Note: this one is for Mifibou, my official translator, with many thanks for the wonderful job. Sorry it took so long, but I did mention Paris.

Thanks, as always, to KS for editing.

Ten Per Cent:

Ten per cent.

That's the official statistic they're bandying about nowadays. Ten per cent of any given population has gay/bi/metrosexual leanings.

Ten fucking per cent. No pun intended there or anything.

Statistics seriously suck. Hey, try saying that ten times, really fast.

So if you happen to meet a guy, say this gorgeous guy with blue eyes and a body that clearly gets brought to the gym a lot, then the odds are totally stacked against him swinging your way.

Even if he does, (and just for argument's sake, let's say he's your boss, so you can't just ask him straight out) how the hell are you ever supposed to know? Unless he actually comes to work one day wearing a spangly rainbow scarf in his messy, unbelievably messy hair, and humming an ABBA song, and brandishing flyers for the latest Gay Pride Parade, which he's organising….yeah, unless he does all that stuff, it's not easy to find out.

Especially when he tends not to talk about personal stuff (tends not to talk at all, unless it's work related) and has never once mentioned a yearning to visit San Francisco – with or without flowers in his hair – or asked where's a good place to get giant-sized bottles of lube on special. Or giant-sized condoms.

Oh, yeah. There's one other thing. He has a girlfriend.

Now, the Maxwell jury is still sort of out on whether she's a girl who's a friend, or an actual girlfriend. Probably the latter.

He's got her picture on his desk - a picture of the two of them. I stare at it a lot, and while I do try to blank out the Relena half of the equation, she's still there. I stare at it and agonise over what the body language means.

He does have his arm around her shoulder, and they're both smiling, but she's not leaning into him or anything. Although, he's a pretty private person, so maybe he picked out the photo with the least amount of physical contact to display to his colleagues.

He's the boss's son, after all – no, make that stepson, so maybe he's expected to show a little decorum. Maybe all the x-rated pics are hidden away at home.

On good days, I can convince myself they're just friends. When I first started here, on the factory floor, I stuck a photo of my friend Hilde on the inside of my locker door, just as camouflage. Working with a gang of mostly-male technicians, it's a pretty good idea to keep your sexuality on the low-key side.

They all found out anyway, after a bit. It wasn't a big deal, 'til I got my promotion last year. Now, I'm the fag who got elevated. I've heard comments on what I must have done to get said promotion.

Anyway, this isn't a good day.

Whether he likes men or women or fluffy bunnies isn't an issue any more. He'll be leaving in a couple of weeks' time and that will be that.

He came here for six months to get technical experience of doing the physical side of manufacturing; the plant on L2 is the biggest of all the Lowe Enterprises, so he was sent here to get an overview of our systems. And now he apparently knows everything so he's being transferred back to Head Office in Paris.

In France.

On Earth.

And yeah, he'll probably be back from time to time, to sit in on meetings, or approve new systems or whatever. He'll be Mr. Yuy, then, the guy who's being groomed to take over. He certainly won't be sharing an office with me, or asking my advice on stuff, or working on a project with me.

I've said he's my boss; that's not officially true. Officially, we're partners (hah) working on a project together.

In reality though, he's the heir apparent, who'll own everything one day, and who has a whole alphabet of letters after his name from the most prestigious universities on Earth. He was partnered with me to get some technical, hands-on (I wish) know–how.

And I have that in spades. I started on the factory floor as part of a community training scheme when I was seventeen. It was some new initiative – get the juvenile delinquent kids off the streets and give them a crappy job with minimum wage. For some reason, the scheme mostly failed, but I got lucky.

I met this great guy called Howard, who rescued me from quality control hell – checking the grooves in screws (no jokes, please) – and got me into repairing machinery.

Life was pretty good for a few years, and then I was given this promotion, which meant most of my so-called friends dropped me. I was suddenly a suit, one of them; one of the guys who made the decisions and gave the orders. While a few of them were still friendly enough, it wasn't the same.

Trouble was, that sort of leaves me in Limbo. I don't fit in with the office folks either. Even the receptionists at Lowe's have university educations, and have travelled, and can speak a couple of languages. I have a diploma from the local community college that I got from night classes.

My best buddy Quatre is always saying that none of it matters, that I'm smarter and funnier and a zillion times nicer than any of those snobs, but it does matter.

