Author's Notes: I thought up this story while writing Desires of the Heart and it follows a similar premise but is NOT the same story. The characterization is a little different and it won't go in the same trajectory. Also, this is a lemon, meaning it contains graphic sexual content, though it has been edited for FF. See Blissful Ignorance for the full version. If I continue this story, there will be more lemons, possibly an arc of lemons (with a plot). Also, in this chapter and possible chapters to come, readers might notice a slight change in my style in that I'm adding more distance between my voice and the characters to allow for narration so I can cover time more quickly. If I continue this fic, the story will cover a lot of time, possibly years between chapters….haven't decided yet. And finally, I will warn readers that in this fic I switch POVs in a way that I don't usually do in my writing. I think the way I do it is clear and make sense, but please let me know if this is not the case.

Thank you and please enjoy!

Amour

Chapter 1

By Zapenstap

It wasn't about love.

It began at a birthday party Relena had thrown when she turned twenty-four, a party where the guests were all close friends and trusted coworkers, where the champagne flowed freely, and everyone laughed, drank, and let their cares and responsibilities slide away. Relena had developed a strong liking for champagne, and she drank a lot of it that night, not in the quantities it would take to make her ill, but enough so that she forgot herself, danced, laughed, greeted her guests… and flirted with Heero.

Their flirtation wasn't entirely new. Years ago Heero and Relena had tried to have a relationship, during a time when Relena's goals had been directed toward a stable lifestyle befitting her political career—a lifestyle which included a built-in future of marriage, children, a two-story home and a predictable schedule—during a time when Heero's stability consisted of a goal to stay in the same place for a full six months, long enough to acquire a couch, stock a few groceries in at least one of his cupboards, and establish a pretense at having a girlfriend.

Their communication also lacked, to the point that they each grew accustomed to dating an idea more than a person, their understanding of one another developing from assumption and a trajectory of thought rather than conversation. Of course Relena had been busy too, and Heero was unaccustomed to the telephone, all of which resulted in a misunderstanding of the other's intentions and sincerity, and which eventually drove them down the separate, but more familiar paths of solidarity, Relena in her determined social and political ambitions and Heero in his self-contained isolationism.

Whether Heero had ever loved Relena was never the point. They had been lonely and needed someone who understood. Certainly Relena had loved Heero, had maintained a girlish crush on him for years before she even really knew him, but her love from him had been of a superficial sort, stirred more by her desire to emulate him and desperation for companionship than honest feelings. Heero claimed to have never loved Relena, and the feelings he did have were murky at best. When they broke up, it was because they were hurting each other, Relena's expectations being too high and Heero's comfort level with those expectations too frail.

For quite a long time, out of heartbreak and hurt, they didn't speak, and during that long sabbatical, Relena's intense emotional dependency on Heero dissipated, her once great love for Heero Yuy settling into a caring sort of affection that she recalled occasionally in the late twilight of a summer evening as a memory, but which was no longer something that occupied her heart or mind. That she retained a certain fondness for Heero at all was partially reminiscent of the history they had together and partly a necessity in reaction to his needs, a need for space and privacy and mobility, freedom that couldn't be maintained when beholden to anyone else, needs that were tragic and yet endearing in their lonesomeness. Relena's connection and understanding of Heero and Heero's continually awareness of it was such that forgetting each other did not seem possible, and over time it became a silly ceremony to pretend the other did not exist.

It was Relena who made the first move toward friendship, initiating forgiveness and open acknowledgement of her understanding of Heero's situation by inviting the former gundam pilot to a social function that involved many people they both knew from the past, a few other former gundam pilots among them. That night Heero and Relena shared space without bitterness, though their interactions were brief and mostly polite. Heero had reacted to Relena's invitation with passivity, and spent most of his time watching other people from the walls and corners; yet he seemed grateful for the opportunity to mingle in social crowds for brief chunks of time, even if his interaction was primarily achieved through observation. He had little ability or practice in making social connections on his own.

