Disclaimers: The Sandman ©
belongs to Neil Gaiman and other related artists. Gundam Wing belongs to
Warnings:
Spoilers for Duo’s past and a bit of the series. Violence.
Slight, but not very extreme, yaoi.
Disturbing descriptions. Angst.
Perhaps a bit of OOC. ^_^
+
Sister Helen was
singing in his head. It sounded like laughter bubbling through glass; distant
and rushing through like the roar of a river. The strands of her hair felt like
plastic in his hand, impossibly smooth, slick through and through with drying
blood.
Daddys gonna buy you a mockingbird
Tears
dropped on her skin and Duo did not bother to wipe them away. They looked odd
in the gray light that followed the sudden flash of the exploding bomb, like
pieces of wet ash.
A mockingbird
It was
nothing but a bit of movement out of the corner of his eye at first, and he
looked up, chest flaring with heat and hope. Maybe someone was alive. Maybe it
was someone he knew. Maybe they could help.
She was
picking through the bodies and looking at each face, the jaunty little cap
slightly askew on her head. He let go of the sister’s body and stood up,
swaying slightly from the after effects of guilt and shock.
Daddys
mockingbird
Duo
stepped over a body, heart clenching as he noticed the face was caved in from
the blast, bone burnt away. He looked up and brushed his dirty hair away from
his face. “Who are you looking for?” His voice trembled and broke. What if she
was looking for him?
She looked
up.
And she
was smiling.
I can't remember
When I was young
I can't explain
If it was wrong
Duo could
not stop the rage that ran through him like a sudden burst of energy. The girl
had stepped closer and was peering at him, the smile ever present on her face.
Her skin was very pale, like Solo’s when he was sick and her eyes were as black
as her hair. He wasn’t a very tall kid but she didn’t tower over him the way
the Father did.
She bent
lower, almost touching her head to his and he found himself looking at the tiny
swirl of ink that ran like a tear from the corner of her eye.
Something
hitched in his breath.
He’d seen that before.
The smile
never wavered, even as she spoke. “Hello.” Her voice sounded strange. It was
such a sad voice for such a happy face.
Duo swallowed, his eyes still on her tattoo. “Please stop
smiling?” He finally asked, remembering the carnage and the feel of Sister
Helen’s shattered bones and charred skin underneath his palm.
She
ignored his question, staring at him with her old black eyes. “Are you okay?”
He bit his
lip and gnawed on it, finally ripping his gaze away from the tattoo to gaze at
her in shock. The tears clung stubbornly to his eyes at first, then slowly trickled down over thin baby cheeks. He gave up
on words and simply shook his head. Nonono. How could you be so stupid to ask that? He would never be
okay after this. Never never never.
Her hands
reached out to touch him but fell at her sides.
She watched him, antiquity dancing in her eyes and concern sweet around
her mouth. “Don’t you remember me?”
He sniffled,
thinking hard, wiping at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Bits of his
braid snagged on his broken fingernails and he tugged at them and shook his
head as he thought.
“Don’t you?” Her voice was sad, like a bird
dragging a broken wing.
He tilted
his head and regarded her face, big blue eyes intense.
Duo nodded
and looked away, at the remains of the Maxwell Church. “How come you always
come when
something bad happens?” He hung
his head, guilty beyond anything a child should feel. Bad things that he
usually caused and the knowledge of this settled heavily into him and he knew
without being told that he would carry it for the rest of his life.
Her smile faded. “I have to.”
“Why?”
“Because I do. It’s what I am.”
Duo
sniffled again then looked up at her. “Then take me with you. Take me to where
you took Solo and Sister Helen and Father Maxwell and everybody here.”
She shook
her head, shiny hair tumbling over her shoulders like a
avalanche of black snow. “Not now.” For one moment he saw his face as she did,
reflected in her eyes, distorted by her irises. Sad, distrustful and old, with
so much left to do, so much that he must finish.
“Why not?” A child’s question from a child who had grown too old to
truly be one, the petulance that should have been there replaced with
weariness.
No answer
came. She had disappeared.
a mockingbird
My life goes on
But not the same
Into your eyes
My face remains
Duo found himself singing the hymn softly one night in the dorm when Heero’s breathing had settled into scarcity, which only
happened when he fell asleep.