Oh, fuck. Don't think about Quat. Not now. I'm going to lose my best friend, and the guy I'm crazy about in the space of the next couple of weeks.

Q is kind of like Heero; heir to his family company. He disgraced himself on his twenty-first birthday, officially coming out to his parents, who promptly banished him to the ends of the universe, aka L2, to manage the Winner subsidiary there. Being a freaky, sneaky genius, he turned an almost bankrupt company into a massively profitable one and Daddy Winner's recently decided his only son could go back home to Earth.

And he wants me to go with him, except I can't. Immigration to Earth from L2 is strictly controlled; you either have to have a Master's degree, or a skill that's badly needed on Earth, or a company willing to sponsor you.

Q spent weeks trying to let me accept a WEI sponsorship, to go and work for his family firm. His new thing is to pretend that we're a couple so I can get a partnership visa. We had a row about it last night; I hadn't wanted to lie and anyway they check out that sort of thing. Quat had yelled at me to get over the stupid hang-up about lying and that we'd lived together for nearly two years. We were a couple in plenty of ways, bar the actual sex and stuff, and not even the most zealous immigration officer would ask us to perform for him.

Ah, that's him on the line now.

'Hey.' His voice is pretty subdued for him.

'Hey.'

'I'm sorry, OK? I just don't want to leave you here. I'll miss you so much.'

'Quat, you can come and visit any time you like. And I'll be really pissed off if you don't. And I can get a tourist visa and come to Sanque to see you.'

'It won't be the same. I'm going to miss you so much.' He sounds hopelessly forlorn. 'Duo, please, would you at least consider coming to Earth with me? I'll marry you if I have to, anything.'

'Let it go, Q. OK?' Shit, if he keeps on like that, I'll end up agreeing, just to stop him sounding so sad. 'It doesn't work like that. I know people who've tried to get those sort of partnership visas and it's damn near impossible. Apart from anything else, they monitor couples for the first three years on Earth. What happens if you meet some amazing guy while you're supposed to be with me? I can't let you fuck up your life like that.'

'I don't want to meet anyone,' he says defiantly. 'I'm so bad at choosing boyfriends that I'm better off being single.'

I raise my eyes; he actually has a point, though. For a smart guy, he has a sheer talent for picking out losers who took advantage of his sweet, sweet nature. The first time we'd met had been in a gay bar, and I'd rescued him from some pervert who'd been cruising him.

'Don't be stupid; of course you'll meet the right guy some day. And you don't want to be shackled to me when that happens. Oh, wait, can you hold a sec? I've got a call on the other line.'

The other line is actually Heero's but we usually picked up each other's calls, and I knew he'd been waiting for some statistics from Marketing.

Instead, it's his friend Trowa. Unlike Relena, who's visited three or four times, Trowa has never been to L2. He's an archaeologist who's been spending the last six months in Egypt, doing research at the museum in Cairo. Heero's shown me some of the photos he'd emailed. Trowa himself had been in one of them; a tall, lanky guy with most of his face hidden by a swathe of burnt-caramel hair. Pretty cute.

'Hey, Trowa. How's it going? Been attacked by evil killer mummies yet?'

'Not yet, no. Is Heero there?'

'No, he's gone for lunch. With Relena.'

'Ah.' He laughed. 'The pink princess herself.'

He's a nice guy, Trowa. I'd talked to him on and off when Heero was out of the office, and I get the impression that he wasn't all that crazy about Relena.

'You have to give her maximum points for trying, though. I mean, flying half way across the galaxy every few months just to see him. You'd think anyone else would have got the message by now that he's not interested in her.'

'What? She's his girlfriend!' God, maybe the mummies had got to him and taken over his brain. Or those little scarab beetles had squirmed under his skin and devoured his brain cells. Or maybe he just had sunstroke or dehydration?

Trowa laughs again; nice laugh; he has a really nice laugh. Especially when he's saying that the man of my dreams isn't already fixed up. Not that I have the ghost of a chance with him, even if he is, miraculously, in that magic ten per cent, he'll probably want someone classy and sophisticated. Like Quat, who can quote Shakespeare and play sonatas on his violin.

