July 27, 2000
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He woke up in his room, an ice pack settled firmly on his forehead. "Ow," he groaned, shutting his eyes against the bright fluorescent light of the overhead lamp. "What--" Even talking hurt. He worked his jaw back into place; someone had punched him while he was on the ground.
His mother entered the room, looking like she'd been crying. Scratch that, she was crying, tears marring her model-worthy heart- shaped face. Heero wished sometimes that he'd inherited his mother's American looks, instead of his Japanese father's sloped nose and arched eyebrows. At least he had her eyes, he thought sadly. At least he had something that was like everybody else.
"I don't want you to go back there," she said quietly, resting a manicured hand on his cheek, maternal instincts kicking in. "Never again, Heero."
"How--?"
"Your friend called me and said I'd better get here soon. Treize, I think." Heero allowed himself a small smile. "But I'm serious. It's too late for you to enroll in a private school, you'll just have to finish the year and then--"
*...they'll be talking about this one for years...*
"No," Heero said stubbornly. They locked eyes, a battle of silent wills, neither about to back down. Maybe she saw a little bit of the geeky, metal-mouthed, four-eyed girl she had been in her son. All she knew was that Heero desperately wanted to stay at home and out of public view. She shouldn't indulge him...
"I'll home-school you," she said finally. "There's enough money in your father's accounts so that I'll never have to work again. But only until September, and then you're going to school." Heero breathed a sigh of relief. He didn't have to go back; didn't have to look them in the eye and try not to blush crimson, just knowing what they were thinking about. One year of rest and recovery.
And one year turned into two.
Then three and four and five, until Heero was about to enter high school and she finally put her foot down. She had more gray hairs, looked much older from dealing with his stubborn streak, inherited from his not-quite-compromise-happy father.
"No," she snapped, crossing her arms. "You're going to Mount Kisco Prep and that's that. It's in another town, even, so none of the kids from your old school will be there. I'm sure they've forgotten all about what happened by now!"
"No!" Heero shouted, frowning. "I don't want to! You can't make me! I'll run away! I'll *KILL* myself first!" Some part of her knew it was melodramatic adolescent angst, but the other part feared terribly for her son's life.
"I'm going for a walk," he muttered, grabbing his jacket.
"You're playing soccer and that's that!" his father yelled, slamming one large fist onto the dining room table. Shooting a deadly glare at the infuriated, slightly balding man, he yanked his leather jacket from the coat rack and went out for a walk.
How different things had become, he thought absently. Once his father had abhorred soccer; it took time away from schoolwork. But once it had gotten him a free ride into Mount Kisco Prep, he took a liking to it. And the extra money.
He was going to be a sophomore there in September; it was June now. He had three months to decide what he was going to do; should he return to public school? Run away and join the circus as a bearded lady?
So lost in his thoughts was he that he didn't even notice when he slammed into a smaller boy, sending him flying into the wet pavement. The whole block smelled slightly musky from the recent rain.
"You okay? I hit what are you doing here?" The Japanese boy sitting on the ground blinked twice at the jumbled sentence, then his eyes widened.
"Treize? What are you--?"
"I live here!"
"So do I!" They both smiled at the same time; the older boy realized that Heero was still sitting on the ground and offered him a hand up. Not realizing his own strength nor how light the boy was, Heero went flying into his chest as he pulled up, his long-boned fingers pressing against the damp of his shirt.
They went for some ice cream and to catch up on 'old times'. "I'm still a geek," Heero admitted. Somehow, it was easier to say around Treize than around anyone else. The sapphire-eyed boy raised a single eyebrow elegantly.
"I don't think so. You look better with the colored contact lenses." Heero snorted, sucking his milkshake up through a long striped straw. "You do!"
"They're not colored. But thank you. I got my braces off two years ago. Finally." Sighing, he lapsed into a quiet reverie, staring out the window. Outside, the rain was starting up again.
"Do you remember Duo and Wufei?" The Japanese boy winced, his expression full of barely dulled pain, making Treize regret mentioning them. "They both have braces now. It's quite amusing, actually."
"Do they." It wasn't a question.
"So, where are you going to school?" Treize asked conversationally, trying to get his quiet companion to talk a little bit.