It was difficult to
remember things from his past, he often wracked his brains for hours before
giving up on restoring memories (it took too much work really and the pain that
followed wasn’t enough compensation). But the hymn came on the strains of an
old pipe organ Father Maxwell used to play, reminding him of times when he
could sit in the pews without feeling the crucified Christ’s eyes tearing him
apart.
Heero’s training
woke when Duo’s breathing pattern suddenly changed. The unfamiliar words washed
over him like waves and stars, cold and melancholy with bitterness like comets.
He’d never heard anything like that before. So instead of drowning Duo out in
the static that normally occupied his brain, he listened.
“Take and
receive, O Lord, my liberty, take all my will, my mind…my memory…” It was a
partly whispered, partly sung and full of bewilderment, as if Duo couldn’t
believe he remembered.
That
wasn’t the only thing that Duo remembered. With it came the canons and that
stolen Mobile Suit, an explosion rising against the sky, smoldering violet,
blue and red. And her, picking through the remains of people
like a carrion crow. He was so full of memories of her it seemed like
she’d been following him all the time. Sometimes in the middle of battle he
fancied that he saw her as others died, coming to them in the cold airlessness
of space, taking them away.
He wished
that she would take him away too.
Heero listened for more words but when nothing came, dismissed it as
more evidence of Duo’s strangeness and went back to sleep. But the haunting
melody lingered even as he slept and he was more disturbed by them than he led
himself to believe.
[I've been so high]
I've been so down
[Up to the skies]
Down to the ground
“Holy fucking Christ.” Duo swore, ducking into the crumbling
apartment building. “Goddamn sonofabitches never know
when to give up, do they? Coz you’ve
got a big fat mouth you just can’t keep closed, damn it all to hell!”
Shinigami, where are you, partner? He thought. He decided that the
rickety staircase could and would hold his weight. Those goddamn wanted posters
weren’t even pretty likenesses of him, how’d these idiots spot him so fast?
The braid. Okay. If he lived through this, he’d get a fuckin’ buzz cut.
If he had
his Gundam—he dismissed the thought before it even
fully formed. Sorry, Mr. Maxwell, your Gundam’s set
to die. Chikusho. They were gonna kill Death.
The grin
that sprang on his face was a little hysterical. No one killed Death.
The stairs
creaked a little under his feet but held. The gun in his pocket was still cold.
He wasn’t going to waste ammunition just yet.
“I think
he went in here.”
“Too much trouble. Let’s just leave it.”
“For twenty grand? You’ve got to be kidding. Let’s go.”
Three men
and all of them were a helluva lot bigger than him.
The guns they held in their hands were the size of his arms.
He rolled
his eyes heavenward and mouthed a fuck you, reaching into his pocket.
Crack!
Gendo watched as Lenny went
down, the bullet embedded in the back of his head. The shot was so clean it
didn’t even begin to bleed until he hit the floor. It had also come from
upstairs. He turned, signaled Kenneth, who hailed the stairs with automatic
gunfire.
“Sorry dudes, you can’t kill Death.” Duo heard
himself say, finger already squeezing the trigger.
Kenneth
went down fast, the bullet in his chest straight into his gut. Painful death. Gendo thought. When
he got that boy, he was gonna ask for fifty grand,
all the trouble it had caused him. Bounty hunters like them could afford to,
anyway. A million if it took more than a round to take that little terrorist
down.
Duo may
not have been trained like Heero Yuy,
but sharpshooting was one of his talents. He usually
employed it when he didn’t have the money or the time to buy or steal bullets.
The American stepped back a bit, avoiding the next burst of bullets that the
last man standing aimed at his general direction.
The wood
creaked and the stairs folded in, taking him with them. Duo recovered quickly,
jumping out and
giving out two more shots. The ensuing dust clouds would help him make and easy
escape.
As he made
his way to the door he saw a flash of black through them.
He
stopped.
The last
guy was dead. Bullet in forehead. A girl, maybe about
his age, knelt over the sprawl of his body.