Not someone who can quote Monty Python and Terry Pratchett and play a halfway decent game of basketball. Height isn't everything; if you're small and fast, you can manoeuvre around the tall ones while they're still lumbering to change direction.

'She's not his girlfriend, Duo.' He sounds fairly normal and sane, not like he's being besieged by weird Egyptian warriors or anything like that. He sounds like he knows what he's talking about. I wait, holding my breath, for the magic words.

'She's not his girlfriend because he's gay. And in love with you.'

Dream on, Maxwell.

The magic words just don't materialise.

Still, maybe he just doesn't want to out his buddy to some random co-worker.

'Uh, Trowa, can I get you to hold on for a sec? I've got a friend holding on the other line.'

'That's fine. Just ask Heero to call me back, will you?'

I flick a couple of buttons, gazing longingly at the Heero/Relena picture. I've angled it ever so slightly on his desk so I can see it from where I sit; I don't think he'd ever noticed. She isn't his girlfriend. Ah, the possibilities.

Yeah. Right.

He is still leaving in a couple of weeks.

I'll probably never see him again.

'Hey, Quat? Quat?'

Deafening, tomb-like silence. Either he got bored and hung up, or I'd somehow disconnected him. Or no, I've managed to patch him through to Trowa's line. Before I can call either of them back, Heero walks in.

Ahhhhh.

Heero Yuy, ladies and gentleman. Not all that tall; I think even an inch or so shorter than my not-so-impressive height. But you know what they say about the best things coming in small packages? Not that his package was….never mind. He was gorgeous, full stop.

Hair that looks like it had just been through a vigorous bout of sex, with some lucky guy tangling his fingers in those dark locks, that were the exact colour of my favourite chocolate bar, melted and spooned over ice-cream, spooned over Heero.

Fantasy over. His hair is messy because when he's concentrating on something, he runs his fingers through it.

He usually keeps the body under wraps with tailored suits but he sometimes takes the jacket off if we're alone in the office – just the jacket, sadly – and he has broad shoulders and arms that looked like they can heft steel bars, or a lover's body all the way into the bedroom.

Ahem.

Fantasy, get back in the box. He's talking! And I haven't even mentioned the eyes yet…ooh. They're looking at me.

He's smiling, too, which isn't his most common expression, although he does tend to do it more and more around me. When I was first assigned to hold his hand (figure of speech only, alas; no hands were physically held) and walk him through the intricacies of our mechanics system, I thought he was a total prick. He loosened up (OK, stop with the puns, Duo. Stop now.) after a bit, though, and he'd confided that he'd been pretty nervous at the start and the clothes and the serious expression were just ways to try to cover that up.

Yeah, he's lovely. He's got every damn thing. He can be all manly and commanding (I've seen him face down a couple of mechanics in the factory) and he's got this sensitive, vulnerable side as well.

'Did you have a nice lunch with Relena? Didn't she come back with you?'

He shook his head. 'It was all right.' He hands me a small paper bag. 'I brought you back a sandwich. You always forget to eat lunch.'

Not true; not remotely true. It's just a sneaky ploy to get him to ask me to the canteen with him, or sometimes we just eat sandwiches at our desk and talk. I'll miss that. No one else here ever wants to talk to me.

'Thanks. Trowa called a few minutes ago.' I glance down at my phone…hmm. Those lines are still inter-connected. Interesting. They're talking. Trowa's heading back to France soon. And Sanque is a short 'plane ride to Paris….

'I'll call him back. Duo, Odin wants to talk to you this afternoon. Would you be free around four?'

'Odin? As in, the Norse God? Cool! Isn't he supposed to use ravens as messengers?'

That makes him laugh, like he thinks I'm joking on purpose. My brain is kind of weird though. Maybe I just read too much fantasy.

'Odin Lowe. My stepfather.'

'Oh. Shit. Why does he want to see me, Heero? What've I done wrong? He's not going to fire me, is he?'

'Of course he's not going to fire you! He has a proposition for you.'

'What? He wants to sleep with me? No way! I mean, I'm sure he's a nice guy and all, but he's not my type. Although I'm sure he's very attractive to lots of people but I ….'

'Duo!' I get the feeling that this isn't the first time he's tried to interrupt. Then, he comes over and takes hold of my chin and peers into my eyes. 'Stop babbling. Are you feeling all right? You haven't been eating yellow M and Ms again, have you?'