Opportunities for such meetings were repeated with more frequency as Relena's political career gained momentum. She threw a lot of parties for social reasons, and grew increasingly charismatic with age, not in a social butterfly sense, but as someone engaging, personable, and more light-hearted and easy-going than she had been in her youth, at least in the comfort of her own home, and especially among close friends or coworkers. When she was working, at the office or on a political tour, she was known to be all business and diplomatic professionalism, but on her own time, or when reflecting on the difficulty of her work, she had relaxed significantly, allowing—as she learned she must when the grand visions of her youth began to unravel in the face of age and reality—to just let some things be, and even became somewhat witty and facetiously charming as she tackled increasingly difficult projects. Heero hardly changed at all, save to grow taller, darker and more mysterious, though he managed to be less distant and standoffish in pleasant company and even behaved graciously around old acquaintances.

Of course they couldn't help being attracted to each other. Heero had always possessed a dangerous, forbidden sort of beauty that turned the heads of young girls and even caused older women to glance with interest and consider, especially when his history as a war hero and infamous gundam pilot became known. Relena's girlhood awkwardness had evolved into elegance with the passing of the years, and in her mid and early twenties her face and figure were heralded alongside the advancements of her career as the epitome of the modern woman. Neither Heero nor Relena cared much for any of that. Their mutual attraction was more than physical; it was a chemistry that sprung from a deeper and more elusive well, a connection they couldn't quite explain and never tried to. The few times they had slept together as a couple had been memorable, if awkward and inexperienced, filled with emotional doubt and uncertainty, but physically satisfying for both of them.

However, a relationship such as Relena desired at the time couldn't last on chemistry alone. Heero had been very clear about the condition of his heart, though he had been sorry to break hers. Though he cared for Relena deeply, he didn't understand how to love her or anyone. He could never be sure of staying anywhere for long, and he knew that eventually she wanted a husband and home. He didn't have a model for it himself, having grown up without parents or even loving guardians, and though he had tried to masquerade the role of a potential mate, the very concept bewildered him. When they eventually succumbed to the inevitable and declared the relationship over, Relena was left destitute and heartbroken, for she had built all of her dreams on the possibility of a happily ever after with Heero Yuy.

By her twenty-fourth birthday, Relena was done with the concept of happily ever after. A husband and a home were a distant idea she hardly had time for herself in her busy schedule and unceasing river of commitments, and the idea of a happily ever after seemed a laughable concept stacked up against the human horrors she encountered, fought and sometimes was forced to yield to daily in her political life. She still wanted it someday, when things slowed down if they ever did, when she had time to date again and before she was too old to have children, but at the moment and for the foreseeable future, it was an impossible ambition.

Her birthday party was a cocktail party and everyone was supposed to have come dressed up, but Heero arrived dressed in dark slacks, a T-shirt, and a black coat. Relena wore a yellow dress cut off halfway up her thighs with a slit in the skirt up one leg and white silk layers underneath. The bodice and hem were strewn with golden beads that caught the light as she chatted and danced in pretty heeled shoes, surrounded by well-wishers handing her an endless stream of crystal champagne glasses. Heero spent the most of the evening sitting on a stool near the private bar, occasionally talking to mutual acquaintances, but mostly content to sit alone and observe everyone else until his hawk-like eyes made people nervous enough that they excused themselves from conversation to flee his presence.

At half past eleven, a few hours into the party and with the festivities still on the climb, Relena caught Heero watching her dance. His staring wasn't predatory, and possibly not even terribly interested in anything she did, but Heero's eyes had a way of merely noticing things that made it seem as if attention were fixated. When a coworker leaned into Relena's ear to inform that a man seated at the bar was staring at her, Relena could only laugh. She had greeted Heero when he arrived, but it wasn't until she turned to look over her shoulder and saw his eyes focused on her that she decided to join him at the bar for conversation. Leaving the dance floor with her latest drink half-empty in hand, she strode toward the bar and perched herself on a stool, swinging her bare legs up onto the rungs of the stool where Heero was sitting and smiling at him.

He turned to her silently, appraising her appearance wordlessly and making no other commentary.

"You were watching me dance?" she asked.

"You looked like you were having fun," he replied in his usual, conservative tones. There was nothing in his face to indicate that he had enjoyed watching, or even that her company was wanted now, but she sensed contentment from him by his posture. He seemed relaxed, the sharp attention that was usually present in his features softening slightly, though he didn't smile at her.

