Desires of the Heart
Chapter 8
By zapenstap
Heero knew that he wanted to kiss Relena. He just couldn’t figure out how to go about it. He had been in Relena’s company twice since the park, but only one of those was a date; the second they just spent time together running errands in the city after Relena got through with her usual work and had some space before late-evening meetings. Heero almost felt that he was getting used to dating, working his schedule around an open evening to spend with her, and working it around her schedule too. Somehow they managed to work out a lot of time, time neither of them knew they had, and Heero gradually began to forget what life had been like without her.
The date had been to the museum. There was an exhibit on the history of flying machines, which led into military flight and featured a section on mobile suits. They had both been interested so they both went. It was the first time he had seen her since the park, and there was a strange energy in the way they greeted each other, reaching to touch each other and drawing back at the last instant. Relena’s face had flushed pink in the cheeks when she saw him and he had been even more silent than usual, evading her eyes. On the date they spent a lot of time walking across the marble floor side by side, awkward and aware of the incongruity between the distance and closeness that was between them. Museums were like libraries, silent and in public. From the time he picked her up he wanted to get closer, but somehow felt that they ought to maintain space. Seeking ways to get her alone, he began eyeing hidden corners as possible places to lead her for the purpose.
At one of the exhibits she had curled her slim fingers around the rail encasing a mobile suit prototype. On impulse, he came up behind her and trapped her in small space by putting his hands on the rail on either side of her hands. She froze for a moment, fingers tightening around the rail, and he was aware of her being aware of his proximity. In that position, they were so close her hair tickled his nose. Then, quite suddenly, she fell backward and he felt her full body fall lightly and satisfyingly against his. Automatically his arms went around her waist, both to steady her and to hold her. Once she was there, it didn’t seem strange to grasp her arms with his hands and just stand like that. She relaxed in his grip, swaying slightly, and then laid her head back against his shoulder. She closed her eyes, but he didn’t. The position gave him a clear view of her body and the way her chest rose and fell with languid sighs as she breathed.
That was the closest he got. When he took her home after that date, they lingered for long minutes on her porch, watching each other and talking in circles with inappropriate silences. He didn’t know what to do. He had imagined kissing her so often by now that he had it down to such a degree that he was sure the real thing couldn’t add anything to his imaginings. He had studied the angles of her face, fantasized about the warmth and moisture of her lips, but on the porch he hadn’t been able to touch her cheek or draw her in the way he wanted. He remembered giving an excuse and watching her go inside before he went home, overflowing with frustration.
Today, early Sunday afternoon, they were going to go for a walk in the city. The weather was beautiful for the time of year, relatively warm and cloudless. Heero parked his car on the curb and walked up to her porch. They had been dressing down gradually since that first date, and he was comfortable to wear casual clothes now, jeans and a red, short sleeved shirt with small buttons and a crisp collar. He chose red because it wasn’t a color he wore often. Thus attired, he waited for her on the porch, leaning against the thin black rail that encircled the little landing above the steps. When the door opened he straightened.
Relena came out in a sleeveless black top with a slight v-neck and no collar. The shirt was sculpted to her body, baring only her arms and shoulders and covering her midsection to the studded black belt that circled the waist of dark denim jeans. Her jeans were fitted but not overly tight, showing her curves without emphasizing them, matching the shirt in their cut and depth of color, and she wore heeled sandals, which made her legs look longer and drew attention to little toes glossed in polish. She wore her hair up in a ponytail, which he rarely seen before. It changed the angles of her face and revealed her neck on all sides, but somehow it did not make her look younger. Perhaps if she had worn a different color or a dress she would have looked like a baby with that cherub face of hers, but in a sculpted black top that bared her shoulders and those jeans she made his blood hot. Heero didn’t process such thoughts consciously, but the total presentation had an effect on him.
“I have to be back by five, Heero,” she said while he stared, reaching up to her ponytail and tightening the band that held her hair. “I have an important meeting with colonial delegates.”
“That’s not a problem,” he replied, and looked away so his eyes would stop trying to undress her.
The city
was starting to pick up with the movements of shoppers, workers and walkers by
the time Heero and Relena parked the car and began at
the corner of Fourth and
“What is your meeting about?” he asked as he walked along her right side on the sidewalk. She walked with her arms hanging freely at her sides, poised and slender as a willow branch, and smiled at him as she turned her head. “I’m not sure. I was just informed about it today, when I was getting ready.”
“It sounds important.”
“It might be.”
As if to tell him something about her priorities, she slipped her hand in his and continued to smile, neither blushing nor looking away. He smiled back, a softening of the face that somehow expressed the warm flow of energy that rushed suddenly into his heart.
“Come with me,” he murmured. “I want to buy you something.”
