Pairings: 2x1
Heero Yuy woke to find a large expanse of empty, cold cotton beside him. He was pleasantly sore down there, the only sign that Duo had indeed visited his bed the night before. Drawing a long, shuddering breath, the Japanese boy padded to the shower.
He wasn't really sure why he did it. For heat and for warmth and for the pleasure that running his hands over that tanned skin could bring, but other than that, there was no connection between them. He was a painter, Duo was... Duo was amazing. He lit up the room with a brilliance from the sun. He should paint his portrait.
He'd known girls, known the momentary pleasure of soft breasts and yielding thighs, but Duo was different. They hurt him, and this one... Everything about the braided boy crashed through his perceptions of life, rending them in two.
They'd met at one club or another, dancing to one song or another. Heero took him home that first night, and had every erotic fantasy he could remember fulfilled. It was like he'd known what Heero wanted before he'd put it to coherent thought. Exhausted, unable to even move his legs, he'd fallen asleep shortly before dawn. In the morning, Duo and his smiling eyes had been gone.
There had been many other times like that. Heero knew he should demand commitment, should demand to see Duo outside of the nightclub scene; it was what all his friends told him, with a glint of disgust in their eyes. They thought he was being a slut, giving away the body without a soul.
In the beginning, he had rationalized it as pure sex. He took Duo home, they fucked for a few hours, and then he left while Heero slept. There was no time he could remember where it had not been that way. And yet...
It didn't seem to be enough anymore. He didn't just want him, he desired him, wanted to lose himself in his embrace. Letting the water redden his back with its almost painful caress, Heero made his decision.
Once-one of the only times he had been coherent after sex-he had inquired about Duo's address, and gotten a vague response. Across from the Polish Deli, he'd explained, eyes twinkling, one hand tangling through sweaty, chestnut bangs, up four flights of stairs and to the left. You can't miss it; there's a big chunk missing in the door from where the last tenant fired a shotgun.
Heero got out of the shower, wrapped his hair in a towel. He pulled on his clothes, and they smelled like Duo.
He walked down three flights of stairs, hand barely skimming the rusty banister, waving hello to Mrs. Purdue, goodbye to Elsie Haverford who had the cats.
He flipped a quarter to a subway bum that tried to grab his crotch. He looked at him with ragged, yellow eyes, mumbled a "Fuck you" in thanks.
He had a vague idea of where the deli was, but after that, he'd have to rely on memory, and on Duo, to help him find the mysterious young man. Heero wasn't sure, but he thought he might be in love with him.
The longer he walked, the more right the word became. It was like stretching his senses outward; 'love'. The word was no longer extranjero, no longer a part of the speech of the condemned and the Christian.
"I want to spend the rest of my life with you," he practiced aloud, even as he watched a drunken older man slap his wife with a flat hand. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you." And he found that he did. The simplest things...
What would Duo say? he wondered. Would he be glad? Would he be angry that Heero had sought him out in the daylight?
Perhaps he was some kind of vampire, Heero mused, nodding as he passed the newspaper stand where he bought the New York Times every Sunday, without fail.
He came to the deli, rocking to a halt, clutching the lapels of his jacket tightly. There was no one around, the streets were empty with the shifty morning clouds. Almost afraid to look, Heero braced himself for the eventuality of the empty lot, the crumbling building. Would all his dreams be for naught?
It was a normal, slightly dusty apartment building, several of the upper apartments possessing run-down balconies. Nothing spectacular. Nothing that needed to be condemned, either. Heero gave a forced sigh of relief and wondered why he felt so...calm.
He entered the building slowly, mind noting absently the crescendoing white iron balustrade, a parody of wealth, and began to climb the stairs. *I want to spend the rest of my life with you,* he repeated.
Almost trembling, he reached the fourth floor. There was only one loft apartment, only one door. Heero reached for the doorknob--and jumped a foot off the floor as it twisted on its own and the door opened.
"Heero," Duo whispered, standing in the crack between hard solid oak and cold ivory wallpaper. "Heero...why did you have to look for me?" The words stuck in his throat; feeling a fool, the Japanese boy bowed his head, fighting off a sudden sob that threatened to wrench its way past his clenched teeth.
A hand caressed his cheek.
"I-I'm sorry," he whispered, nuzzling the hand affectionately, but none of the raging desire flooded through him, none of the sudden heat and warmth that came with Duo's touch.
"It can't be as it was," warned the American, blue eyes smiling kindly. He smelled his cologne, smelled his soap in his long chestnut hair, unbound from its usual braid, as he bent at the waist, lips brushing Heero's ear. He whispered a single word, a word that made his blood chill.
Then he was gone, shutting the door firmly, eyes still smiling, only they were mocking, not friendly at all. He whispered the word once more, lips circling around it like a fish gasping for air on a beach.
Heero hugged his arms tightly around him. Suddenly, he didn't feel so well. His head ached unpleasantly... He was barely aware that he was moving, his feet taking him back down the stairs, out the door, onto the street, past the deli, past the newspaper stand. Wave, hello, smile, goodbye.
Heero went home and cried.
He went back several times in his lifetime to that apartment building. Sometimes he knocked. Sometimes he just yelled and screamed and kicked until the landlady came upstairs, demanding in her nosy way to know what was going on. Duo never answered the door. Heero doubted he'd ever really lived in the loft.
He moved out of the city, got a job in Nebraska, fell in love, married a young girl named Lena, pretty with blonde hair. Blue eyes that never danced like the demons around a fire at Midsummer's. They had two children.
He never told her about Duo. Never told anyone about Duo. No matter how hard he tried, he could never forget those beguiling fingers, laughing eyes. And that word, senseless and abstract and terrifying. It meant that no matter how far he ran, how many times he cursed the heavens, Heero belonged, and would always belong, to his darkness.
He killed himself when he was 31. A single word was scrawled over the white bathroom tiles in his blood. It dripped and rolled down the shiny surface. Lena fainted when she saw it. Their son, almost elfin-like with his long chestnut hair and wide violet eyes, simply smiled.
INCUBUS
INCUBUS
INCUBUS
INCUBUS
INCUBUS
INCUBUS
INCUBUS...
Ariana
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