The Stone Bench - By Maaya
Standard disclaimers apply

Heero POV

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Every day, at the exact same time, I take the same way home from work. Every day, every week, and every month.

Call me simple, stupid, monotonous, dull, or whatever you want – I’ll still do it. And it’s not like you can prevent me, can you?

I grew up out in the country and for some reason; I’ve always been naturally drawn to trees, bushes and all of that kind, since I moved out here. I guess people don’t really know what’s important to them until they can’t have it anymore.

So, naturally, I take the shortcut through the park as I go to and from work. I go downstairs, step out on the street, walk about hundred metres down it, then turs to the left and walk into the park. When I reach that definite place, I can suddenly breathe again. It has that special tree-smell to it, so unlike the smell of exhaust fumes and it’s a wonderful variation.

It doesn’t scent as much as it always did at home, of course it doesn’t, but the faint scent is enough to make me nostalgic, remembering my happy childhood time. If people who knew me back then would hear me call my childhood ‘happy’, they’d probably argue about it. ‘You never smiled.’ they’d say. ‘You were alone all the time. You didn’t play with the other kids. It was not normal.’

Why is usualness such a delightful thing to be? So what if I never smiled. So what if I never played with the others. So what if I was alone. To be alone is not necessarily something bad, not in my opinion. You can make a tree house on your own. You can read a book on your own. You can invent a new poison on your own. You can think on your own.

That’s all that counts.

After having walked through the most of the park, I see ‘him’.

And he is the reason as to why I don’t want to be alone anymore, like I did when I was younger.

He’s always sitting on the grey stone bench beside the small fountain and the even smaller flower-bed with forget-me-nots.

He has chestnut hair, in a very neat (and long) plait.

He was sunburned, probably from sitting on that bench every day, though I don’t know how long..

He was dressed in black. Black – every day, always black. Just. . . black.

He had blue-violet eyes, like the forget-me-nots in the flower-bed beside him, just darker.

He was always talking. Every day, every week, every month, there was always someone sitting there beside him, listening as he talked about only God knows what. Let it be a small boy with Band-Aids on his knees and dirty face. Let it be a teenager in baggy clothes and a skateboard by his feet. Let it be a businessman in black costume. Let it be an old woman with grey hair and wrinkled face, holding her purse in her skirt-clad knee.

When I passed him the first time as I had recently moved into town, I looked at him. It was only a brief glance, the idle one you use on every stranger you pass on the street, but he seemed to sense me. For a short moment, his eyes rose from the small girl with the lollipop he was talking to back then, and they met mine.

And then he smiled.

It became a routine. I passed him every day, and he would always look up when I was two and a half yards away from him. And smile at me. His appearance changed slightly from day to day. Once he had a broken leg, all wrapped up. Once, he had a bruise on his cheek. Once, a wisp of hair had escaped its braid and swung beside his face. Sometimes, he looked happy, smiling with a force that left me breathless. Sometimes he was sad and smiled dejectedly, making me want to comfort him. Sometimes he seemed uncomfortable and smiled with what looked like distress.

But however it might look, everyday it left me feel strangely light inside.

Wufei asked me once how I could be so happy every day when I came to work. I replied that ‘When someone offer me happiness, why not take it?’

He just looked at me strangely and left me alone for the rest of the day.

Maybe there is one more thing I should add about the braided youth. That spot beside him on the bench is never free. It is always occupied by someone else.

*******

It had been a bad day, that’s the least I could say. My secretary, Ms. Peacecraft, had spilled tea over the papers that Wufei had left for me to sign, and she had apologized, blue eyes filled with ‘bravely held tears’. It caused a minor scene in the office, something that made the guys (Wufei, Trowa, and Quatre) humour me for the rest of the day.

Like I said, it had been a very bad day, indeed.

When I could finally leave the office, I was late – something I had never been before. Cursing myself, I hurried my steps as I walked swiftly down the street in obvious frustration. It was that kind of frustration that everyone I met could see, and they made way for me carefully, wanting to avoid an argument.

“Heero!”

Damn.

“Heero! Wait for me!”

I would have cursed again but realized that it would have been too humdrum so instead, I turned around as swift as my steps had been and glared at the source of the shout. “Ms. Peacecraft.” I made it sound like a greeting.

She trotted up to my side, smiling breathlessly at me. “I’ve told you, please call me Relena.”

I grunted out a reply as I wondered if there was something wrong with me. Most men at the office (minus my friends) would kill for the chance to be allowed to call the honey-blonde girl Relena, but I wouldn’t. She was pretty, all right, but every time I looked into her cornflower blue eyes, the memory of a more appealing, violet shade, hit me and washed away whatever fondness I could ever have had of her.