"Mount Kisco. My mom's making me." The words were spoken with such a blatant disregard for Mount Kisco and his mother that the ginger-haired boy had to laugh.
"I'm going there too. Maybe I'll see you around." He slapped down a ten and turned to go, Heero's words floating to him across the room.
"Yeah. Maybe I will."
Relena and Dorothy were shopping.
Which meant, in far more words, that they were spending as much of their parents' money in as little time as possible with as many bags from expensive stores as their thin arms could carry. And they were sipping iced cappucinos and checking out the guy working the afternoon shift at Recordtown.
In fact, they were so busy checking out the guy as he bent over to dust off old CD's from the bargain bin, they never saw him walk by.
But he saw them.
They had changed! It seemed they all had, he thought as he glimpsed himself in the reflection of the glass. It had taken nearly two and a half years before he could look in the mirror and not see smirking violet eyes, not throw up his lunch. Being home-schooled had given him a strange kind of perspective, almost distant from the normal point of view of a high-school freshmen. Their petty fights seemed--well, petty, and their adolescent worries of acne and other horrors were somewhat less than top priority for Heero.
And it seemed Relena and Dorothy had fallen into the "look- like-everyone-else-dress-like-everyone-else-talk-like-everyone-else" clique at their schools. Both blondes had bleached their hair so as to become perfectly white-haired, and had perfect, capped teeth. They wore super-tight extra-flared Abercrombie and Fitch jeans and even tighter tube tops.
They were the most hideous things Heero had ever seen. Smirking, he decided to have a little fun. He deserved to, after five years of self-imposed exile because of these people.
"...can't believe they're closing the high school," Dorothy sighed. "...just a little asbestos...!" Relena nodded her agreement emphatically; they both paused to ogle the Recordtown boy again.
"Excuse me," Heero said suddenly, tapping Relena on the shoulder. Her eyes glazed for a moment, and then she smiled in a terribly syrupy way. "Do you happen to know the time?"
They fell over themselves looking at their watches; Heero smiled politely. Pathetic. A male (who wasn't even attractive, just not as homely as some, his childhood demons reminded him) asked them the time and they drooled enough to fill a bucket.
"Five past twelve," Dorothy breathed eagerly, resting a cupped hand on his shoulder. Relena made a choked noise and began to sulk as the other blonde flirted with him. "Waiting for someone?"
"Yes," Heero said, spotting Treize riding down the escalator next to an exhibition statue of alphabet letters, "my boyfriend was supposed to meet me at the ABC Tower..." He grinned, waving at the ginger-haired boy. "He's right here. Nice meeting you, ladies." They watched him as he walked away, every little movement of his jean- clad butt its own kind of special goodbye.
"What a hottie," Relena sighed, sinking onto a bench beside an old lady knitting a sock large enough for the Jolly Green Giant. "We didn't even get his name...!" Dorothy gave a rather loud cry of appreciation as Heero dropped his wallet and didn't even bend his knees to pick it up.
"Treize goes to Mount Kisco. I bet that's where they met. What luck," the forked eyebrow girl laughed, "that we're going there too!"
Treize choked on his milkshake as Heero recounted how the two blonde girls, so disdainful of him as children, had drooled on his sneakers when he asked them the time. "Desperate," Heero said, shaking his head, apparently oblivious to the fact that most of the teenaged girls throughout the Friendly's were staring at him with something akin to hunger in their eyes.
"Yeah," he recovered. "Sure." He couldn't help smiling as he imagined Heero declaring him his boyfriend. "I saw Duo and Wufei here earlier, playing video games at the arcade. I can't imagine how everyone thought they were so cool..." He shuddered, the image of the two overgrown greasy skaters laughing and chestbumping forever imprinted in his mind. "I want to see them." There was a malicious gleam in his eye. Treize hastily held out a hand to keep him from sliding out of the booth. "Don't try arguing with me today. I have to know why..."
"You already know why! Children are vicious, cruel back- stabbing things and I knew that when I helped you up that day in gym." Heero blushed and Treize feared he'd embarrassed him. He had a feeling the Japanese boy didn't get out much.
"You remember that?" he asked, almost with a shy pleasure. Treize grinned broadly.