Duo’s eyes
widened. “You…you…”
“You sure keep me pretty busy.” She said
without turning around. The air around her shimmered slightly and she vanished,
leaving nothing but three dead bodies and a guilt ridden boy.
“Yeah, yeah.” He said nonchanlantly
before walking back into the crowds of sunlight. “Should have
taken me when you had the chance, deathgirl.”
I was so blind
I could not see
Your paradise
Is not for me
Heero found him after the battle. The normally merry pilot was sitting
between Shinigami’s skyscraper-like legs, knees drawn
to his chest and face buried in them.
So gentle. The Japanese pilot
thought. But in battle—He understood the suicidal tendencies that underlay
Duo’s sometimes psychotic movements because he’d had the urge himself, to throw
himself into an explosion during a sortie and end it all.
The
mission, of course, kept him alive. He was certain that it would kill him
someday—if it hadn’t already.
Even from
across the hanger, where Wing was sequestered, the tarmac drapped
over the gundamanium alloy body like a tent made from
a child’s blanket, he could hear Duo whispering something to himself. The tone
was hysterical and rising with every word until he could make out about every
one in five words. He made his way over, the yellow sneakers silent on the
floor and against himself, against his will, bent and touched Duo’s arm.
The
American flinched and drew back from him like a departing bird.
“Duo.” He hissed and it came harsher than he intended it to come.
“Hee-ro?” The other boy drew
out the syllables like they were going through a flute and Heero
stared at him as he heard his name drift into the air like musical notes. One
indigo-blue eye peeked out against pale skin, beneath an arm and through a protective
net of hair.
Not
knowing what else to do, Heero straightened stiffly
and nodded.
“What are
you doing here?” His voice was normal again, slightly deep at the first words
and slightly high at the end and muffled by his arms.
“I have my
Gundam stashed here too, remember? I came to check on
Wing.” Liar.
The conscience he didn’t even know existed shot at
him. Duo wasn’t in the cockpit of the plane or the in
any of the little rooms set up in the
loft of this warehouse, that’s why you
came looking for him.
“Haha. So the perfect
machine needs repairs too, sometimes, huh?”
Heero wondered if Duo was referring to him or to the Gundam. Or perhaps both of them, the sarcasm was hard and easy to catch in the palm of his hand. “Yes.”
He replied and the unexpectedness of this drew Duo’s head up and they regarded
each other like two dogs meeting for the first time.
The
braided head tilted slightly to the left and Heero
noticed, not for the first time, the easy way the flow of his hair followed the
movement. What are you going to do now?
The conscience muttered. It had always lost this conversation before.
“What were
you doing?” Heero asked curiously, wondering at the
words that stayed at the back of his perfect memory.
Duo’s eyes
flashed dark for a moment and it was as if both of them were back in battle
again. He knew that dark look and the dark heat that often followed it. Duo’s
anger—it always came on the tide of something unexpected, like that one time he
turned on Wufei.
The
Chinese pilot had been trying to explain a proverb to Quatre
and had misjudged Duo’s intelligence badly by not suggesting that perhaps Duo
had better thing to do than listen to philosophical discussions? The sharp
retort had both shamed and silenced him and allowed all the pilots, in that one
rendevouz, a glimpse of both Duo’s
razor sharp tongue and wrecked childhood. You
think I’m not smart enough for that kind of thing Chang Wufei,
well think twice. Even if I didn’t
grow up well like you and Quatre, spent half my time
wondering if I was still alive, I can
still understand what things like that mean! The door had slammed then and
they hadn’t seen Duo for the longest time, until Heero
tracked him down to a boarding school in the French Riveria.
But the
look disappeared and it seemed as if the anger was Duo’s alone. “Praying.” He said simply, straigtening
up so that Heero could see his entire face. His hands
had bruises on the back. Heero noticed then when he
pulled his knees closer to his chest.
I never lie. Duo’s words came into his mind again
and he went against the sudden urge to get up and walk away, leave this braided
brat alone instead of asking: “Praying what?”
“The Act of Contrition.” Duo said. Contrition meant he felt guilty—and
the concept was not as foreign to Heero as it should
have been.