“Where are you going?” She asked in an attempt of starting a conversation, sounding just the slightest bit unsure.

“Home.” I replied gruffly, but she seemed to miss the tone I had carefully used in order to set her off.

“Oh. Sixth Street from the centre, isn’t it?”

She knew where I was living? Damn.

I had resumed my fast pace with her by my side, half of me hoping that she would see the smile from that youth and understand that she would leave me alone, and the other half hoping that she wouldn’t see it so she wouldn’t remark on it.

I entered the park with her by my side, and after walking a while we reached the bench.

Have I described the bench for you? It’s a simple, coarse stone bench, not decorated or painted anyhow. It’s on the path, just between the flower-bed and the fountain I’ve described earlier. Trees surround the place and shadow it for the most of the time, giving it a cool feeling even during the hottest summer-days.

The ‘stranger’ who wasn’t really a stranger to me anymore since we had shared smiles for over a month, was sitting there as always, today dressed in a pair of black slacks and a shirt in the same colour. The hair was neatly braided and a black baseball cap was resting on the chestnut mane, saucily pushed up to reveal his eyes.

And the spot beside him was empty.

He looked up at me at the same time as always, and smiled the most beautiful smile I had ever seen him give me.

Have you ever kept a pupa in a drawer just to see how the butterfly will look when it can finally destroy the case and get out in the free? Every year, you are always certain that just ‘that’ butterfly was the most beautiful, until you one day find a very rare and special one that outshines everyone with its beauty. And that short moment you can study it before letting it free will always be kept at a safe place in you heart and you know that you’ll never see it again.

It was something analogous to that special feeling that went straight to my heart when I saw that wonderful smile.

And then it faded.

His eyes had fixed on something beside of me and I turned my head slightly to see what. Of course, it was Relena who looked puzzled, but hadn’t really noticed the youth on the bench. Her blue eyes met mine, confused. “Heero?”

I threw a last, desperate glance towards the bench, but the braided young man was already gone, having left only a small, yellow flower behind, with half the petals picked away.

*******

I stared at that small little flower in my hand. Having snatched it from the bench without having Relena to notice wasn’t very hard and I had finally gotten rid of her so I could spend time to think, unaccompanied.

“Loves me, loves me not, loves me, loves me not. . .”

It’s a childish game without any meaning, but I kept going none the less, watching as flower after flower fell, descending to the floor in a slow velocity.

“. . . loves me not. . . ”

The phone rang just as the penultimate petal went down to the floor. Mumbling something not even I wanted hear, I let the flower with only one, yellow petal left, descend to the floor as I flew out of the room to get it in time. “Yuy.”

It wasn’t Relena, thank God, but Quatre. “Hello Heero!” He chirped into the phone in a way that made me depressed as I felt his happiness contrast against my downheartedness badly. “I called to ask you to do me a favour.”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to ask you in myself. Are you up to come to my marriage?” He both replied and asked, causing me to choke on the breath I was inhaling right then.

“What?” Was my croaked out question, sounding to the entire world as if I was a teenager whose voice just had started to break. Quatre, married? Since when? How, when, what, why?

“Trowa has asked me!” I swear to God that he was giggling like a mad man at the words. “Yesterday.”

“Quatre.” I said dryly, though happiness for my friends had filled me enough to forget my own problems for a while. “Isn’t it more normal to announce the marriage *before* inviting one to come?”

“And spoil the fun?”

I growled at him, causing him to laugh even brighter.

We talked for a long while, during which I congratulated him and shared some marriage-jokes, mostly inside jest that we bachelors had collected during our long-time friendship and as colleagues. It wasn’t until at the end of out conversation he seemed to realize I was acting a little ‘off’, if just very slightly. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes. . . ”

He knew immediately that I was lying. “Still angry at Relena since that incident? The whole ‘going-into-shock-because-of-sadness-I-need-mouth-to-mouth method’ was a little too much, wasn’t it?”

I snorted softly, not even bothering to reply, and he snickered.

“Why don’t you just tell her that you’re gay? That would spare you a lot of trouble, you know.”

I shrugged even though I knew he wouldn’t see it, not having an answer to his question. “Do you think I should?” Strange images of me, telling her in front of the stone bench appeared in my mind, one more ridiculous than the other and I snorted to myself. “Do you even think that would really set her off?”

“Good point.”

We said our good-byes and I hung up on him, before going to the kitchen, eating supper and then go to bed – the small flower totally forgotten on the living room floor’s softly red carpet.

