Heero's Proposal
By Zapenstap
The meeting of ambassadors was situated in Belgium. The members of the World Nation's Diplomatic Assembly gathered in a room without trappings, a council chamber at City Hall set up like a classroom or a small theatre, long white tables situated on rising steps in a semicircle separated by aisles. There were a little over two dozen people in attendance, ranging from age twenty-three to eighty-four, each a distinguished citizen of the World Nation and each representing the viewpoints of a smaller population, such as Europe, the Americas, Africa, or in Relena's case, the Colonies.
Relena folded her hands on the desk and crossed her ankles under her chair. The meeting was coming to a close, the forum leader asking for questions and summarizing the material. He had been rambling on good-naturedly for a half hour and his tone had become conversational as he joked and flirted with the thirty-five-year old delegate who represented the Middle East. Relena put her pen in her mouth while she adjusted the clip holding her hair back and then tapped the pen idly against the desk, having taken no notes to doodle on this time and not sitting near enough to any of the other ambassadors for a friendly chat. Talking wasn't disrespectful. The real business wasn't done at this meeting. Meetings like these were called to keep up communication and establish relations, a lot of which was purely social. Relena was content because she was no longer the youngest member in the room. Daniella, newly elected this year at age twenty-three as ambassador of the Americas, was the youngest now.
The door opened and Relena looked up as Heero slipped in. She sat just a little straighter in surprise, but nobody else so much as glanced at him. He wasn't the first person to waltz into the room during the meeting today to deliver a private message to some important official. Such occurrences had been happening all morning and indeed, happened at every meeting. Everybody in this room was important, and most of them at least pretended to be busy.
Relena caught Heero's eyes and beckoned him to sit beside her with a glance and subtle twist of the head. He did so with or without her approval, leveling her with a humbling stare as he pulled out his chair and sat gracefully, his long legs stretching out under the table as he pushed back his seat.
"How is your meeting going?" he murmured, looking straight ahead at the lecturer so as not to draw attention.
She didn't look at him either, but crossed her arms over her chest and smiled wryly. "I haven't seen you in months," she murmured back.
He glanced at her, dark hair angling over his dark blue eyes. His expression was something between amused and calculating, mimicking the way she looked at him. She caught the gleam in his eye, the sharp, intense look that had so captivated and frightened her during the war, an expression that was just as intense today without being half as serious or somber as it once was. Something, she hypothesized, had Heero in a good mood. She wondered what he was planning. Heero in a humorous mood was something to watch out for.
"I came to visit you," he said levelly, "and that's all you can say?" His tone was straight. It almost always was, even when he was making jokes, and for some reason, that made it funny. It had taken her almost a year to realize Heero was telling her jokes, and almost another year to tell the difference between his jokes and his normal speech. It was that gleam in the eye, and the content of what he said, that gave it away. That, and knowing him very, very well.
Relena shook her head. "I don't suppose you're here to keep old promises," she muttered.
"Which promise would that be?"
"I don't know. I get lost; you break so many." Relena sighed expressively. "My mother used to warn me about that. 'Watch out for those young men' she'd say, 'they'll tell you anything to get you in bed.'"
Heero actually laughed.
"You told me when you went away last time that you would only be gone for a couple of weeks," Relena reminded him.
"It took longer than I thought."
Relena nodded. "I figured as much. Not everybody in the field is as efficient as you are, Heero."
"Hmm," he murmured. "Is it because of that or your mother's warnings that you haven't ever slept with me?"
She raised her eyebrows at him, deciding to play it as cool as she felt rather than pretending to be shocked or embarrassed as she would have been in the past. "The former," she said, smiling as she toyed with her pen, mischief coating her tone, "you're known to get the job done, Heero Yuy, but not for taking your time."
He eyed her shrewdly, eyes slanting into the corners as he smiled at her with almost a devilish air. "I propose we fix that. With you, Relena, I would be completely thorough. Ask Trowa. He'll tell you how it is."
