Wufei, struggling with his demons, agrees to a wartime fling with Heero, no affection needed or wanted. But the 'arrangement' lasts and grows as they join the preventers. It could become a source of strength for both, if they let it.
The Arrangement
is a Heero/Wufei Gundam Wing fic written by Maldoror, who is also the writer of Diplomatic Relations.
The story is a total of 43 chapters long, inlcuding a two-part epilogue (and now a brand new last chapter called "Breaking Cover" that was posted on Nov 3rd 2017 that offers a more well rounded closure to the fic), and takes place from the beginning of Gundam Wing to the end of the war(although Endless Waltz is considered void in this story), then follows a post-war storyline.
The Arrangement provides examples of:
- Badass Bookworm: Wufei refers to his pre-war self as a bookish scholar and still reads classic literature in his spare time, a habit that Heero finds baffling. While Wufei's at university, his uncle also tries to get him to change his major from politics to literature.
- Bodyguard Crush: Relena has hopes for a relationship with Heero, who often has to play bodyguard for Relena. Of course, only Wufei realises this; Heero has no idea
- Curtain Fic: The second half of the epilogue depicts Wufei and Heero shopping for a bed (which has significance given previous events in the story), though the author has expressed some regret at including it in the fic.
- Determinator: Both main characters take this to an extreme. Bullet wounds are rarely enough to stop them.
- Deus Angst Machina: As the author puts it, "I put Wufei through the mincer. Heero's not having fun either."
- Hallucinations: Wufei goes through a hallucination grinder courtersy of some interrogation drug from the black market from an OC in the fic... said OC will be mentioned again in CH. 43 and let's just say it did NOT sit well with Heero.
- Heroic BSoD: In the climactic end of the fic, Wufei experiences an epic breakdown, complete with hallucinations of a city-wide fire and an near-attempt to shoot Heero.
- Hitman with a Heart: The fic details Wufei's slow realisation that Heero is one of these (sort of).
- Jerkass: Duo is surprised at how horrible Wufei and Heero are to each other.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: When Wufei's Heroic BSoD reaches its apex, the story narrates his point-of-view, even while the reader is made aware (through Quatre's confused commentary) that Wufei is hallucinating most of what he tells us he sees.
- Undercover as Lovers: Heero and Wufei take a mission that requires them to pretend to be university students who are boyfriends. It doesn't last.
- Unreliable Narrator: The entire story is a particularly clever example. Told from Wufei's perspective, the reader initially believes that the story is told objectively, only to slowly realise that Wufei's understanding of the world is actually dangerously twisted. The couple of chapters narrated by Trowa foreshadow this:Wufei was very good at observing things only if he wasn't emotionally involved in them. At the slightest hint of that passion he was capable of, his eyes went blind, and he filtered everything he saw through his own interpretations, emotions tamed and warped by his intellect as if they were dangerous things to be rigorously controlled... He knew how deadly Wufei's emotions could be, trapping even their owner into a glass maze where nothing was quite what it seemed.