*******

Day after day went by in its normal pace, but one thing had changed dramatically.

The bench was always empty.

It seemed as if the braided youth had completely stopped to come there because as more and more days had gone by, it was soon completely covered in petals that had begun to fall from the trees together with crumbling, brownish leaves. The scene it shaped was sad but also strangely beautiful in a very melancholic way. No one seemed to sit there anymore – it was like as if everyone had lost their interest when there wasn’t anyone to talk to anymore.

The water in the fountain was turned off now, and the forgot-me-nots in the flower-bed were slowly dying.

And the bench remained empty.

*******

I could never understand why Quatre and Trowa wanted their marriage to come off during the fall. Maybe there was an inside joke, maybe there was an underlying, deep reason to it all but in any way, it took place the day when the first hoar-frost had came during the night before. I would lie if I said it wasn’t beautiful, but it was so. . .so. . . dead.

I slid down in a bench where there was still place, half dazed by the peoples murmuring voices that echoed around me. How could Trowa and Quatre know all these people? It had to be at least a hundred of them, all whispering to one another until their voices mixed together and shaped a humming, never ending sound.

I didn’t notice it at first, but after a minute I felt my hair rise at the back of my neck in a way that told me someone was watching me. Turning my head slightly to the left, I was met by a pair of . . violet, wide orbs that stared right back into mine own Prussian blue.

He was dressed in a black suit; his hair braided more neatly than I had ever seen it before, and looked about as shocked as I felt.

I hope you can all agree that it would be stupid not to say anything, wouldn’t it? We had seen each other for over a month and shared smiles, so a small hello wouldn’t be so hard, would it? Still, my throat went dry and my jaw refused to work. It was like meeting a guy you ran into on the street the day before. Both of you recognize each other, but neither knows if you should say ‘hello’, or not.

Finally, I managed to stutter a low “Hi.”, at the same time as he did. Our voices mixed together, his smooth tenor with my just slightly darker. Just as we had spoken at the same time, we stopped, gaped, and then blushed one at once. He looked. . . cute.

There was an uncomfortable silence for a while, until I finally came up with something good to say. I felt strangely embarrassed, and I caught myself trying to tame my always so untidy hair over and over again. “So, are you related to Trowa?”

“Uncle-in-law.” Was the immediate answer and he pulled his braid over his shoulder to play with the end of it.

“Then you’re Quatre’s nephew?” I asked stupidly.

“Yeah. His oldest sister was my mother. What about you?”

I deliberately ignored the ‘was’ in his statement as I saw how sadness seemed to fill his eyes. “Just a friend.” Then I added on an afterthought. “To them both.”

“Oh.” He nodded slowly, eyes thoughtful. “From work?”

“Yes, and otherwise.” I felt that there was something else he really wanted to know. . .

“Like that woman?” He blurted out before looking down at his knees.

My sixth sense never fails me. “She’s not a friend.” I said resolutely, hoping that he would see what I meant. Not so.

Instead, he flushed even more and stuttered out a quiet. “Sorry.”

It wasn’t until I looked up again that I understood what he thought that I had meant. His eyes were suddenly very much sadder and glossier. Cursing myself, I tried to repair the damage. “She’s just my secretary. Obsessed with Japanese men, if you ask me.”

“Oh.” He said again. “I see.”

The next question I asked was to uphold the conversation as much as I was curious. “What are you working with?”

“I. . .” He looked surprised for a moment during which I studied his face closer than I had never had a chance to be before. He had round cheeks, sunburned and with some freckles on his nose. His eyes contrasted beautifully with the golden brownish colour and they were wider than I would ever have imagined. Needless to say, he was gorgeous. “I’m a writer.” He finally concluded.

I decided to be blunt. “Gay?”

You know what? I never knew that guy could look as surprised and embarrassed as he did then. His eyes widened and his lips formed a small ‘o’. He didn’t answer that question, just nodded and asked one of his own. “Does that bother you?”

My heart did a funny little dance in my chest. Leaning forward, I captured his lips with my own and proceeded to kiss him breathless. After a while, I felt how his lips began to move in protest and I broke away from him. He looked at me critically.

“I thought it was appropriative to know a person’s name before kissing him.”

Maybe I had moved too far? I cursed myself on the inside but smiled on the outside as I held out a hand for him to shake. “Heero Yuy.”

He accepted it, the critic glint in his eyes changing into something happier. “Duo Maxwell.”

Then he leaned forward and kissed me.

*******

The End

*******

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