Relena eyebrows climbed halfway up to her hairline as she threw one arm over the back of her chair and leaned back. She knew he was talking about his principles and his preference for thoroughness over efficiency, but she waited until he caught on to what it sounded like he had said, connecting Trowa to the half-veiled subject at hand. She was rewarded when he flushed bright red from neck to hairline.
"That came out wrong," he said with a choke.
She tried to look skeptic, but seeing him so flustered was too taxing on her sensitivity. Though he sat perfectly still, he was red in the face, flushed bright as a beat, and slowly regaining his composure. She touched the back of his hand with hers and waited until he lifted his head. Then she smiled at him.
The lecturer called an end to the meeting and the other ambassadors began to stand up, stretching and gathering their attendants around them like bees to honey. The room filled with the babble of voices and then people began to file out, brushing past the ex-princess and the ex-gundam pilot as if they didn't exist. Relena noted Danielle, so serious in her countenance, clipboard held flat to her chest, her face a perfect slate except for a small, elegant smile that was meant to be diplomatic, though it was friendly. Relena watched the young girl and had to laugh inwardly, at herself, for being just like that not too long ago.
Relena and Heero remained seated until everyone else had left the room. When they were alone, Heero lifted Relena's hand and kissed it. "My apologies," he said. "For staying away so long."
She tried to look upset, but sighed in defeat. "Oh, I can't stay angry at you, Heero. I never could. I've been thinking about it recently. You, both of us, used to take everything too personally to risk getting angry or allowing ourselves to stay that way. We were so serious and we tried so hard to do everything right. Now, things have changed, but I still can't stay angry with you. I wish I could understand how everything else has changed so much."
"We grew up," he told her, and that serious tone for which she had just been reminiscing coated his voice, flooding her with a wave of nostalgia. She smiled her old, serious smile for his benefit. "We just got older," he said, "and learned that there's more time to live than we thought."
"And so many things to enjoy," Relena added. "Like conversations with old friends."
He regarded her silently for a few moments, and then smirked. "Is that what we are?" he asked, and the joking was back, even if it was hard to detect in his voice. "Even when I've been telling you for a year that I'm going to marry you?"
It was her turn to laugh, not because the suggestion of marriage offended her or seemed at all silly, but because that was how the joke ran. Once, more than a year ago, she told him that, since he had failed to kill her, the only thing left to do in order to keep her from thinking she could walk all over him, was to marry her. Though she certainly loved Heero Yuy as well as she ever had anybody, she had been mostly kidding. But then, later that day, he backed her into a corner and pointed a serious finger at her chest. 'I am going to marry you,' he had said, 'so don't get any other ideas.' That and nothing more… a whole year ago.
Since then they had kissed a few times. The first time they kissed—well, made out, really—they had been a little drunk on champagne at New Years. They reached for each other at midnight, full of confidence and pretending it was all fun and games, but ended up on the couch off to the side of the room, touching and kissing for, well, she didn't really remember much of it. The few times they kissed after that were to ensure each other that drunkenness had nothing—well, not much—to do with it. Heero brought the marriage thing up every once and awhile too, always as a joke, and she knew it for one as well as she knew him.
Heero leaned forward and put a hand on her knee. "You know," he said with pointed vagueness, "someday." He exaggerated to indicate that the word might very well mean 'never.' Then he gave her a very sexually suggestive look, accentuated when he slid his fingers toward her thigh. "Well, Relena?"
She let out a peal of laughter as she slapped his hand away. "That line didn't work then so don't think it's going to work now."
"Hmm," he said. His eyes narrowed into slits, a sleepy, almost lethargic expression that kept her from seeing what he was really thinking. "Perhaps girls should be encouraged not to listen to their mothers.
"When did you start acting like a normal man?" she demanded, still smiling. "I liked it better when I thought you never had any ideas like that!"
"That trick didn't work," he said soberly.
Relena stood up, swiveling out of her chair and walking the opposite away from where Heero sat blocking the aisle. She moved down to the next aisle and marched out to the front of the room, where she turned to head for the door.