Attached to his hand, she had no choice but to follow, and came along behind him at a near trot as he quickened his pace and lengthened his stride. She brushed escaped strands of hair away from her eyes as he rounded a corner and stopped to wait for a crossing. The hairs still hung in her face as she turned her head to look around. Cars rushed past on their left and people passed them on either side, shopping and running errands, but Heero held tight to her hand. One or two people stopped to stare at Relena, noting who she was by the flicker of recognition that flashed through their eyes, eyes that then leaped to the boy to whom she was attached with lightning accuracy. Heero ignored them but Relena smiled back, her fingers clamping around his as she drew close to his shoulder.
When the walk signal flashed permission to go, Heero led the way across the sidewalk. Once across, he turned the corner and headed south toward the water. Relena kept pace with him, a look of delight on her face and something almost like disbelief in her eyes when she looked at him.
The flower shop was open and ready for business. Heero had noticed it accidentally in the past and had remembered it on that first attempt to pay Relena a visit that was meant to be more than a social call. The flowers were fresh and varied and not as expensive as the precut and arranged bouquets one could buy at a grocery store or plant nursery. A soft ding announced their presence as Heero opened the door, Relena clinging to his wrist with both hands now.
The shop keeper was the same man Heero remembered the first time he entered the shop. He looked up when he heard the ring of the bell and his eyebrows lifted expressively when he saw Heero. When he saw Relena, his eyes widened noticeably, his hands freezing in a stopped gesture of welcome.
“Heero,” Relena murmured appreciatively, looking around at the plants blooming in the room like a small jungle or an overgrown garden.
“Pick out something you like,” he suggested.
When she looked at him, her face soft and round and pretty, hair gathered up behind her head, he hoped she wouldn’t refuse, or suggest he do the choosing. But all she did was smile and then move about the store, gazing at the orchids and the lilies and the roses each in turn. Heero stood in front of the counter as she browsed, watching her.
“Is this your special girl?” the shop keeper asked suddenly, incredulity coating his voice. “Relena Peacecraft?”
Heero didn’t answer. He had forgotten the shop keeper, but even reminded of the man’s presence and knowledge of his last purchase, he had nothing to say.
Relena chose a bouquet of twenty blue irises, though she refused to explain her choice of flower. The shop keeper gathered them for her with a smile. Methodical but professional, he cut the stems, arranged the flowers with some other, sharp-leaved plant, tied them securely, and then wrapped the assortment in moistened towels, followed by wax paper. He handed them to her gently, smiling as if at a favorite daughter, and thanked Miss Peacecraft for her patronage of his shop. As they left the shop, Heero felt him watching them, but for some reason it wasn’t terribly upsetting. Something between the park and today had changed; he wanted people to know.
For the rest of their time together, Heero paced beside Relena protectively. Holding her flowers in the crook of her elbow, she stared straight ahead, yet he felt her thoughts on him, and reveled in the attention. At intervals he touched her back as he had in the park, drawing her close when it wasn’t awkward. At four, after two hours of shopping, walking, talking sparsely, Relena announced regretfully that she needed to return home and prepare for her meeting.
He missed her before they even reached the car. Because she was holding the flowers, he opened the door for her and then walked around to the driver’s side, thinking about the sensation in the cavity behind his rib cage. As he drove, the feeling intensified. Relena sat quiet in the passenger’s seat, playing with the flowers. He remembered what he had thought about her never fidgeting and felt a tightening in his stomach. She smiled as she caressed the petals, but as he eyed her fingers, she wished it was him she was caressing like that.
Crazy.
When he pulled up to the curb he stopped the car and sat still, looking down at between his shoes and then out the window before turning to look at her. She had been looking at him the whole time, and there was something in her eyes that told him what she wanted, that was waiting for him to make a move. Yet as he stared at her he couldn’t imagine leaning over the gear-shift to kiss her with flowers in her lap.
Though he desperately wanted to.
She got out of the car. She didn’t seem angry or disappointed. She had the same sweet contented smile on her face, and if there was that small worrying crease on the brow, it was a small one.
“I don’t know how late my meeting will go,” she said. “But I’ll call you.”
“All right.”
She stepped away from the curb. “Thank you for the flowers. Heero.”
When he got home he damned himself, cursing silently. She had looked so good. He wished her had chanced it, kissed her, in the car or on the sidewalk or even in the museum, anyone watching be damned. He wished he had backed her into every corner at every opportunity. He wished he hadn’t thrown away that first bouquet, or had run to Mandred for help. He wished he hadn’t sounded like an inexperienced fool on the phone, or had tried more at conversation. Something about this girl was getting to him. Something about her rang something inside him, like that little bell on the door of the shop, and he wanted it to go on ringing. Girls had not been a high priority when death loomed so largely on the horizon. But now, after only a few years of domestic living, of watching other people interact, of growing up in the ways he had never had a chance to before, he began to understand what all the fuss was about.
