Show Me a Smile

Chapter One: Misery

The weather was as dark and miserable as his mood, the skies clouded with an endless, monotonous gray, any defiant traces of sunlight immediately destroyed by the impenetrable shadows and gloom surrounding the city skyscape.

The air was stark and frigid, the shock of the cold abnormal for the early spring season. A wicked wind whipped through the streets, resembling a prowler who sought to take his next victim by surprise, robbing passersby of warmth and breath. Heero Yuy became one of those unfortunate victims, cursing bitterly under his breath as he pulled his coat tighter around himself against the sudden chill.

He found himself feeling strangely out of place; in a way he had not felt since first coming to the city fourteen years before. He supposed it was only natural that he felt so uncomfortable, wandering through the nearly empty boulevards in the middle of a work day, the expensive ties and suits that had become as familiar as a second skin traded in for faded jeans and a sweatshirt bearing the N.Y.U emblem, finished off by a pair of sneakers and the old bomber jacket pulled taut across his shoulders.

He found himself taken back to his days as a college student, when his path in life had seemed so bright and certain…what did he have to show for it now?

Everything had started out so normal. His parents were wealthy, old money; his father a businessman, his mother a socialite, and so his childhood had been privileged, growing up away from the city on the isolated country estate his parents preferred to the constant movement and noise of the metropolis. He had graduated early from high school, and instead of having to rely on his parents' name and money, his good grades and high honors earned him a full scholarship to the elite New York University.

With a wistful smile, Heero remembered the satisfaction his sixteen-year-old-self had derived from that small achievement, independent from his parents and the world they lived in, the world he so completely despised.

The transition from the quiet country to the bustling New York City had been a shocking transition for him, but as adaptive as he was, he quickly adjusted to his new lifestyle. To his classmates, he came off as antisocial and intimidating, making it nearly impossible for him to make friends. But he had always been withdrawn and introverted, and their lack of companionship suited him fine, instead giving him more time to focus single-mindedly on his studies. As long as he kept up his status as one of the university's top students, no one dared to complain to his face about his brusque and standoffish nature.

Life had taken another dramatic turn a few years later when he made the acquaintance of young Relena Darlian, herself an incoming freshman, he a senior. For some reason beyond his comprehension, she had taken an immediate liking to him, and established between them a friendly, platonic relationship that baffled Heero's classmates. Why she would want to interact with surly, antisocial Heero Yuy was beyond them.

Prim, proper, privileged, Relena was a born socialite, the daughter of one of the oldest and wealthiest upper class families in New England. But she was pretty and bright, and Heero found he enjoyed their conversations. So they began to casually date, and after Heero graduated with a Bachelor's in technology and computer sciences and went on to work toward his Master's in business, it made perfect sense to everyone that they should marry.

In the eyes of society and their families, they made the perfect match, both born of the similar breeding and lifestyles. Heero took it all in with an easy, submissive acceptance, because after all, it was what had been expected of him all along.

He was given a job as a programmer at one of the top computer firms in the city, considered preparation for the day he was to aide his older brother Hideo (the family heir) in running their father's business. His marriage to Relena was mundane, but tranquil, and he did not mind when most of Relena's attention went to parties and social functions instead of him.

But after eight years of marriage, all it took was one ill-fated drunken confession to bring his entire world crashing down around him.

It was the night of yet another party, Relena's most important social function of the year, the Christmas celebration. He had been plugging in long hours at the office, and while he would rather have been catching up on his sleep or working on inhumanly impossible deadlines, Relena insisted he attend. It would be unseemly after all, she told him, for the host to not attend his own party. He was smart enough never to mention that he had no hand in its planning, all too aware of his wife's bristly temper.

With exhaustion fueling his general distaste for the bureaucratic functions Relena threw, the surly side to Heero's nature reared its ugly head. Luckily for him, no one expected anything more than polite conversation from him; so with the sympathetic support of his childhood friend Quatre Winner, Heero got himself ragingly drunk that night.

He had little tolerance for alcohol to begin with, and at the rate Quatre continued to hand him drinks in hopes of tempering his infamous bad moods, he stood no chance of being anywhere close to coherent by night's end. Able to avoid making a fool of himself until the guests had all gone, it was actually Relena, in a good-natured mood, lucky for him, that helped her stumbling, stammering husband up the stairs.

Unfortunately for Heero, alcohol had a habit of making him conversational. And in the wake of his loosened tongue, he had confessed to his wife the real reason they had not shared a bed in the last four years of their marriage. The reason he had made the spare bedroom his own.

In an instant, his sweet-tempered and loving wife turned raging and furious, and wasted no time in throwing Heero's befuddled, drunken hide out on the icy streets. Afterward, he could imagine that she wasted no time in making tearful phone calls to sympathetic friends and family, one of them being her lawyer.

Her father being the Senator Darlian, Relena had a far reach, and it became her new mission in life to completely destroy anything else left of Heero's comfortable world. The same day he was served for divorce, he was laid off from his job; within two weeks of separating from Relena, he was renounced by his parents and disinherited from their wills. The Yuys, as well as the Darlians, would not afford such a scandal. From that point on, as far as the higher society knew, the Yuys had no second son, and Relena Darlian had no ex-husband worth recollection.

Not a single soul wanted to accept, or even acknowledge, the fact that Heero Yuy was gay.