Heero caught her by the sleeve. "One more try," he requested. She stopped with only a little bit of a huff, and resigned herself to wait patiently.
He got down on one knee.
"Oh, no," she objected, "that's too much."
He gave her a pointed look, as if to say 'don't interrupt.' Then he cleared his throat, holding her hand delicately. "Vice Foreign Minister Relena Dorilan Peacecraft," he said as if reciting a litany for a funeral. Like always, it was difficult to tell by his tone if he was joking or serious. His eyes still gleamed as he took her hand, but when he spoke his tone was as dark and meaningful as she had ever heard it. "Of all the girls in the world, you are the only one I could ever want, and the only one I have ever loved."
She raised her eyebrows expressively, staring down at him with as bored an expression as she could manage, though something deep in her heart twitched like the pattering of tiny feet.
"I share a past with you," he continued. "I want to share a future with you. Of anyone I have ever met, you alone make me feel like I am worthy to be loved, but as strongly as I have come to realize you love me, I love you still stronger. I promise to always protect you. I promise I will always be with you. If you, Relena Dorilan, will have me…"
He paused dramatically and her heart lurched in her chest as she struggled to breathe, staring at his face and losing herself in the sudden seriousness she saw in his eyes. Was this for real? Could this possibly be…?
Then he smiled, a wry, secret smile, "…for a lover…"
She hit him, slapping his shoulder with the flat of her hand. "Heero!"
His smile broadened as he teetered backward from her assault. Then he rose smoothly to his feet, straightening with the lithe grace of a wild panther. She fumed at him, ice blue eyes piercing him in an angry stare. He reached for her, grabbing her coat with both of his hands.
"Oh, let go," she said, jerking her elbow. "Honestly, Heero. That really was too much. Is any of it true?"
"I'm sorry," he said simply, not answering the question. He continued to hold onto her until she stopped struggling. "I do love you. I really don't come around here to try and crawl into your bed, whatever people say."
"All right," she said, smoothing his clothes and then her own.
I love you. That was something they had been saying to each other for years, even before the marriage proposal incident and the kissing. She had said it first. 'I love you, Heero,' she said one day when he was more introverted than usual, sitting alone on a broken wall, staring into space. She said it to comfort him, because it was true, and he hadn't even seemed that surprised, but he did thank her, and smile. And he said it to her, one night after she had been crying from stress, when he brought her tea and helped her sort through her paperwork and then put her to bed. 'I love you,' he said, and kissed her forehead before tucking her in and turning off the lights. So now it was okay to say it, whenever it was needed, and they never asked each other what they meant, because that wasn't the point. That had never been the point.
"Where are you staying while you're in town?" he asked her.
"The Regent Star Hotel," she replied. "It's in walking distance to this building. They have beautiful suites, but I wouldn't let them give me one."
"Paid for by the city," Heero added. "That's the reason you won't take it." She worked her mouth soundlessly. "Can I walk you home?"
"Hmm," she replied. "I suppose that will partially make up for that lousy excuse of a proposal."
He accepted the barb with a smile and no comment.
They began their journey out of City Hall and down to the sidewalk side by side.
"How long are you in town?" he asked her as he opened the heavy glass doors to let her through.
She heaved a sigh. "Only a few days. What about you?"
"I don't know," he said. "I don't have anything lined up for awhile. I was hoping to be able to spend some time with you, unless I get called somewhere else."
"I don't see why we shouldn't," she mused.
They walked down the street, empty-handed and facing one another as they talked. Relena always walked with her spine straight and her shoulders back. She noticed that Heero did the same, and that he shortened his strides to keep pace with her. She smiled as she looked at him.
"Relena," he said.
"What?"
"Are you going to be in politics forever?"
She shrugged her shoulders a little. "I don't know. One thing I've learned is that you can't plan the future, and that maybe you shouldn't try. I might have children some day, I suppose, but even if I do I still want to do something to better society all the days of my life. People need to be taught what the good things are, and they need dreamers to lead them; that's my father always used to say."
"You ought to have children. Your face is too pretty to keep it to yourself."