Duo’s eyes widened as Heero sat down in front of him, crossing his legs. The
hanger floor was cold against the bared part of his thigh and legs. He noticed
how dark he was next to Duo, who was bronzed from a summer spent in the French
countryside. He also noticed the freckles on Duo’s face, the tiny spotting of
them over the bridge of his nose. “Could you…” the question
faded from Heero’s fear of asking because before,
when he’d asked, he’d never received. “Teach it to me?
He half expected Duo to say. Why
should I? You don’t believe in God, repeating what Heero
had so callously told him the last time the American had invited to teach him a
prayer or two. Instead Duo shot him a small smile and hesitantly taught him how
to make the sign of the cross and then repeated the prayer until Heero could say it in his sleep.
After, Duo
waited for him to leave and was surprised when he didn’t. He had come to his Gundam to seek shelter from Heero’s
silence yet it had doggedly decided to follow him here.
“Heero?”
The other pilot said nothing and simply looked into his eyes.
He didn’t
close them, even if the desire to raged through him
like a firefight. Heero was leaning forward and their
faces were scant inches from each other.
The
American’s face flamed. Duo stood so fast he was sure he was going to hit his
head on Shinigami. He stumbled backward a bit then—he
ran.
He runs, he hides, he
never lies. As Heero watched his back, he realized
he’d forgotten to ask what Duo had been praying for.
|
Autour de moi |
All
around me |
The loft
was colder and his hands shook as he grabbed the ladder and scrambled up, the
hollow noise of his boots against steel echoing in the empty warehouse.
What was
it that, what was it that made him run?
He wanted it. Heero wanted it. He just blew his
chances up to the sky. He looked up. So
there God, catch it for me, you fucking Son of a bitch.
He found
his cot in the corner and slowly sank down into it. Would Heero
follow him or would he take Wing out of the hanger and blow Shinigami
to smithereens? He grinned despite himself. Probably the
latter.
Exhaustion
finally made its presence known as Duo wrapped himself in the regulation army
blankets he had managed to steal during the last mission, which had commenced
this morning at 0400, as planned.
The
firefight today had been unexpected and harsh, the other Mobile Suits catching
them as they blew up a presumably less than guarded base. It was a routine
destroy mission. There were no important documents, secret tactics or codes
that they needed to find, memorize, download and deliver. It was just that this
outpost was important, keeping a steady flow of supplies like food and arms to
the central Oz intelligence base in
Duo hated
these missions more because none of the soldiers could ever fight back. It was
easy to sneak in and easy to get out. He’d much rather not have started that fire in the storage
hangers to distract them while Heero snuck Wing in to
turn it into a gaping crater of death.
He was
hungry but they wouldn’t have provisions until tomorrow, when both of them
would go into town that this abandoned warehouses had once supplied. Heero’s mission: medication and weaponry supplies. His
mission: food and new clothes, for both of them. Money they lacked but skill
they had in high degrees.
Developed in L2 for destruction fulfillment. Duo thought and gave
a half-dead giggle at his own attempt to make himself laugh.
“You
shouldn’t have done that, you know.” Someone said behind him.
“Yeah,
well.” He knew the voice, like a child’s ringing out in a catacomb below a
city, all too well. He turned around and she
was leaning against the cold metal walls of the warehouse. The jaunty cap was
still on her head, as was the tattoo on her face. She seemed a little bit more
haggard now, the bones on her cheeks were thinner and when she waved a greeting
to him her wrist seemed more delicate than it had been. “Tired?”
“Beyond
belief.” She stated and she had given something away there, he was sure.
“How are you, god of death?” The name was slightly mocking and he took it as it
was meant.
“Fucked up.” He grinned.
Her eyes were very black and they held universes of pain in them. “And
you?”
“Missing my brother.” She said and it struck him as absolutely normal for her to have a brother. It
made her a little bit more human, in his eyes.
“Sleep?” He asked, old mythologies learned in stolen classes in
boarding schools with stolen identities surfacing in his memories.
“Dream.” She said. “This is why the world is descending into
madness.”
“I live
in it.” Duo muttered, resenting the truth.
“Have you
seen any angels lately?” She asked suddenly and he wondered what brought it on.
