"Love Potion #9"
a Gundam Wing Fanfic

by the Princess

**WARNING: foul language, shounen-ai, characters frequently OOC...*

"Love is friendship set on fire."

-old Welsh proverb

~Prologue~

Hiro finally got back from his date at half past one. I had been waiting up for him, of course, as I always did when I finally got him a hook-up. I was drinking a cafe mocha which I'd only just mixed up and was watching "Moonstruck". Nicholas Cage was telling Cher that the snowflakes were perfect, not them; it was my favorite part of the movie, but I willingly clicked it off when I heard him open the latch and push the door quietly open.

"So," I said, grinning at him as he entered the room, "how did it go?" I ignored the fact that he looked deadpan and blank, and not giddy with kisses; there was always hope that he had gotten a little and was just hiding it.

"Nothing happened, Duo," he said simply, and passed right through the room into the kitchen.

I sat there, giving my mocha an occasional sip, listening to him rustling up some grub, and thought. The war had been over for three years now; we'd been roomies ever since it'd been over, and he had resisted my every urge to get him a date with a girl. Or when I finally got him in a corner and got him a date with some chick who was ga-ga over him, he scared the dickens out of her with threats of "Omae o korosu" and waving around a gun in her general direction at the slightest threat of physical closeness. I had, several times in the past year or so, gotten phone calls in the middle of the night from a furious girl, and gotten my ear talked off about how awful Hiro was, and how frightening, and blah blah blah.

I could have warned them plenty of time beforehand, though, and they never listened.

Nine times out of ten, the girls who I got to date Hiro were girls I had asked out myself, and they always said the same thing: "You're sweet, and I like you, but I'm in love with Hiro."

I was entitled to hate Hiro and his reaction to these girls for this.

If I wasn't such good friends with Hiro, I might have.

"Baka," I mumbled. He was never going to learn that everywhere he went, girls were falling for him like rotten apples off of trees; and I somehow always wound up being these girls' best friend...and always got to hear about how I was sweet, and kawaii, but I simply couldn't hold a candle to that button-lipped Japanese boy with the blue eyes that made girls swoon.

He came back in the room, carrying a ham and cheese sandwich with a bite already in it and a can of Coke. "What happened?" I asked him, taking another swallow of mocha.

"I told you, nothing," he replied, sitting down on the couch beside me.

"Liar. What'd she do to incur your wrath? I thought that D'arcy was a nice enough girl." That was one way to put it; D'arcy was a regular boin, with legs up to her neck and fantastic breasts and all the right curves, and this long red hair that you wanted to drown in, and a cute handful of freckles over her shapely nose, and big green eyes. Forget 'nice enough girl'. Lord, she was an angel.

"She was pretty," Hiro admitted, a surprising move. "But not my type."

"I repeat. What'd she do?"

"There was an ex-pimp of hers at the restaurant we ate at, and he tried to pick a fight with me."

"'PIMP'?"

He nodded. "She worked as a prostitute when she was fourteen, when her mother died. She told me about it."

"And what'd you do? Did you kick the pimp's ass?"

"Hell no. Why should I? It's not like she was my girlfriend. I walked out."

"Duo, I think you're awesome, really. But I'm in love with Hiro--"

"That was it? You just walked out?"

"Yeah. Why do you care?"

I shrugged and smiled. "You seem bound and determined to keep me from getting you a date, that's all. You're making my life difficult."

"I didn't ask you to play Cupid," he replied, taking a bite of his sandwich. "This is all your doing."

>Actually, I didn't ask to 'play Cupid', either. It seems to be a part that falls on my shoulders--<

"Right, gomen," I said, drinking more mocha. I knew perfectly well why the girls fell for him; I sometimes wondered if maybe I'd fallen for him a little myself, and that was one reason why he always drove me batshit. But whether it was that, or just being friends, I cared about his well-being...and yet, I also occasionally hated his guts, and this was one such moment.

"I'm going to turn in," he said, dropping the bread-crust down on the floor and brushing his hands off as he left the room. "Good night, Duo."

