21 Aug 2000
DISCLAIMER: All Gundam Wing characters are property of Sunrise, Bandai Visuals, Sotsu Agency, and Asahi TV. This work is not written for profit, but for entertainment purposes only.
WARNINGS: Shonen-ai
PAIRING: 13+6
Monday morning and the train was more crowded than usual, no doubt due to the chilly rain that fell over the city. I had my newspaper in hand and was trying to remain interested in an article on the election that was coming up. When I realized I'd read the same paragraph three times with still no idea of what it said, I told myself it was time for my coffee and tucked my paper away in the outer pocket of my brief case.
Taking my thermos out, I poured a small cup and savored the taste, looking up as I did and letting my gaze wander over my fellow passengers. I saw him immediately of course. Anyone would have. It wasn't just that he was stunningly beautiful, although he was, there was no denying it. No, there was something else about him, something unusual that made him stand out - something that made his presence among the mundane business people on the train seem incredible.
The man I spoke of sat several seats beyond me on the opposite side of the train, so I had the luxury of looking at him closely and, so far, he hadn't noticed my doing so. He was tall, probably six feet in height with blue eyes the color of the sky on a clear winter morning. His face was breathtaking, with a clear, masculine beauty I'd only ever seen on statues, with serene features that made him appear an island of calm in the sea of Monday-morning faces around him.
What had really captivated me, however, was his hair. It was shining, the palest gold I've ever seen, and given the bluntly cut ends that I could see against the back of his seat, I guessed that it fell almost to his waist. Long, feathery bangs hung past his eyes and framed the exquisite oval of his face. Along with his almost unnatural beauty, the gleaming, golden mass of it gave him a rather fairy-tale like appearance and for some reason I couldn't look away.
I watched him, discreetly of course, all the way to Museum station. When the announcement of our approach to the station came over the loudspeaker, he stood and held onto one of the metal poles, obviously preparing to leave. My heart gave a small lurch to see him go and I felt I should say something to him, tell him that he'd completely captivated me, but I couldn't think of a way to do it without sounding like a fool. So I just sat with my cooling coffee and watched his silky hair as it swayed with the slowing movements of the train. A moment later, the doors opened and he was gone.
Fifteen minutes later I was in my office, trying to get my attention on the rather pressing matters that adorned my desk, and failing miserably at it. My secretary, Hayley, a perky young woman of 19, peered into the room and made sympathetic noises. "Enjoyed your weekend a little too much, Mr. Khushrenada? I know how that goes! Getting me up this morning was like waking the dead - at least that's what my roommate told me!" She giggled - a frequent occurrence with her, and handed me my schedule for the day.
"Yes, I know exactly what you mean," I lied, having had a rather uneventful but relaxing weekend myself. "Well, what's on the agenda today?"
"Ten o'clock, you're meeting the other partners concerning investments, at eleven you have a phone interview for the new Associate position, eleven-thirty you're meeting with Roget about the Freed case, and at twelve-thirty you're meeting Mr. Brandtmann at Lausanne for lunch. Then in the afternoon -"
"Stop! No more!" I held up a hand in mock protest. "We'll deal with that after lunch, the morning sounds daunting enough. "You can go, Hayley." I sighed. As she left, I tried harder to focus on the work before me.
Lunchtime came and I found myself sitting in Lausanne, a comfortable French restaurant across the street from the city's large art museum. My client and I discussed some particularly complex issues in the case I was handling for him and then, at one o'clock, his pager went off and he had to leave early.
I finished the rest of my meal quickly, having no conversational partner to slow me, and then sat back and gazed out the window at the gray and rainy afternoon. People were scurrying up the steps of the Museum, perhaps trying to get out of the rain, which was becoming heavier by the minute.
I was about to look away when something stopped me - a flash of pale gold under a dark blue umbrella. The blond man whom I'd seen on the train that morning had just come out of the museum and was standing on the steps, the only person who was not moving rapidly up them towards the doors. I could see his face beneath the umbrella, and the silky strands of his hair being blown by the gusting wind. He appeared to be waiting for someone, because he looked up and down the street, expectantly.
I watched him, for the next several minutes, completely enthralled, until he began to walk slowly down the steps, a disappointed look on his beautiful face. "Whoever stood *you* up must be certifiably insane," I murmured as he disappeared around the corner.
Reluctantly, I stood and paid for my lunch, not looking forward to spending the rest of the afternoon in meetings with clients. As I walked back to my office, my mind kept returning to the blond, and the look on his face. It had seemed so sad and out of place for him. /A person like that should be smiling/ I said to myself and then shook my head and tried to regain the real world.