He wasn’t really sure what made him get back in his car, leaving dinner untouched on the table.
Relena’s office was devoid of most of its personnel after hours, but a late-night secretary was sitting behind the desk in the lobby and security guard stalked the perimeter.
“Excuse me,” the young woman behind the desk objected when he began to move past her on the way to the stairs.
He paused only long enough to be heard. “I’m gundam pilot Heero Yuy. I’m here to see Vice Foreign Minister Relena Peacecraft.”
The titles confused the woman long enough for him to make it to the stairwell and out of her eyesight. He heard the security guard question her if he was a problem and her return answer that everything was all right before he continued upstairs. Heero hoped Relena was safe these days.
Her office door was open and by the look of things, her meeting had been brief as it appeared that it was over. Heero knocked twice on the wall and stepped in without waiting for a reply.
Relena was dressed in her business uniform again, just a skirt and a white blouse with a small tie. The skirt circled her waist and tucked in the blouse, molding her figure into a womanly shape. Her skin was pale against the thin white of her blouse and he could see the outline of her bra wrapped snuggly over her small breasts beneath. Her hair was newly washed and hung down her back, clean and fine, the color of honey with highlights of wheat. She was standing in front of her desk, arranging papers, and looked up when he came in.
“Oh, Heero. I was about to call you.”
She looked tired and a little unhappy as she pushed a strand of hair away from her face and leaned over the desk.
“I have to go on a business trip tomorrow morning,” Relena said, scrubbing a hand across her face wearily. “To the Colonies to deal with a political… I don’t really want to talk about it, but I’ll be gone for at least a week by the look of things.” She paused, staring at the ground, and then looked up at him. “Heero, I don’t want you to give up on me because of this. In the future I may be gone a lot, but I…”
“Why would I do that?” he asked quietly. “You have to go. It’s your duty. I understand that you have work to do.”
“Of course,” she deferred demurely. “I just want you to know that this time with you has meant a lot to me and I understand that things are…difficult.”
He approached her without comment, his gaze sharp on her face. He saw himself in her eyes, dark hair shading penetrating blue eyes that caught and held her as he reached gingerly for her hand. Wrapping his larger fingers around her small, delicate ones, he pulled her hand to his chest, along with the rest of her, and caught her just before she bumped into him with his other hand lightly touching her jaw.
Her babbling was losing its force. “It’s just that I know you and I know me and I can’t be sure…” She faltered.
As his fingers stretched to envelop her cheek, he saw her eyes process the moment briefly just before he closed his eyes and kissed her. It was like what he imagined, her small mouth and lips sweet and warm, but he thought little about the mechanics of it. There was a feeling in his gut, something sharp and tight that trembled when he first touched her, and all the breath was drawn from his body. And then she was kissing him back, moving her mouth against his repeatedly. Caught in an under-toe, he did what felt right, whatever increased that feeling that was making the surface of his skin shake and shiver. He raised both hands to her head, pressing her hair softly against her ears as he kissed her, not thinking much of anything. Her hands were on his chest, elbows lowered, and as he dropped his arms to wrap them around her waist, his mouth broke automatically away from hers as he pulled her too close to kiss, instead enveloping her in his embrace. She stayed small against his chest and then pulled away.
From the way her eyes glimmered, he thought she meant to say something, but instead they kissed again. He touched her face and the kiss was brief, but it was followed by another and a caress of her neck. She continued smiling at him and managed between contact to tell him the time of her flight and where she could be reached. Half listening, he kissed her again. She told him she would call him everyday while she was gone if that was what he wanted. Her lips tasted like sweet berries. He couldn’t get enough. Eventually, she shut up and melted into him, her arms soft against his body, her lips searching his with the same sensuous need that made his knees feel weak.
He stopped kissing her when he ran out of breath, pulling his head up to take in air. “You need rest,” he whispered, threading a hand through her hair to cradle the back of her head. “And you need to pack. You may have presentations to prepare.”
She watched him with searching eyes as he opened the door to her office and walked her to the lobby. The receptionist eyed them as they glided past, especially when Heero put one hand behind Relena’s back and opened the door for her.
“I’ll call you,” Relena said again when they were both outside and night washed them in a bluish darkness.
Heero straightened the collar on her white blouse and kissed her again, stretching his neck to capture his lips. He touched her face when he pulled away, tracing the shape with his hand. “When you get back…” he said.
“I’ll want to see you,” she replied, a faint blush rose in her cheeks.
He smiled. “Have a safe trip.”
“Thank you, Heero.”