She smiled at him though, champagne glass in hand and wisps of hair flying about her face where they had come undone on the dance floor. Now that she was sitting down, the alcohol in her blood seemed to be singing, a tingling feeling running up and down her arms and making her feel slightly dizzy in the head. She blinked her eyes and looked curiously around the room, surprised at how quickly everything seemed to slide when a moment before it had all be perfectly stable. Letting out a small laugh at the absurdity, she leaned her forehead against Heero's shoulder.

"Thank you or coming," she said.

He smelled good, a slight spray of cologne drifting into her nose from under the fabric of his shirt. As was an unfortunate effect of alcohol, she immediately began to think about Heero as a man in a place convenient to a sudden desire that sprang out of nowhere to occupy her thoughts. It wasn't a serious reflection, but because it had been months since she had had time to date and longer since she had had a boyfriend, she allowed the thoughts to progress as a curiosity, exploring a part of herself that she was usually forced to suppress in the interest of time, responsibility and availability of resources. It had been a long time since she had felt a man's lips on her skin or a man's body against hers, and it was something she desired even if she didn't have time to develop or maintain that kind of relationship and was considered too generally proper to engage in it casually.

So she allowed herself to lean her head against Heero's shoulder and just remember.

He tolerated it for maybe ten seconds, and then tapped her gently on the cheek until she raised her head to look into the enigmatic brilliance of his dark blue eyes.

"Heero," she said, her head spinning now and her body feeling as if a small fire had been lit somewhere to make her blood simmer. She reached out to touch his cheek, gracing her fingers over his skin and trailing down to touch his neck. "Would you like to stay over tonight?"

He jerked his head back and there was the barest hint of a warning growl in his voice as he pulled away. "Relena..." She blinked at him through the hazy curtain that seemed to hang between the two sides of her brain, wondering what she had said to receive such a response. Perhaps he had no interest in her like that anymore, but even if that was true, his reaction seemed stronger than necessary. She deliberated for a moment, and gradually felt she understood; he must have thought she was asking for more than she meant, as if she hadn't learned from their first experience that asking for more than Heero could give would only hurt them both. She spoke slowly, carefully choosing her words.

"Heero, I'm not asking for a relationship. I'm not in love with you anymore. It's just that it's been awhile. I guess I'm feeling like I want someone to stay over."

Giving her a reproving look, he took the glass from her hand and set it on the counter of the bar. "That's because you're drunk."

It seemed answer enough, and because she was indeed drunk, she couldn't be sure he wasn't mistaken. She sighed, chasing away her transitory lust like so many elusive butterflies and glanced at Heero with a regretful, but affable smile. A moment later, Duo Maxwell and Trowa Barton sauntered over from the where they had been lounging outside on the patio and started talking to Heero about the newest model of some security system or another. They greeted Relena with a "happy birthday" and offered her an opportunity to enter the conversation, but she took her leave of the group, hopping off the stool and retreating back to the dance floor to leave the boys to discuss among themselves such topics that failed to interest her.

As she left, Duo laughed.

"She's cute when she's drinking," he said to Heero.

Heero grunted noncommittally and asked Trowa about the newest advancements in aerospace technology, particularly in regard to the latest testing equipment in motion sensors. He considered what Relena had said before the others arrived, wondering what she meant by it and what had made her ask something like that, especially to him, but his thoughts were swept away by Trowa's subtle grilling. Heero had to evade questions about where he had been lately and what he had been up to, partly out of secrecy for the working he was doing and would be committed to doing his whole life, and partly out of habit. It wasn't that he had anything to hide from Trowa, but Heero regularly avoided talking about what he did, and really avoided talking about himself in general, or even thinking much about himself. The way he spent his time and met his needs—physical and emotional--were a mystery to everyone. He preferred it that way.