She blushed. Again, she wasn't sure how far he was joking.
They entered the hotel through the double glass doors at the main entrance. The lobby was busy, full of people with suitcases, small children staring around at the velvet padded benches and chasing each other across the carpet. Bellmen directed rolling racks hung with tuxedos and evening gowns. The manager of the hotel nodded at Relena when she came in, white gloved hands clasped in front of him.
Relena nodded toward the hotel staff and headed toward the elevator, where at least thirty people were waiting, watching the lights light up each numbered floor. She was about to open her mouth to thank Heero for accompanying her, but he interrupted.
"There's a line," he said. "We should take the stairs."
Suppressing a smile, she closed her mouth and followed him.
They took the stairs, opening the heavy fireproof doors and climbing up eight flights side by side. Relena breathed hard in her heels and skirt, and was afraid she was starting to sweat. "Brilliant idea," she muttered, but quieted when he glared at her over his shoulder.
They emerged on the floor just below the top.
"If you're not going to take the penthouse, you should park your ass on the first floor," he said with an intense glare. "Which room?"
Relena fished her card out of the tiny pocket in her suit jacket. "831," she told him. She watched him as he led the way at a march, again tracing the lines of his back, swimming in some pocket in her brain where she stored all her thoughts about Heero Yuy.
At her door they both stopped. Heero looked like he was going to say something and Relena was almost on the verge of thanking him again, when they both fumbled for their voices. She watched his eyes, calculating the movement of his thoughts. When he smiled she knew he was about to make a joke about how she had brought him up to her hotel room and rehash their previous conversation at her expense. Before he could speak, Relena took Heero's hand in both of hers, caressing the skin on his knuckles.
She wasn't sure what made her do it, but she knew what it meant. Slowly, she raised her eyes, asking him a question with the expression on her face. It was almost no expression, a slight, barely perceptible tightening of her brow and a small smirk of a smile.
But he caught on.
The hand she had been caressing slipped around her waist. She laughed and raised her arms to his shoulders, wanting to relax right then, but instead she pulled out of his grasp and turned, unlocking her door with the key card. The light blinked green and the door opened with a click, swinging inward. Smiling, Relena stepped backward into her room, again grasping Heero's hand and pulling him in after her. The door swung shut behind them.
"This is my room," she said, separating herself from Heero and standing with her feet together, hands folded demurely in front of her. Her hotel room was carpeted in beige and the double bed was blanketed in a red-pattern quilt. Curtains over the window shut out the sun from outside, but a little light seeped through the material, making the room seem to glow with warm fire. Relena looked over at Heero, letting him adjust to the atmosphere. He scanned the room briefly and then removed his coat, tossing it carelessly over a chair. Smiling, he turned and approached her with a purposeful stride. Not willing to let him get the best of her, Relena reached up and cupped Heero's face in her hands, bringing his head down for a slow kiss.
His kiss was always familiar but never the same. She smiled as she kissed him, thrilled by the thrill of it, but she didn't savor much of it before he lifted his head and grasped her chin lightly with one hand so that he could look into her eyes. "Relena," Heero whispered. "I want you to know that this is not the reason I came here today."
"I know," she said calmly.
"Well, at least not the only reason."
She pursed her lips at him.
He chuckled at her expression and smoothed her lips with his thumb. "Are you sure this is what you want?" he asked. He forestalled her when she opened her mouth to reply. "Before you answer, let me make it clear what you're agreeing to."
Leaning forward, he kissed her ear. She trembled pleasantly, shaking as he blew inside and then across her cheek. He touched his lips to her jaw and his tongue to her neck. She closed her eyes as he caressed her shoulders with his palms, continuing to breathe into her ear with warm, seductive breaths. Reaching behind her, he wrapped an arm around her waist and unclipped her hair with the other hand. Then he pulled her against him, caressing her body with his own.
"I just don't want to lose what we have," she told him. "Our friendship means so much to me. I worked hard for it."