"'Course. I make it a point to rescue bishounen in distress," he teased, rubbing his thigh suggestively. Heero burst out laughing as one of the waitresses, listening to their conversation, suddenly dropped her tray full of french fries and sodas.
"Come on, I'll bet they're still at the arcade..." Sighing, Treize allowed himself to be led from the restaurant. If only Heero weren't so cute or so *not* street-wise...
"Yeah! I killed OZ!" A slightly greasy looking teenager with braces on his bottom teeth did a victory dance, knocking over several smaller children like bowling pins. "Man, I'll have Romafeller conquered in no time! This game isn't any fun anymore, Wu- man," he pouted, using the expression that had gained instant concessions from any adult he used it on as a child. Unfortunately, he was a 14-year old boy with hair down to his ass, bloodshot eyes, and teeth that glittered in the sunlight, although not because of their whiteness.
And it just didn't work any longer.
"Get out!" the manager shouted, enraged. Then, as if aware of how close he was to losing his best customers, he added, "Come back when you're not stoned!" Duo looked, confused, at his Chinese companion, who shrugged.
"We're not stoned, though," he said, almost curiously. Wufei shrugged again. "Oh well. Let's go pick up some hot guys or something." The Chinese boy, aware of his status in the world as a loser and a dork, nodded slowly.
"You never talk anymore," Duo said, his braces flashing bright lights at everyone as they walked past. "I never understood why..."
"Ow!" Duo winced as he slammed into a brick wall. "Watch where you're going, pal!" A deeper, huskier voice, still a bit nasal, bit back at him through the haze of having been dumped on his head.
"You watch where you're going, baka." He looked at the guy's feet; sneakers. Expensive sneakers. Money. Cha-ching! Moving on, he saw two tanned legs and long cargo shorts. Not bad. Slender, not too bulky. Duo liked them thin, but not too skinny. Long arms, long fingers, long-- He stopped his hentai thoughts to continue examining this new piece of flesh before him. Pretty face, Asian. Exotic, probably didn't speak a word of English, which was okay since he didn't want him to *talk* to...
Heero grinned at Treize, who was hiding behind a potted plant, as he realized Duo didn't recognize him. At all. "Oh, hey," Duo was saying, "let me buy you a Coke or something and make it up to you?" Heero pretended to think a moment.
"Well..." Treize's eyes suddenly went very wide. "Only if you invite my friend," he said slyly, pointing to his ginger-haired friend. "He gets very thirsty."
"Okay," said Duo eagerly, not really listening. "Whatever you say..."
"That was more fun than I've had in years," Heero said honestly. And it had been. Not only had Duo, the boy who'd destroyed his childhood, hit on him the entire time, Wufei, the other boy who'd had a hand in making him the scapegoat of the class, had hit on Treize incessantly, tearing his straw paper off for him, opening his Coke and spilling half the contents in the process. Heero thought the poor boy was about to go permanently pink with embarrassment...
"Can I call you?" he asked hopefully. Heero smiled.
"Maybe. But, we'll see each other around..." He turned to make his triumphant exit.
"Wait! What school do you go to?" Duo cried, desperate. He had to see this boy again...even if it was only because of the way he looked. "Where do you live?"
"I'm going to Mount Kisco," Heero said cheerfully, enjoying Duo's attention (Treize thought) entirely too much. Duo's face lit up into a brilliant smile that might have been extremely attractive had it not been for the row of metal wire adorning his teeth.
"I am too! What a coincidence, maybe I'll see you there..."
Treize sighed, wrapping his blanket around him tighter. They were watching Top Gun and Heero was wondering what it would be like to fly a fighter jet. "Don't try to change the subject, Heero." He grabbed a piece of popcorn from the nearly empty bowl and stuffed it into his mouth, savoring the way the butter melted on his tongue.
"What? Duo deserves everything he gets," Heero said firmly. Treize couldn't argue with him there, so he just busied himself watching Tom Cruise's butt in his tight blue jeans. "Mmm..." Heero suddenly sighed. "He's making me hot."
Treize choked on his piece of popcorn. He wished Heero wouldn't say things like that when he had food or drink in his mouth. "Excuse me?" The Japanese boy looked at him with a mixture of michievousness and curiosity in his eyes. "Did you just say 'He's making me hot'?!" Couldn't be. He must have misheard.