Duo fetched drinks at midnight, ashamed—as he put it—that it was already so late and Heero had had only one glass of champagne, but probably more hopeful of jarring something loose from Heero's secret life. Heero wasn't worried about leaking information he shouldn't. The reason he hadn't had much to drink was because he didn't particularly like drinking. He didn't have any moral, medical, social or even personal opposition to it as an activity, but he didn't like being drunk. Though he always knew his limits and could measure fairly accurately how much alcohol would put him in what state of mind, he was still as susceptible as the next person to losing focus and the ability to reason. Alcohol also affected Heero emotionally, and in the opposite direction, heightening the impact of his feelings on his psychology and dramatizing his sense of isolation and loneliness in social groups. Drinking made Heero feel depressed.

Nevertheless, when Duo provided drinks, he drank. They started by taking shots, first all together and then in a round, chasing them with water and telling a secret when they had finished. When Heero finished his first two shots, Duo wanted to know if Heero still had feelings for Relena, to which Heero replied with some annoyance that he didn't and never had. He explained for what must have been the fifteenth million time that he cared for Relena but had no interest in a relationship with her, for her benefit as well as his own. Duo's response was disappointment at having wasted Heero's secret on something he had already been told openly, to which Trowa laughed and jibed him.

A drinking game followed, something Duo either made up on the spot or had learned elsewhere. It involved watching people on the dance floor, singling someone out and trying to guess what they would do. If they guessed incorrectly, they had to drink, and the drinks Duo provided were not much less potent than the shots they had started with. It was a stupid game, as most drinking games were stupid, but they played anyway, at first for something to do and later because the more they drank the more interesting and difficult the game became.

By one o-clock Heero was drunk and irritated about it. He could speak without slurring and walk without swaying or tripping, but it took concentration, and his thoughts seemed to slide out of grasp like slippery vines when he tried to hold on to them. His body felt as if were full of pins and he had the intense and bizarre desire to want to be and remain with people, talking or touching or something more.

He found himself watching Relena again, half abstractly but also unable to shake off what she had said, especially after Trowa and Duo brought his attention to her by guessing something she would do. Duo had to drink when he guessed incorrectly that Relena would get sick or fall after spinning around the dance floor with a man Heero hadn't know the name of, but who irritated him for being less than Relena deserved, even in a dancing partner. Trowa guessed that Relena would soon lose her shoes, which she did, kicking them off when they apparently became too cumbersome or painful to take care of. In bare feet, she twirled on the dance floor, this time without a partner, and not long after that Trowa wandered away and got lost and Hilde came by to haul a sleepy, blurry-eyed Duo home in a taxi, leaving Heero alone at the bar with an empty glass in his hand and only the dance floor to look at.

He watched until Relena stopped dancing, her hair having come undone, falling in a tangled mess of a loose bobby pins and golden curls around her shoulders. She left the floor to sit on the couch that was set against the wall across the room to try to work out the tangles, leaving the pins on the glass surface of a little table by the arm rest. When the last pin came free and her hair hung curly and mussed around her shoulders, she swung her bare legs up on the cushions and lay with her head on the armrest, not sleeping, but watching the party wind down with a smile on her face.

Heero felt his blood stir and looked away uncomfortably, not because he was unused to finding Relena attractive, but because he hadn't prepared himself to deal with the sensation while drunk in her house and exposed so provocatively to the long length of her bare legs stretched out on the sofa. He tried to ignore the urgent demands on his sexual instinct, but a part of him wanted to try her out again, to see if she was riper now that she was older, and to see if he was better at pleasing her now that he was more experienced. It was this primal, almost animalistic thought that he was able to dismiss simply by looking away, but what remained to haunt him was the residue of loneliness and the need for the touch of another human being that the alcohol in his blood multiplied tenfold.

He didn't think it could do any harm to talk to her.

Before he knew it, he had set his glass down on the counter and was approaching the couch without a conception in the world of what he wanted to say.

She lifted her head and dragged her knees in to make room for him, tangled golden-brown hair spilling down her shoulders and sticking to the perspiration on her cheeks and neck when she turned a sleepy, heavy-lidded gaze on him. Her makeup was smudged under her eyes by this time, and the lipstick long gone, as if she had fallen asleep forgetting to wash her face.

"Hey," he said, and she smiled as he sat down beside her.

She sat up and shifted so that that she could lean against his arm, her breasts rising a falling as she heaved a sigh. "I've lost my shoes," she said ruefully, extending one of her knees and pointing her toes.

