This came about from a linefic challenge from Andrea that required not only one of the lines used, but the pairing had to be non-standard. Alas poor 1x2-dom, I knew it well...
You know, I had always thought that Duo and Heero would be together. They had everything really. The chemistry, the playfulness, a trust so deep you could drown in it and a friendship that never had to be said aloud between them. You just looked at them, watched them move and you felt it in your bones, resonating through the marrow.
It was always the little things. I never really needed my uuchi no kokoro to tell me anything. The way Duo's eyes would soften just that much, or how without thinking about it, Heero would slow down his pace, and Duo would speed up his.
A match made in heaven right?
I was so unprepared, when it was me that Duo asked to wear the ring. That Heero was standing not far behind him, nudging Duo on, and smiling like a proud father or more accuratly, a best friend.
It kind of didn't fit into my sense of reality until I thought about it. I mean, really thought about it.
There was something undeniably attractive about Duo. Sure, he's beautiful in the estimation of either gender, but I was thinking something beyond that.
At first glance it would seem that he and I had it the easiest of all the pilots. Sometimes, privately, in the dark of my own room, when sleep wont come and I've chased my tail into exhaustion about my father, I've thought about him.
There's a pain within him. Not so fresh and sharp as within Wufei, as controlling as Heero's or even as dabilitating as what keeps Trowa awake. It was soft, diluted. A type of ancient pain that has permeatted right down the to the cellular level, ever present, perhaps even accepted, but no longer noticible.
The fact that he could keep smiling, where others would collapse, gave me a whole new awe - no, affection - of him. Somehow that smile touched his eyes, and in turn our souls.
I could feel the pain of others, but he could take it away.
The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything, they just make the most of everything that comes along their way. I think I fell in love with him with that slow creeping realization, that he was honestly happy. It wasn't a mask. He was making the best of US.
Somehow I felt it, when he asked that question. A resonance between us that I thought only existed between he and Heero. It was just pitched to a different note. And an empathy deeper than the understanding between Trowa and myself... of being abandoned and unwanted.
They say time slows down and thought speeds up when everything is in the balance, hanging like the sword of Damoclese. All this and more sped through my mind. Sliding, colliding, organizing.
Between that one, all-important question, and the less confident "So will ya?" A lifetime of information paraded itself through my mind, daring me to make sense of it.
It was in that confusion, that I recognized the reality. A moment of bravery I didn't know I possessed and a leap from the normal and accepted into something uncontemplated.
In short, I smiled at Duo. I said yes.
The End
Nixers
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