“You mean
aside from Heero? No. I expect all those sky sorties
frighten them away.”
She smiled
again and it curled genuine. “Love him. He needs it. And so do you.” Then she
was gone.
Duo
clutched at the rough olive-green blankets. “Great. I need relationship advice from Death. Pathetic, aren’t you, Duo?”
He punched his pillow. Was it his call or Heero’s? He
was so absorbed in deciding whether or not to go back down and face the stoic
pilot or just stay here and wait that he didn’t notice the squeak of familiar
yellow sneakers.
Heero’s voice came faint from
the ladder. “What were you praying for?” The pilot asked with his usual
frankness. The unexpected question ripped Duo from contemplation and he stared
at Heero as the Japanese pilot stopped on the last
rung, leaned on the floor of the loft and stared back.
“For, for—the soldiers at the base today.” Duo replied, his
voice deserting him as it always did when Heero was
around. His words were never enough, when it came to one Heero
Yuy, Perfect Soldier who did not feel things the way
other humans did.
Heero waited, the sudden
softness in his eyes encouraging Duo far more than he could have known.
“And for
loving someone I’m not supposed to.” It was a gamble, of course. But Duo had
the luck of the devil.
Or, from
the look on Heero’s face, he used to. Heero’s silence drifted around them like a butterfly that
had found its way in and gotten lost.
Heero understood now. Understood his impatience with the other pilot
and why the littlest things he did stayed in his memory forever, to be
carefully rehashed at will. Understood why at night, he could never sleep
knowing the other lay across from him.
Duo gave a
gigantic sigh and collapsed into the bed. He turned over to his side until all
he could see was the charcoal gray of the wall. He needs you my ass.
The arm around his waist startled him and he almost cried out as Heero drew him close, his body still cold from the walk to
the warehouse in the crisp night cold of August. Then he relaxed as Heero, apparently deciding his own words were useless,
kissed the back of his neck and the place where his jaw morphed into his ear.
Duo never
got what he wanted. Right? Street rats like him just
had scraps of dreams instead of the real thing.
But his
body warmth was apparently inviting. It made Heero
slip off his shoes and slip under the covers. The hug was firmer now and Heero’s hands stayed still, flattening against his belly.
“Guess I
won’t have to pray for you anymore.” Duo reasoned quietly and Heero’s response, all though it was unspoken, was enough.
I've been so high
I've been so down
Up to the skies
Down to the ground
Space stretched out before him, yawning with
infinity. The stars burned in the distance and he knelt, eyes raised and
searching.
Heero was out there
somewhere and soon that godawful princess would be
here.
He wasn’t jealous. Not a bit. Not when Heero was—Shit.
Duo’d better stay away from Relena. He might
do something drastic. Like rip out her eyes so she’d stop looking at him
triumphantly. She wasn’t stupid—she knew the moment she saw Heero
and Duo in a room together. And he knew he was the one who’d given them away.
“Steal him away, will you?” He murmured,
pressing a hand against the porthole. He wondered if the old Shinigami was still around—floating empty in the blackness
of space.
One moment his hand was pressed against glass
and the next, against hers.
She smiled at him from outside, floating in
the largeness of space. Her mouth moved but he couldn’t understand what she was
saying, even if it was a single word, uttered over and and
over again.
What? He mouthed but she simply smiled at
him, tilted her head in the direction of the door behind him and disappeared.
It slid open quietly and he turned, hopelessly
expecting Heero but seeing Wufei.
The proud Chinese pilot was still playing with that exercise thingie of his but Duo hadn’t spoken seriously to him in
quite a while—not since that time with Quatre.
“Maxwell.” Wufei
said and again Duo was surprised by his voice when he wasn’t shouting or
stiffly answering or barking orders. It had a soft tone to it that suggested
that it wasn’t used much for conversation, a kind of
gentleness that he was certain was truly in Wufei’s
personality.
“Yeah?” Wary, Duo
sat at the edge of the bed and looked up at him. “Look, you don’t need to
apologize or what—I’m just like that—you know…uh…” He faltered because Wufei was giving him a Duo-you’re-talking-too-much look
that he undoubtably patterned after Heero’s.
“I am sorry for belittling you. Sometimes I
forget.”