"They're under the table," he replied. She had pretty toes, and his eyes climbed up from her feet to shins to her knees and up to her thighs where the edge of her dress cut off his view. The spinning in his brain was not receding, and the more he looked at her skin, the more he wanted to touch it. He felt his own flesh heating, his heart beating too strongly to account for the alcohol alone.

Relena snuggled against him, burying her face into his shoulder and he tensed. Her proximity was making it difficult for him to focus on anything except the scent of her skin and softness of her body. He shifted a little, but when he moved, she moved with him, half falling over his lap. His eyes tripped from the top of her head to the bodice of her dress to where her hand supported her weight on his upper thigh.

He meant to say her name, this time with a stronger warning than before, but his thoughts were sluggish and his physical reactions quickened. He struggled to retain some semblance of rational thought, wondering just how many shots Duo had put in his drinks and if they had all hit him yet, when Relena struggled to raise her body enough to look him in the face. He found himself lost in her eyes, seeing a lust there that reflected his own, was guarded and wary like his own, and was winning like his own. He returned her look honestly, making no suggestion, but not trying to mask one either. She lowered her lashes, her fingers splaying over his leg as she braced against him to push herself up, and when she looked at him again there was something in her expression that quickened the stirring in his blood to a torrent.

Forgetting himself, he touched her hand, caressing her fingers. She smelled lightly of flowers and spring breezes, and up close her skin glistened with a light perspiration from dancing under hot yellow lights. He fingered her hair, curling it about his knuckles, and appraised her body without shame or disguise, trying to remember the shape of her curves and the feel of her frame in his arms. It had been awhile for him too, and the memories were such that once the floodgate was opened, he found it difficult to shut. Leaning forward, he brought his head close to her hair and grazed his lips lightly along her neck.

She shuddered, breathing deeply and longingly in way that made him feel hypersensitive all over his body. Anticipation welled up like a river, and he reached for her arm to pull her closer to him.

"Too public," she whispered, turning her head slightly, twisting out of his reach and looking around to see if anyone had noticed. If they had, they weren't watching or didn't care, and with her body trembling so close to his arm, he didn't either. "Wait a moment and then follow me," she said, standing up from the couch and striding away quicker than he could straighten in his dizzied state. Slowly, he rose to his feet, watching as she conversed briefly with a woman he didn't know and then turned down a dark and narrow hall, vanishing from his sight.

He waited a moment and then followed, taking a slightly different route, but passing close enough to the woman Relena had been conversing with to hear her explain to another woman that Relena felt groggy and had gone to bed, and that she had been left in charge to make sure everyone else got home safely. He didn't pause to hear the other woman's reaction, but slipped into the dark hallway where Relena had gone, treading swiftly down the corridor in as straight a line as he could manage.

Relena waited for him at the end of the hall, leaning against the wall with her hands tucked behind the small of her back. He sped up as soon as she caught sight of him, closing the distance swiftly and trapping her against the wall with his body before she could move or utter a sound. His hands took hold of her wrists, keeping them in place behind her back as his lips sought her mouth, kissing her fully and urgently, openmouthed but not penetrating passed her lips with his tongue. Instead he released her hands and dropped his mouth to her throat, grabbing her about the waist and running his hands over her body. Her hand came up to his shoulder and neck as soon as he released them, and he felt her fingers tangle in his hair and a gasp release from her lungs as he dropped lower to her breasts.

Swallowing, she struggled in his grip until he lightened his hold and allowed her to slip out under her arm long enough to push open a door at the end of the hallway and lead him into a room that had to be hers. The décor was of elegant Victorian style with dark furniture, white tablecloths on the tables and lace curtains. The curtains covered windows that spread almost across the whole wall on the far side of the room, and the moonlight that streamed through the curtains bathed the darkness in the silvery blue glow of night. Heero wasn't interested in any of the details of the room except the bed, which was large enough, but with a comforter too white and fluffy for his purpose.