"Nighty-night," I said, sticking out my tongue and pulling a face at his retreating back.

Whenever things got to be too much, I had picked up the habit of taking walks around the city. This was a nocturnal city, with street performers singing and playing, and gaggles of teens wandering the streets until half past daylight. I blended in perfectly on the sidewalk, just another teenager with troubles on his mind. I wondered fleetingly if I might see Trowa and Quatre out on a date, or maybe Wufei, if he'd decided to breeze through town; then I blocked all conscious thought from my mind. Thinking was a buggering thing, and it had gotten many folks in trouble, myself included. So I just walked, and I wasn't sure how long I walked, or where I went, or how I ended up outside the Gypsy's magic shop.

'I took my troubles down to Madame Woo /You know, that Gypsy with the gold-capped tooth /She's got a shop down on 34th and Vine /Selling little bottles of Love Potion Number Nine...'

The place was a rundown, ramshackle, pathetic little thing. The outside was painted with peeling gray paint and the roof was sagging; it looked like the building was simply wilting. The big show window was covered with a lacy veil, which allowed the candlelight from inside to leak out, but only let you see a few vague shapes inside. In chipped green paint, on the show window and the door's glass panel, the following inscription was painted:

MADAME ACCHI IKEYO BUTSOYO--PALMREADER--HERBALIST--POTIONS & CRYSTALS CHEAP--WALK-INS WELCOMED

Below that, a complicated design of a pentacle in a Celtic knot was carefully painted in red and black; above it, a yellow hand with an eye in the palm was stretched out.

>Creepy,< I thought, and turned to walk on down the street, and I found myself pushing open the door and going inside. A little bell rang as I pushed the door open. A heavy smell of spiced incense nearly knocked me over as I went inside. The place was a one-room deal, with huge pillar candles stuck in every place that they could possibly fit. There were shelves containing jars with weird-looking labels, some of it in runic, some of it in Latin; the stuff that I could read was scary: EYE OF NEWT, TOE OF FROG--

I glanced away from that, and looked at the table. It was smack in the center of the room, an old, sagging thing, like the building itself, made of rotting wicker. Ditto for the two chairs which straddled it on either side. It had a lacy tablecloth of the same material that muted the shop window, and a crystal ball resting in its center.

And in one of the two chairs, there sat a gorgeous young woman, with sweet brown hair in a loose cable to her waist, and exotically slanted (almost Oriental) amber eyes, and flawless brown skin. She wore the typical Gypsy getup, with lots of loose, colorfully printed clothing layered over her short but shapely frame, and huge gold jewelry. "Hello," she said, smiling, and I noted that her canines were capped with gold. "Will you be paying in cash?"

After she weaseled a twenty out of me--who needed to eat for a day, anyhow?--I sat down in the other chair, and said: "You're kind of young for this, aren't you?"

She smiled again. "Iie. Why do you say that? Were you expecting an old crone?"

I nodded dumbly. This woman's beauty was absorbing.

"Yes, well, the Goddess does have the form of a crone, but She also takes that of a mother...and a maid." Her eyes glinted.

"You name...Butsoyo. It sounds familiar, for some reason."

"I suppose it should. I have a few half-sisters in the reporting business. You may have read their material once. But that is not why you have come here, is it...Duo?"

Not wondering how she'd known my name, I said: "That's right, Acchi Ikeyo."

"Tell me why you are here."

"Well...my buddy Hiro and I, we're both kind of flops with chicks."

"I see. And how long has it been this way?"

"About AC 196."

She looked at me, smiling with her golden fangs, and she made a magic sign with her fingers. "Well, that's simple," she said. "What you need is a love potion, right?"

I hadn't thought of that, but it sounded good to me. "Sure."

"Cross my palm with silver, you who seeks love."

After she got another twenty--I could live without food for *two* days, I guess--she rose up from the rickety chair in a rustle of cloth and clink of gold.