"No," Heero said, mock-scowling. "I said, 'Maybe we should stop'. You know, like the tape? It's getting late and my mom probably wants me home--"
"Already talked to your mom," Treize said, fanning himself with one hand. *He's making me hot*, honestly, Treize! he scolded himself. "She'll be gone all weekend. You can stay here if you want." Heero smiled.
"Sure. God, I hate this part!" he groaned, his hate apparently too awesome to let him rest placidly on the floor. Heero rolled around, writhing in a way that could be mistaken for an invitation to something very inappropriate.
*Hentai! I'm such a hentai...* Unable to restrain himself, he looked at the Japanese boy's backside, which, he admitted, he would take over Tom's anyday.
When the movie was over, they decided to go to bed. It was rather awkward for Treize since he usually slept naked. Eventually, he fished out a pair of old boxers and a loose tee-shirt and slipped between the sheets to watch Heero undress.
The freshman fought with the cloth of his shirt for a moment before tossing it to the ground. Heero whistled absently to himself as he tugged the rough material of his cargo shorts over his hips. Treize swallowed hard. If he looked hard enough, he could just see the faint outline of... He tore his eyes away, glad his slowly hardening member had decided not to embarrass him by remaining somewhat unnoticeable.
Heero sat on the edge of Treize's bed, looking apprehensive, his hands locked in his lap. "Treize..." The older boy yawned and pretended to be foggy from half-sleep. "I have to ask a question." The really pathetic thing was, he probably would have answered anything Heero asked, even if the Japanese boy didn't know it.
"Sure." He sat up, his sapphire eyes glittering strangely in the moonlight. On purpose, he began to lean towards him. Some part of him was warning, 'Stop! Stop now!' But the other part, the part of him that knew how lonely it was to be the outsider, was urging him on. Most freshmen in high school have already been kissed, he assured himself. I'm just...helping him up to speed, that's all.
"Do you think what I'm going to do is wrong?" His voice sounded for moment so haunted; the ghost afterimage of braces and broken glasses hovered around the Japanese boy's face. Disappointed with his own lack of resolve, Treize pulled back and looked straight into Heero's eyes.
"I don't know. Duo has never been cruel to anyone else like that..." Treize hurried on; he doubted the younger boy wanted to hear how the American had singled him out. "Maybe he's changed."
Heero nodded for a moment, his expression unreadable, a cross between a half smile and a grimace of pain. "Or maybe he hasn't, and it's time he got his." He nodded; it was possible.
"But maybe you should leave the details to the fates, and concentrate on your own life." He winced as the words came out--they sounded so preachy! He could just hear Duo's voice, booming over the auditorium at their shy guestspeaker, a strict nun from the Amazon: "Preach, sister, preach!" The boy was truly obnoxious.
Heero shuddered. "I still have nightmares," he confessed. "Where they're all standing a circle and they're just laughing and shoving me, and then I fall again and I see this bright white light... And I wake up and I don't even know where I am. It's always the same." He began to tremble; for the first time, Treize could see the true after affects of Duo and Wufei's trick. The worst scars are the ones that no one can see, he thought.
And that bastard Maxwell deserves everything he's getting. I can't wait until September, and then maybe, when it's all said and done, Heero'll have found some kind of peace.
"Oh man!" Duo sighed, flopping back against his bed, his violet eyes clouded with little pink hearts. "I can't believe today." In his mind, he was swimming in a sea of Prussian blue... "Oh God," he sighed, resting his head on his hands, "I know I've done terrible things to people. I've lied and I've stolen from people. But I just wanted to say thanks." A grin was slowly stealing over his heart-shaped face.
He hugged his pillow tightly to his chest, imagining for a moment that it was the boy he'd ran into at the mall. The more Duo thought about him, the more he was convinced that he was almost in love with him. Something in him called Duo to his side, no matter how preposterous the idea of love at the first Coke was.
"I can't wait for September!"
The summer passed quickly--too quickly for Heero. He and Treize spent almost every waking moment together. It seemed strange to him; didn't the older boy have somewhere else to be, something better to be doing than hanging around a geeky boy like him? But at the same time, he wasn't one to question fine companionship.