Turning his attention back to Relena, he immediately helped her out of her dress, finding the zipper tucked under the material and kissing the skin on her back as he pulled it down until the dress slipped off. Relena removed her undergarments without his help while he pulled his shirt over his head, dropping his clothes on the floor where he stood and moving to the bed to throw the comforter down around the posters on the edge. Stripping down to nakedness, he caught Relena's wrist as she came toward him, pulling her nude form into his arms and caressing her skin with his hands, touching her everywhere to let her know he wanted her, and then turning her back toward the bed and laying her down gently on the sheet-covered mattress.

Their touch of one another was familiar, their fingers remembering the other's body and experience quickly filling in the gaps of the time they had spent apart. Their lovemaking was ardent and demanding, the crescendo of their pleasure steady and the climax mutually satisfying. When it was over, they spent a little time recovering their breath and then settled down to enjoy the euphoria, letting sleep wash away the remains of alcohol.

Heero awoke in the morning to the sound of birds outside the window, and with less of a headache than he had feared. His body still tingled with a pleasant sense of physical fulfillment, but as memory rushed back in with the light of morning, he sat bolt-right up in bed, turning to stare at Relena sleeping beside him with a pounding heart in his chest and whirling in his mind. He had promised himself he would never hurt her again.

"Relena," he said, and touched her shoulder, shaking her gently.

She opened her eyes groggily, hair a mess around her head and wincing at a headache that was seemingly worse than his was. She blinked her eyes in the sunshine that poured through the curtains and brightened the room with yellow-white light and turned to look at him. To his surprise, but not relief, she smiled; a small smile that showed she was pleased, and not at all hurt.

"Good morning," she said. "I'm twenty-four."

"Relena," he said, this time in an apprehensive way.

She turned so that she was propped on one elbow, the sheet from the bed tucked around her body and hiding most of the creamy smoothness of her skin. "I'm surprised you stayed," she said quietly. "Did you just wake up?" She looked at the clock hanging on her wall above the vanity and took a deep breath. "God, I'm exhausted. I think I will sleep most of the day away if I can get away for it. What about you? Do you want to sleep in and stay for breakfast or do you need to go?"

"I need to go," he said quickly, not concerned or interested in breakfast. "Relena, what's happened?" It wasn't that he didn't remember. Their sexual encounter was as beautifully clear in his mind as anything was that night, but what had he been thinking to allow himself back into her life this way? And more importantly, what did she think of it? And what did they do now? He couldn't stay. He had no intention of staying. How could he have let his needs overrun his sense so easily? Had he wanted it that much?

Relena's face was a study, carefully blank as she considered him in his panic. When she spoke it was with the evenness of simple truth. "Heero, I know I can't keep you so please don't think that that's what I expect. I wasn't so drunk last night that I don't remember what I said. I really am not in love with you anymore. To be honest, I don't have time for a boyfriend these days anyway, and even if I did have the time I wouldn't make the mistake of thinking you would have a miraculous change of heart just because we slept together." She smiled at his shock and relief, mirth playing at the corner of her lips. "I really enjoyed it, by the way," she added. "I needed that, really. It's been a long time, and I'm just happy that you were willing. I care a lot about you, and I know you care about me. I'm not asking for more than that."

"So you're okay with this?" he confirmed hesitantly.

She nodded. "No strings attached."

"Are we protected?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah. As long as you don't have anything."

"I don't," he confirmed, and began searching the floor for his clothes. "You can go back to sleep. I can find my own way out."

Relena smiled and pulled the comforter back up over her shoulders before snuggling into the bed.

Heero got out of bed and dressed quietly, unconcerned for the wrinkles in his own clothes, but taking a moment to hang up Relena's dress in her closet. When he was finished and ready to go he paused at the door, looking at the woman asleep on the bed, her cheek resting against her hand and her chest rising and falling under the blanket. He then put his hand on the door frame and opened the door.

"Thank you, Heero," Relena murmured from the bed, and he smiled as he walked out.

"Happy Birthday, Relena."

To Be Continued?

I have an idea of how this story might progress in a kind of lemon-y arc with a plot, but we'll see how it goes. I don't know how often I'll be able to update because I have so many things going on, but I like my idea for the story! Anyway, let me know what you think. It's been awhile since I've written a full lemon!