Duo smiled at him and the genuine regret in
his voice. “So’kay. I don’t look like a smartyass type.”
“Would you like me to…?” Wufei
had strange ways of making amends and he was already halfway out the door when
Duo responded.
“No. Don’t worry bout it. Just come in
already, if you want. You’re leaking cold.”
The door slid closed behind Wufei and the silence stretched between them. The pilot was
wearing a blue tank and those white Chinese pants of his. Why was he always in
white? Wasn’t it the color of mourning in
He found himself
suddenly and utterly curious about the pilot before him. “Could I ask you
something?” He said tentatively. Heero never spoke of
his childhood but the little hints he dropped whenever Duo asked were usually
enough for the American to see that it was painful and brutal. Quatre and Duo had shared theirs to the point that Quatre understood him better than he understood himself. He’d even managed to needle his way past Trowa’s defenses, all though most of everything he just
divined from dropped hints.
Wufei nodded and lowered the exercise thing.
“What?” He asked warily before he sat down in the little chair the room had.
“What’s your favorite color?”
The question made Wufei’s
eyebrows rise up in surprise. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting such a query. “Favorite…color?”
“Well. Me, I like black and I like blue. You?”
The clock on the desk ticked away.
“…red.” Wufei replied finally. “I
like red.”
“Why?”
“Why do you like black and blue?” Wufei was unused to this type of interrogation and was
trying to delay the answer. It would reveal too much.
“I like black cause it’s the death color and
I like blue cause—” He blushed slightly. “Cause it’s the color of Heero’s eyes. Come on—tell me why.” He urged. It might
explain some things, if Wufei chose to answer
honestly.
The truthful answer disarmed the last of Wufei’s defenses. He worked the Aerobar
with needless ferocity. “Because my wife liked red.”
Duo didn’t, as Wufei half-feared, shout out a
expletive or hoot you had a wife?!. He merely
looked at Wufei’s face as if he was seeing the
Chinese pilot for the first time.
“Was
her name Nataku?” He finally asked and Wufei caught yet another glimpse of the intelligence he so
badly misjudged.
“Meiran.”
Wufei said tiredly, not wanting anyone to know but
wanting someone to know, finally. The burden of loneliness lay heavily on his
shoulders.
“Aah.” Duo said. He
played with the garter of his socks as he drew his leg under him to get more
comfortable. Meiran. He sat bolt upright.
That was what she was saying to him.
He smiled faintly—was it a warning maybe?
“Duo?” Wufei was looking at him oddly.
“Hm.
Just remembered some things.” Duo said. “Did you take
it hard?”
“Yes.” The tone was curt and Duo dropped it.
How
much did you change? Duo wanted to ask but he had a feeling he would never
know. Now he would have to give something in exchange for the past that had
suddenly opened itself up to him. “Maybe she was your Solo, you know. Like a
turning point.”
“Solo.” It wasn’t a question and Wufei’s eyes were narrow as he peered at Duo.
“Yeah. I didn’t know
I had to have a name until he died.”
He was silent for a moment. “Do you think
they are happy?”
He thought of a girl who would warn him of
unexpected visits. “Yeah. I mean, if everything is as
everything is, there has to be some sort of happiness somewhere.”
Wufei looked beyond
him, into space and memories softened his mouth. “I suppose.”
The Peacemillion
drifted silently and from where she was, she could feel Duo’s smile and the
tentative laughter of the other pilot. She just cocked her head to the side,
watching the earth that looked so peaceful from so far away and almost forgot
that it shuddered with war.
There is a light
Above my head
Into your eyes
My face remains
Concrete slapped against his half bare feet
as he ran.
And ran, the bag of
special medicines clutched to his chest. Solo needed this. Lily needed this.
They all needed this.
He could get it, he was strong enough. Yes.
He was, he was, he was.
Then
he
Then
he…
tripped.
She stood
a few feet away. Solo stood right behind her. Long long
years later he would realize that he would have been too late, no matter how
fast he ran. No matter if he could have flown across the colony, into regulated
space and flung himself farther than any Mobile Suit.
What was that, that
Solo had told him once?