She felt warm breath on her cheek. "You won't," he whispered. "You could never have worked hard enough to keep me if I didn't want to be here, but I have never been only your friend. And if you tried to lose me I would just keep coming back." His hands caressed her sides, running down her body from her shoulder to her hips in streaming lines.
"Have I been too forward?" she asked. "Bringing you to my hotel room? Shouldn't I have made you wait?"
"Hmm," he replied. "Ten years or so." When he saw her raised eyebrows, he chuckled, caressing her cheeks with the back of his fingers. "I have known you for ten years and only you would think that is not a wait, or believe that you have asked for nothing."
"Heero, I have to ask you a question," she said, more serious in her tone, but not cripplingly somber. "What is this to you?"
"Sex," he said. He removed her coat. She stood still as he unbuttoned her blouse, revealing nothing but bare skin and part of a white bra. When the last button popped free he touched her chest with his fingers and slid his hand down her front, between her breasts and over her stomach. She shivered, and swallowed, but she kept her eyes locked on his face. "I'm going to touch you," he said seriously. "And you're body is going to like it. We're going to share our bodies and delight in our senses. But that's not what you're asking me. Relena, know this. I could never, for the rest of my life, do anything but make love to you, regardless of the circumstances or the experience, because that's how I feel. I love you whether we are here or not, whatever you want to do, however it has to be, for as long as we both live. If you want to do this, believe me, I want to do this. It's just sex, but we're going to make love. I can't promise any more than that."
She paused and he did nothing, leaving her blouse to hang loose. He stood silent, touching her hair now and again, waiting for a response.
"I love you too," she said.
He smiled and took her in his arms.
Heero Yuy showed Relena Dorilan what it meant to be completely thorough. As promised, he took his time with the foreplay, lavishing her with a tender passion that curled her senses. Relena was not a little girl and she knew what to expect. There were no surprises in the content of things, but what caused her to lose control was the way he touched her, the timing, the rhythm, the way he listened to her body and worked her to where he wanted her to be. Every passionate touch flowed into the next and he was never doing just one thing. He was everywhere, bare skin glowing in the light of the room, warm and smooth and powerful.
"Heero, do you have to be good at everything?"
"I'm not experienced at this," he told her, trailing a hand down her stomach, watching it twitch the lighter he touched with avid fascination. "You just make it really easy." He kissed her ear again. She liked that, smiling as his hot breath so close to her head caused her to shiver with delight and anticipation. "Have you done this before?" he asked her.
"No," she breathed, and then added for the fun of it, "not with another person anyway."
He chuckled and kissed her neck, his hands cradling her head and smoothing her hair. "I guess you were waiting for me," he murmured.
"Took you long enough."
"I needed to make myself worthy of you," he told her.
She wasn't sure if she was supposed to take that as a joke or a confession. It sounded like a joke, but then, it was Heero. "About done?" she asked.
He mumbled something and bit her shoulder. She objected about as much as it hurt.
To make up for it, he touched her face and turned her chin with his fingertips so that he could kiss her cheeks and neck, then drew her back for a tender kiss on the lips. The touches and kisses were distracting. She smiled into it, returning every touch, satisfying him with yelps of surprise when he meant to surprise her and whispers of encouragement when he needed to hear them. When it came to the real act, it was nothing she had not dreamed, and everything that was real. They laughed when they made mistakes, any little thing that broke the mood, and renewed their efforts with redoubled intensity. Eventually, Heero's kisses got rougher, charged with sexual tension, his movements more focused. She responded with murmurs, honest in her feedback, and gradually felt him driving them both to one inevitable destination. The tension coiled tight, pulsing, demanding stimulation, then spiraled up to that final shudder that swept them out of mind, an intense sensation that crested and was over in a moment, leaving only a memory they couldn't quite recall, and the familiar presence of each other's bodies.
Sweating, Heero pulled off of her, his hands entangled in her hair. They both nestled down in the bed, resting on their backs side by side with their heads on different pillows.
"Don't expect me to fall asleep so you can sneak out," Relena breathed. "It's early in the afternoon."