'No!' Yellow's a sucky colour, when you can have bluuuuuuueee…….Blue's so much prettier. Oh, shit. Don't look into his eyes. He'll see your pupils have dilated or contracted or whatever they do when you're attracted and then he'll know and then he'll…..

Oh.

And then he'll kiss you.

'Oh.' His hair, finally, is messed up because I got my hands on it. And somebody, somewhere, has taught Heero Yuy to kiss like a dream, like a fantasy, like a fucking Norse God.

'Odin doesn't want to sleep with you.' His eyes are all sparkly now; the way Quat's go when he gets a perfect cup of tea, or finds an episode of 'The Gilmore Girls' that he hasn't seen before. 'Luckily. That would complicate things rather a lot.'

'So…you're the one who wants to proposition me?' Yes! God, this is too much for my poor little brain to process.

He nods vigorously.

'YOU want to be with ME?' Just in the nick of time, I manage not to ask him why. It's fairly obvious, at least on the physical level. Somewhere, during that soul-stealing kiss (I hope he's not a zombie!) we ended up in his cool, I'm-going-to-inherit-this-company-one-day swivel chair, with me on his lap and a certain part of his anatomy rather enjoying the fact. Does he just want me for sex? Face it, it's not like a whole lot else can happen in a couple of weeks. And then he'll be gooooone. Forever and ever. So maybe I should just grab what I can. Every square inch….Hmmm. Tempting.

'Until a few minutes ago, I thought you and Relena were a couple.'

'She's not my girlfriend. She's just a friend, and Odin suggested that it might be a bad idea to flaunt my sexuality on this colony.' He sighs, wrapping both arms around me. 'I didn't actually realise she had such a crush on me. That's why she left early; I told her today that nothing was ever going to happen between us.'

'Aww. That was kind of sad for her.' I can just picture them, her sobbing prettily into a wispy lace handkerchief, and Heero being all noble and manly, patting her shoulder and maybe giving her some tissues. Good; at least she's out of the picture.

'Why did you never say anything? We've been working together for months! You did know I was gay, right?'

He nods; well, how could he not? I'd probably been pointed out as the resident queer. He'd probably been warned to keep his back to the wall around me, just in case. All those other executive types resented the hell out of me, for being the one who got to work with Heero. Most of them hadn't been too careful about keeping their opinions to themselves.

'I thought you and your friend Quatre were a couple. You live together, you go out with him all the time; he's always calling you.'

'No! God, no. We're just friends. So, what brought all this on? How'd you figure we weren't together?' I burrow even closer against him. I'm apparently allowed to do this now.

'Your friend Howard said something last week.'

My eyes narrow at him. 'Howard, out of the blue, said 'By the way, Duo and Quatre aren't a couple'?'

'Not exactly.' He bites his lip. Oooh, I want to do that. His lip, not mine, obviously. Just sink my teeth into that soft flesh a little bit and make him moan. No, concentrate. 'We were talking about you. He thinks you're amazing, you know. He was saying how talented you are and that it was a shame you didn't have someone special.'

'Wow. Uh, why didn't you just pounce on me after that?'

'Because it's complicated. I didn't want to start something and then have to leave. Or make things awkward for you at work. Duo, Odin's proposal is to offer you a contract at our plant in Paris. You'll be promoted; we'll still be working together. He thinks we're an excellent team.'

'Me? Paris? With you?'

Paris.

'If you like, yes. The alternative would be for me to stay on here until I can convince you to leave. I can do that, if you like. I know you'll have to leave your home and your friends and…'

'I don't need any convincing.' I said it in a rush, just in case he changed his mind. 'I'd love to go! With you. But won't it be awkward if we're a couple, since you're the boss's son and all?'

'Absolutely not. France is a lot more tolerant than L2. And no one will be surprised at me dating a beautiful, brilliant engineer. Jealous, maybe but that's all. Well? Are you going to say yes?'

'I'm not sure. I kind of like the idea of being convinced a little bit more. I mean, this appointment with Mr. Lowe isn't for another couple of hours. I should really have my mind made up when I go into his office.'

Ten per cent. The thing is, the other ninety per cent doesn't matter. Statistics don't mean anything, not really. Just figures on a page.

What matters is the stuff you can't quantify.