'She bent down and turned around and gave me a wink /She said "I'm gonna fix it up right here in the sink"'

I watched her as she moved like a dervish through the shop, picking up various jars from the shelves and emptying their entire contents into the sink in the back. A smell rose up from that sink by the third jar (which seemed to contain horse testicles): it was a rancid, nasty, rotten smell, and I couldn't help but wrinkle my nose. She noticed my discomfort and smirked a little, but continued to dump the contents of a baker's dozen of jars in that sink. Once she was through picking out her ingredients, she retrieved a huge, chipped wooden spoon from a corner and started to stir the whole nasty thing up, adding a little hot water and muttering a few witch's chants to seal the whole thing up.

Curious, I wandered over to the sink, and looked inside.

'It smelled like turpentine and looked like India Ink'

I wrinkled my nose again, and she laughed. "Magic is not always pretty," she admitted, "but if it serves its purpose, then what does it matter if it's pretty or not?"

"Sure, Madame." I couldn't take my eyes off the floating white things in the black mixture.

"Those are strictly for flavor," she said, noticing. "They'll be strained out when I finish letting it steep."

"Joy," I said to myself.

Five minutes later, she ran a sieve through the whole thing, and carefully poured the stuff she caught into a waiting jar. "You never know," she said in explanation. Then, she retrieved a number of spray bottles from a shelf, like little perfume bottles, and filled them, one by one.

Finally, she handed a box containing twelve of the little bottles to me. "Six for you, and six for...Hiro?" she said. "This supply should last both of you until you find suitable mates. Ten more dollars, please."

>Hiro will understand that he has to tighten his belt,< I thought, and shucked out ten bucks to her.

"Beautiful. Now, use these sparingly, and do *not* give them out to anyone. Be very careful, for anyone could fall under their spell. Members of the opposite sex are most suseptible; however, homosexual and bisexual men would also be attracted to you. In fact, if you have any close male friends, they may also be affected by the elixer, drawn by their friendly feelings towards you into confusion. In any case, you won't be a flop with chicks after this night." She reached for the spoon, dipped up a goodly amount of the mixture, and jammed the spoon underneath my nose. "Perhaps you'd like to try a bit of it now?"

'I held my nose, I closed my eyes--'

I didn't take a drink. I opened my eyes back up, and said: "Arigatou, but I think I'll try it later, if it's all the same to you."

She smiled, showing her golden fangs again. "Whatever pleases you. You must call me and tell me if you are a success." She produced a business card from nowhere and pressed it into the hand that wasn't clutching the wooden box. For a second, I felt a little disoriented from the insense, and then I heard the bell jingle as the door shut behind me.

I glanced back at the shop. The window had gone dark, and a little black sign had CLOSED--BLESSED BE written on it in neon pink script. I glanced at the business card in my hand. It had the exact same message which was written on the show window, with the phone number 555-0666 printed beneath the WALK-INS WELCOME, and the pentacle and hand/eye on either side of the enscription. I looked at my other hand, which clutched the box; it was an uncarved, simple thing with a little metal loop and tab holding it shut. I pushed the tab up, and lifted the lid. There were twelve little spray bottles filled with an inky black substance inside.

"I must be out of my mind," I said out loud, getting a few weird stares from people passing me by. I thoughtfully pocketed the business card, and went walking back down the street, swinging the box and whistling as I went.

What the hell, it could turn out to be fun.

Disclaimer

The Gundam boys and anything pertaining to Gundam Wing belong to the creators of the show, not to me, no matter how hard I wish. They are being used without permission for fun, not profit. If you don't know this, then you are a sad sack of shit. Go crawl under a rock and wither up and die. Also, "Love Potion #9" (the movie and the song ) belongs to their writers, and not me; any semblances between the plot of this fanfic and that movie were done very much intentionally. Get over it.

In contrast, D'arcy, Acchi Ikeyo Butsoyo, and any characters not belonging to the Gundam franchise are mine, and may not be used without my permission (God only knows why anyone would want to use them, but...). If you do use them without asking me first, I'm going to get Acchi Ikeyo (which, incidently, means "Go away!") to put a curse on you so nasty that I don't even know what would happen...

On to Part 1

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