You’re born alone. You die alone. No matter
how many people try to persuade you otherwise.
I can't remember
When I was young
Into your eyes
My face remains
The remnants of the war were so
sharp he could feel the blades enter him and stay there.
Everything important happened not back here on L2 but on Earth. Mariemaia’s rebellion had been quelled,
Relena was now the major political figure, the
mainstay of the public’s eye. It was AC 197 and the first year of the true
peace. The peace that left him shaking from nightmares involving Shinigami coming to life and eating him alive in the
cockpit. The peace that came with the loss of Heero.
The last time he had seen Heero was through a TV screen, watching silently as he
stood behind Relena like an impassive statue which
Duo knew from experience he wasn’t. But everytime he
was around the former Queen of the World he acted as if marble had gone through
his veins inside of blood.
So you’ve won, Relena. You got Heero after all.
He had thought then. Nowadays he tried to dismiss Heero
from his mind. Duo had moments, moments Relena would
never had, moments where he could get a glimpse of what lay beyond the Mission,
the Soldier, the perfection. That briefest showcase of the shadows of Heero’s soul, the nightmares he had. They had more than a
brotherhood, he had loved. Even if it was washed up and faded like his oldest
pair of pajamas.
He remembered nights that they lay in partnership, camping out after a
mission, Heero’s head on his shoulder or sometimes
curled towards each other, foreheads touching. Fingers intertwined, just
barely. Then there were the moments that were nothing but heartbeat and
breathing, slick flesh on flesh, rough kisses and delving inside and deep,
swimming down into each other as if each of them contained the sea.
He propped
his feet up on the desk and shifted the cap on his head. Today was a slow day.
No one had come in yet, but it was only nine in the morning besides. He shifted
the empty cup of instant coffee next to him and turned it upside down, watching
the brown drip out and land on the metal. He placed it back down and stared at
the drop. It looked suspiciously like a bullet. He played with the tops of a
car battery while he waited. The radio played some old songs, by a band named
after bugs.
“Two of us going nowhere, spending someone’s hard earned pay…”
Hilde had gone somewhere.
She was sweet chick, but Duo wasn’t one to forget easily, unlike Heero his
emotions usually left him
wrapped up in ribbons of regret. He also couldn’t forget that one long
sleepless night right after the coup, when he had told her about everything.
Save for Death.
For some
reason, he had always felt that Death was for him alone to see.
A shadow
fell over the desk and Duo looked up.
His
fingers stopped on one of the battery tops and dug in, dirtying the nail. He
was quite a sight, after two years. Standing there with his duffel bag slung
over his shoulder, trading in the spandex for jeans. The tank was the same,
forest green and for some reason, it was fading now.
Duo
inclined his head. “Old habits die hard, eh? Your fashion sense equals zero.”
Heero quirked a smile. “I looked everywhere
and all you did was come back here. You play hide and seek well, Duo.” He set
the duffle bag down by his sneakers. Duo wondered where he bought those awful
shoes and why during the war, they never seemed to get run down. Now they were weatherbeaten and waterstained,
cracking in corners and the shoelaces were dirty.
That meant something.
He looked at Heero’s smile. It was slow at first,
before it showed a glint of teeth.
“I don’t play it well,
Heero. I was here all the time.”
“Been
waiting long?”
“I thought
you were with her.”
“You were
first.”
“You’re a
slowpoke Heero.”
The former
Wing pilot dusted his pants off. “I would have found you, wherever you were.”
This time it was Duo’s
turn to smile. “I know.”
Into your eyes
My face remains
When Heero
approached him, the air stirred with something that he knew had to do with her.
He rose from the chair, intending to meet the other boy halfway changing his
mind halfway, practically leapt into his arms. Heero
had grown a bit taller, a little more muscular but it felt the same, felt safe,
felt homey.
He looked past Heero’s
shoulder and she stood in the doorway this time, casting no shadow. She tipped
her hat at him and he saw herself reflected in her eyes, a too-old teenager
with a goofy grin on his face.
Duo saluted her.
“What was that for?” Heero
asked, his voice muffled as he started to kiss Duo
along his neck.
“Just a friend. A very good friend.”
“Ah.”
-end-