He felt odd when he was around the ginger-haired boy sometimes, like there was an unspoken tension between them, building and fading, making its silent presence known in a little flinch or a burst of color in his cheeks. It came to a head one night at Treize's house, where they were busy comparing schedules and reminiscing about the lazy days of summer.
"Oh man," Treize laughed as he snatched Heero's schedule from limp hands. Heero made a sound of protest, and tried to steal his papers back. After his sixth failed attempt, he plopped onto the floor.
"You've got Master Quatre for Physics," snickered Treize. Heero looked at him oddly. "Master Quatre--he insists that we call him 'Master', and I'm not too keen on finding out why--is the craziest old coot in the school. He drinks green tea for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and he gets heartburn in the middle of class, so bad that sometimes he has to cancel classes altogether." He snickered. "He's also got a tendency to blow up at students at the slightest provocation, but otherwise he's a rather well-mannered man."
"Hm." Sounds bad, Heero thought, gazing out the window until other, more pleasant, thoughts stole over his mind. "Do you remember that day at the mall, when we saw Duo and Wufei? "Yeah," replied Treize uneasily. Sometimes Heero was a bit unpredictable. It was good in a way; he was a breath of fresh air, blunt, to the point, never playing games or beating around the bush. Rather, he tended to use a chainsaw to hack the shrubbery down and then walked over them. "Wait, let me take my gum out. Somehow, whenever you start out a conversation like that I always end up choking on some kind of food." Heero waited patiently, tapping long fingers against the bedpost.
"Are you gay?" he finally asked.
Apparently, one didn't need food to choke. He knew his face was flaming red as he forced himself to look the unconcerned Japanese boy in the eye. "Just wondering..." he said, backing down and giving Treize a chance to avoid responding to the question.
"I appreciate both sexes," he said loftily.
"You mean you're bi."
"Where did you hear that?!" he demanded, moving so he was perched over Heero's knees. Heero blushed.
"Om...I was listening to some guys from Mount Kisco talking about how Milliardo wants a piece of your ass--" Bewildered, the older boy had no choice but to sit back and listen to every piece of rude and crude gossip regurgitated, uncensored and unbiased, back at him. And what made it worse was that most of it was, in some way, true. "Well, now you know. You don't have to worry about swirlies in high school," he teased, running a hand playfully through the smaller boy's bangs. "The gossip is the problem now. It's vicious."
Heero nodded. "Yeah; I mean, I can't see you doing half the stuff they were talking about. They said you were cheating on Milliardo with another boy." His eyes narrowed in outrage at the thought of his friend doing anything so...indecent; Treize didn't have the heart to tell him the boy they'd been talking about had probably been Heero himself. "I thought 'Milli Vanilli' and Lucy were going out..."
"That's more proof of how withdrawn you've been from town gossip," he sighed, pleased. Not innocence, but a sheltered mind. "He dumped her in seventh grade. She's now 'special friends' with Cat, Trowa's step-sister." He added tactfully, "Trowa has been sent to a detention center in Sunnyside; he couldn't stop laughing during his hearing."
"Are you still going out?" he inquired, quickly grabbing his schedule from Treize's suddenly lax hands. "Aha...you *are* in one of my classes...Spanish 3." His friend's face contorted into a pained expression.
"We did not part on good terms. It was not a welcome relationship towards the end." He tried to pry the paper from Heero's hands and immediately pulled away as the paper-snatching thief gave a pained yelp. Red finger marks encircled one too-thin wrist. There would be bruises there later, he noted, eyeing them subtly. "Sorry..." He lifted the arm to his face for closer inspection, and somehow, impossibly, he found himself kissing his wrist, his palm, his aristocratic nose nuzzling the open face of his hand.
Neither dared to move, to break the spell. Treize let his tongue dart out to taste the fleshy pad of his thumb-tip, smiling serenely as the tastes invaded his mouth. Licking his palm, rubbing up and down his spine in a way that was sending pleasure scaling up and down Heero's body.
"So," his mother inquired as Heero picked at his dinner, "did you and Treize have a lot of fun?" The Japanese boy smiled, eyes far away, and Mrs. Yuy took that for a very positive yes.
End Part Three
Ariana
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