I saw him the next day on the train as well and it struck me as odd that I had never noticed him before, even though he was apparently a regular rider. He sat in one of the forward-facing seats ahead of me, his face returned to that serene state I'd seen yesterday. It was strange, but as I looked at him, it really did seem that the world around him moved just a bit faster than he did - that he was somehow in a time frame of slower motion than the rest of us were.
The day before, I had avoided making eye contact with him, preferring to look him over first than to jump right in. But today, he seemed too intriguing for me to do that again, and I found myself deliberately staring at the man, almost willing him to look at me.
My disappointment was all the greater then when he rose, again at the Museum station, and left the train without having looked at me once. I followed his figure more closely this time, and noted that he took the 52nd Street exit. For some reason that made me feel much happier -knowing that I had another, albeit tiny, piece of information about him.
The rest of the day got away from me and I wasn't able to leave my desk for lunch. I had hoped to walk down near the Museum again, in hopes of spotting the beautiful blond. Perhaps he worked at the Museum, or at one of the nearby shops or businesses. But it was past eight o'clock by the time I got away, and the streets, and trains, were deserted.
I dreamt of him that night. I dreamt that I was walking along a pathway that ran through a dense forest. I was looking for something, or someone, and hadn't been able to find it yet. Taking a turn in the path, I came upon a clearing and there he stood, with his back to me, hair almost silvery in the dim, green light. I knew immediately, in the dream, that he was the man from the train and I smiled to see him so close. "I've been wanting to talk to you," I said, hearing the yearning in my own voice, and he turned to face me, long hair flying out to one side as if in slow motion.
Nothing prepared me for the feeling I had as our gazes met. I stared at him, transfixed, and he actually looked back at me in the same way. For a long time neither of us said anything. My voice seemed a dead thing and all I could do was to drink in the sight of him, the most beautiful creature I had even seen in my entire life.
At long last, I walked towards him and whispered, "You're amazing."
The tiniest smile ghosted across his lips and he whispered back to me, his voice a delicious and resonant baritone. "As are you..."
I moved closer, unable to take my eyes from his face, and put a hand up to caress his cheek. "I've waited so long to be with you again," I said, not knowing why. "Will you stay with me? Now and forever so that we won't be parted from each other?" My thumb brushed over his lips and he kissed it. And in that moment I knew that I was his, completely and utterly.
I woke with a strong feeling of regret at leaving the dream behind. I knew I had to get up. I had a deposition to attend in the afternoon and the morning would be consumed by last-minute research. But I also knew that I had to see the blond-haired man that day. I had to speak to him, to find out why I found him fascinating to the point of complete distraction, and why it was he was haunting me so.
So I showered and dressed and gulped down a breakfast I couldn't quite taste and ran for the station - a different station. He was always on the train before me, so obviously he got on to it at one of the stops it made prior to mine. There were four to choose from, so I hailed a cab - a cab mind you, to get me to a distant train station - and headed for the first station on the line, where the train started out each morning.
It was chilly out as I headed down onto the platform. I searched and searched but he wasn't anywhere that I could see, so I boarded my usual car, nearly deserted at the moment, and sat down opposite the door. I spent the next ten minutes in abject prayer; prayer that he wasn't just in town for a couple of days and visiting the museum; prayer that one of the stops ahead would be his and that he would board *this* particular car of the train, although I hedged my bets by scanning the stations; prayer that he wasn't ill or doing something completely different with his day today. If something could have gone wrong, I begged God to make sure it wouldn't.
One station, two stations, now three stations had gone by. There was only one remaining station before the one I usually boarded from and my heart was in my mouth as we pulled into it. It was definitely the most crowded of the four, and I had a terrible time keeping one eye on the stream of passengers coming through the door, and the other on the platform itself, searching in vain for long, pale gold hair.
Then the impossible happened. The doors of the train hissed shut, and he had not arrived.
As we pulled away from the station, I felt myself go numb. What the hell had I just done? Taken a cab to go to a train station miles away from my home, even though another station was just two blocks away; sat in a train car staring at every person who came on board, as well as those outside, looking, no doubt, like some demented fool - the type that people shy away from on the street. And now here I was, feeling as if the world had just come to an end because a fair-haired man whom I'd never met, never spoken to, never even made eye contact with, had not gotten onto the train.
I worried seriously about my sanity - and then it happened. Someone brushed by me and took a seat along the opposite wall, next to the door. I looked up and it was him.
End of Part 1
(:./kumiko/gemini1)
