Summer [PG-13]

[wonderllama]

Disclaimer - I don?t own Gundam Wing.

AN: I?d like to call this a drabble, but I think it crossed into one-shot territory. It?s been floating around my head for a while, and I could think of no better time to actually write it than now.



Summer.




There was always something he?d hated about the summer. It overwhelmed you and smothered you. It attacked you from every direction. It snuck up on you, and before you realized it, the spring had disappeared. He could tolerate the spring. And Autumn. But summer was intolerable. It changed everything. He?d once heard that summer was when things begun, where they started. That wasn?t true for him. It was more like the opposite. Summer is when people left, they dumped their shit on you and left. Everything changed in the summer.

Except for her.

She never changed. She made the transition from spring to summer with such ease. She traded in her khakis for sundresses, her loose hair for a ponytail. She was always put together. Even in the summer.

But he knew her better. He knew she hated the summer.

As children, the summer never held much joy. As adults, it held even less. His childhood summers were punctuated with flight tests in sweltering heat. Hers with long soir?es and cotillions where her pink dress matched the blush that the heat had left on her cheeks. For these two, childhood dreams of summer had vanished as soon as they had appeared.

Even now, as her twenty-second birthday came and went, she held no joy when the cool temperatures fell away.

He sat in the driver?s seat of his old car, so old that it still had bench seats and a cassette player, and drove down the highway. He stole a glance at her as the needle on the speedometer danced between 60 and 61.

She saw the glance and smiled.

There were few things in this world he valued more than that.

He removed a hand from the steering wheel and reached out for her. Her skin was clammy and wet from the heat.

Let?s go, she?d said, standing in his kitchen. She held a glass of water, slipping it as cool as you please.

He?d agreed. He asked her where they?d go.

She looked longingly out the window, as if memorizing the way the sunlight filtered into his apartment. Taking a snapshot in her mind. Like she wanted to remember this moment for a long time. Anywhere. She?d replied. Everywhere.

They didn?t pack anything. They didn?t leave a note. They got into his old car, and started to drive.

The road was desolated, like they were in some movie. It was just Heero Yuy, Relena Darlian and the open road. He wondered aloud if anyone was looking for them.

It was summer, she said. This was their vacation. And they deserved a break.

His hand stuck to the vinyl of the steering wheel and every miniscule movement reminded him why he hated this season.

The heat was pressing down on them, trying to crush their spirits, suffocate them. Heero pressed down on the gas and the needle on the speedometer jumped to 65. He wouldn?t let it happen. He wouldn?t let the heat and the expectations ruin them. He would drive with her, if that?s all it took to keep her.

Her hand twitched, causing him to look at her.

She was staring out the windshield, watching the sun rise higher and higher. Her eyes followed the passing sky as if she was reading a book. She had a childlike innocence in her face, and he thought, this is what summer was supposed to be. Ageless wonder, freedom, happiness.

Everything in that moment, her eyes to the sky, holding his hand, driving in his old car, escaping from everything, it was what summer was supposed to be. This moment replaced any aching need for lazy childhood summers by the pool. The moment was perfect and eternal.

She would be his summer. She would be his new beginning. She would be the change he sought in himself.

[HiFreak]

Very nice.