He grumbled tiredly with his eyes half closed. "Why would I sneak out?"
Relena pulled the bed sheets to her chin. "I don't know. It seems like something you would do."
Heero reached over and pulled the bed sheets down to her waist.
"Hey," she objected.
"Don't cover up. I'll warm you if you're cold."
To suit his words, he reached for her body under the sheets and took her into his arms, his hand smoothing over her breasts and stomach as he kissed her neck and rubbed his cheek against her shoulder. She reached to touch his cheek fondly, and realized suddenly that things between them had changed.
Heero continued to caress and kiss her. Eventually, her eyelids slid shut and she drifted into a restful slumber.
When she awoke, she was the only one in the bed. By the sunlight streaming through the curtains, it couldn't have been long since she fell asleep. Annoyed, Relena rolled over, throwing her arm over the side of the bed where Heero's body should have been. Instead, her hand slammed into something else, something small, like a square stone on Heero's pillow. Opening her eyes, Relena propped herself up on her elbows, lying on her stomach with the bed sheet falling off her back. She looked at the little, velvet black box on the pillow in front of her in some confusion.
Gingerly, she picked it up. She knew what it was, but the synapses in her brain didn't make the connection. Opening the lid, she was surprised when a little piece of paper confronted her eyes.
There was tiny writing printed on it. Relena squinted to read.
It's all true.
-Heero Yuy
Under the paper was a diamond ring.
Relena sat up sharply, heedless of the sheet that pooled around her legs and lifted the box in the palm of her hand. She struggled to get the ring out, fumbling at the black velvet with shaking hands, blinded by the sparkle of a two carat, ideal, princess cut diamond angled on a platinum band. She freed it from its box and held it between her fingers, tilting it to see how it caught the light.
Breathing hard, she half fell off the bed and rocketed toward her closet. Leaving her work clothes where they lay on the floor, she pulled a spring dress from her closet that she had been saving for luncheon on the weekend and dressed with one hand. The other clutched the ring fiercely in her palm, the diamond biting into her flesh. She checked herself in the mirror when she was dressed, searching frantically for her comb and perfume and makeup. Her hair hung in loose strands around her face, tangled in places.
"Are you going to put it on?"
Relena raised her head and turned, tucking her hair behind her ear. Heero was in her doorway, dressed, leaning against the wall with his arm stretched above his head.
"Oh, Heero," she said. "Do you mean it? Tell me this isn't a joke!"
He smiled as her as she flung herself at him, catching her with his hands and holding her tight. "I would never joke with you," he said, kissing her forehead. "I always mean what I say. Are you going to put it on?"
"Yes," she said, and unclenched her hand. He plucked the ring from her palm, lifted her hand, the hand he had kissed earlier, and slipped the ring on her finger. She stared at it, then at him. "How long have you been carrying this ring?"
"Not for very long. But it's the real reason I came here today, if you wanted to know."
"Not to seduce me?"
He smiled at her and pushed her hair back from her face. "No, though I didn't mind that." He toyed with the diamond, twisting the band on her finger, and then looked into her eyes, deep blue space meeting the sky of the earth. "I can't do anything unless it's complete. Relena, what I want from you is to be my wife."
She stared at him, the ring forgotten as she saw in his eyes that every word of his proposal really was true.
"Yes," she repeated, seriously, and smiling with a delight that sparkled from somewhere deep inside, she took his head in her hands and brought it down to kiss him.
And they lived happily ever after… I know that not everyone lies to review, but if you read this story, will you please review it? I worked hard and I appreciate the feedback.
DISCLAIMER: This story is rated R, not NC-17, regardless of the fact that the characters do have sex and the reader doesn't leave the room. The way I tell it is vague, though, and nothing you haven't seen on prime time television so please don't complain that I'm breaking the rules and punish me for telling a story that contains sex. I'm sure none of you would do that, but I've heard of it happening before so I just wanted to include a disclaimer. Honestly, thank you very much for reading my story. I adore my readers and I really appreciate all of your support.