into Wufei's ear,
fighting the wind to get his words across. Trowa was barely able to control
the fear that was coursing through his body and the expletive slipped out,
surprising his lover who had rarely heard him so much as curse mildly. Even
as the Mercenary personality slipped back into the recesses of Trowa's mind,
his influence had been heard in his angry words and it shocked his lover.
Onyx eyes widened as Wufei realized beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had
inadvertently upset the taller teen badly. He apologized without fully
knowing what sin he had committed, "Gomenasai, koi, it wont happen again. Um,
what did I do, anyway?"
"We didn't know where the hell you were, Fei! I thought you might have…"
Trowa spoke then stopped, barely getting his runaway imagination under
control enough to keep from admitting that he had feared the other boy might
have taken his life rather than confront the truth about his past. "I was so
damned worried!"
Blinking back his confusion, Wufei allowed himself to be drawn to his feet by
Trowa who held onto him possessively even as the other pilots stepped closer
to the couple as if requiring physical contact with the Chinese boy to be
convinced that he was all right after all.
"What on earth did you think you were doing up here alone, Wufei?" Quatre
angrily demanded then added, "Didn't you hear us when we were down on the
deck looking for you?"
"Nani?" Wufei asked, leaning forward slightly, "What did you say, Quatre? I
can not hear you over the wind."
Realization dawned on them all suddenly that of course Wufei hadn't heard
them before. It was breezy at ground level, but here at the top of the nearly
fifty-foot tall beach house it was positively gusty. The wind drowned out
words from nearby and would have rendered words from the deck totally lost.
"Let's get back inside," Heero recommended, leaning in so that both Trowa and
Wufei would hear his words.
"All right," Wufei agreed easily, and then winced a little from where Heero
had placed one hand on an exposed arm. "Ite," he griped, glancing at the
slightly sunburned skin even as all five of them headed back to the door that
led inside.
"I wonder what the hell was going through Wu's head to pull a stunt like
this?" Duo complained to Quatre as they walked into the kitchen ahead of
everyone else.
"I guess we'll find out in a few minutes," the blond answered, going ahead
and brewing coffee for all of them. His nerves were shot to hell and he
didn't even bother with making tea, simply sitting down at the table with Duo
to wait for answers.
Full Author's Notes to Run at Conclusion.
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