10-Mar-2004
Every time I persuade myself that GW and I have parted ways for good, Bob goes and proves me wrong.
Most of the reason for this fic comes from my new job, where I spend my days putting author corrections into galleys at a small vanity press. This job requires me to read through a lot of material, most of which could use the services of a good beta-reader. At the end of the day, I want to scream at my monitor: "SHOW, DON'T TELL!"
Hence this fic, where I did what I could to show instead of telling.
Title: Steady
Author: Lys ap Adin
Notes: Post series. Asshole Duo, saintly Heero. I considered calling this one "Pursuance Redux" if that tells you anything. Is it friendship? Is it shounen ai? You be the judge of that.
Feedback and criticism are beautiful things. You want to give me beautiful things, right?
When he headed to the kitchen to start his morning coffee, Heero found that Duo was asleep on the couch, curled up underneath a beat-up jacket and looking thinner than Heero remembered. Heero continued into the kitchen and doubled the amount of coffee grounds he scooped into the coffee maker. Then he fetched a blanket from the bedroom for Duo.
The smell of coffee began to permeate the apartment as Heero skirted around the coffee table, shaking out the folds of the blanket before settling it over his unexpected houseguest. Then he stepped back.
As expected, Duo reacted to the disturbance of his slumber with lashing fists and booted feet before entirely waking up. Heero watched as Duo thrashed himself into a tangle before finally rolling off the couch, and then leaned over the coffee table. "There's coffee if you want it."
Duo clambered to his feet and stretched. "You ever thought about getting a better couch? That thing kills my back."
Heero just turned and headed for the bedroom.
The coffee was gone by the time he'd had his shower and dressed, and Duo was shoveling bites of omelet into his mouth at a steady pace, and the emptied egg carton was sitting on the counter by the stove. Heero started another pot of coffee and poured a bowl of cereal for himself.
"How's life at the office?" Duo asked, breaking the silence.
"The usual." Heero brought the coffee pot to the table and filled Duo's mug and then his own. "Busy." He returned the pot to the warming plate and carried his cereal to the table, sitting opposite of Duo. "Boring."
"You said it first, not me." Duo finished his omelet and pushed the plate away. He curled his fingers around the fresh cup of coffee, tapping out a rhythm against the ceramic of the mug. "You're out of eggs. And bacon."
Heero grunted an acknowledgement around his mouthful of cereal. Swallowing, he said, "I'll stop by the store on my way home."
Duo nodded. "You ought to reset your codes, too. I got into this place way too easily."
Heero gave Duo a steady look. "Is this my apartment or yours?"
"Just saying is all." Duo let the criticism roll off him. He yawned. "God, I'm tired. Think I'll go back to bed."
Heero swirled his spoon through the cereal and traced patterns in the flakes. "Use my bed. It's more comfortable."
"I will." Duo left the table. Heero finished his own breakfast and did the washing up. When he checked on Duo before leaving for work, he was already asleep, sprawled across the bed in a boneless heap. Heero watched him sleep, noting the twitches and half-formed mutterings, and then closed the door to the bedroom. He resisted the urge to reset the codes on the front door into something devilishly complicated, since Duo seemed set to sleep all day and by the time he returned from work and the grocery, he'd have forgotten that he reset it anyway. The hassle would be greater than the satisfaction.
Heero spent his commute to the office wondering where Duo went and what he did for the months on end between his abrupt visits. Pressing Duo for details never got anywhere but an argument, so he'd learned not to ask. He still wondered, though.
At work, he punched in, exchanging greetings with other agents, and went to the pair of desks that made up his corner of the office. Every once in a while, the higher-ups tried to make him surrender the second desk, or at least accept the assignment of a new partner, but so far he'd fended them off. As far as Heero was concerned, he already had a partner to go along with the desk-even if that partner had left five years ago to get a soda and had never officially returned.
"About time you got back," Duo said when Heero, burdened with shopping bags, came home. "I'm starving." He was wearing a pair of Heero's jeans that hung loose on his skinny frame, and Heero could count every rib beneath the skin of his bare chest. Heero just carried the bags into the kitchen and began unpacking them. Duo put the book he'd been reading down and followed him. "I hope you bought some decent food. This healthy shit has got to go."
Heero handed him a box of cookies. "Here. Quatre says hello."
"What, did you tell the whole world I'm in town?"" Duo asked, tearing into the package.
"No, he just knew." Heero put a pot of water on to boil.
"It freaks the hell out of me when he does that," Duo said between bites of cookies. "Whatcha making?"
"Spaghetti."
Duo made a face. "Does it have to be spaghetti?"
"Yes." He reached around Duo to get the box of pasta out of the cabinet. "If you don't want it, fix your own dinner."
"I guess I can live with spaghetti," Duo conceded. Heero just rolled his eyes.
He always managed to forget between visitations how noisy life could be when Duo was around to run his mouth. Dinner was full of complaints about the mushrooms in the spaghetti sauce and the lack of anything to do in Heero's apartment, interspersed with questions about the Preventers. They talked for a long time, until Heero yawned in the middle of a sentence. Duo cracked up. "Tired?"
"Yeah. Long day." He began to stack the dirty dishes.
"Don't worry about the dishes, just go to bed," Duo advised him. "I'll take care of them."
The dishes were still on the table in the morning, stuck together with dried food. Heero shook his head, not surprised, and put them into the sink to soak, and started the coffee.
Duo was asleep on the couch, with a book lying on his chest, and slept through Heero's breakfast and departure for work.
Heero returned home that evening to chaos. He stood in the threshold of his apartment, surveying the living room. Every single book had been pulled from the bookshelf and scattered about the room amidst the stack of dirty dishes and half-eaten food. Duo was in the center of it all, idly leafing through a magazine while he ate ice cream from the tub. "So what's for dinner?" he asked, not looking up from his reading.
Heero took a deep breath and closed the door. "Pizza."
"Don't get sausage. I can't stand the stuff."
"Duly noted," Heero said, picking his way through the mess to the kitchen, which was in equally poor shape, and phoned in the order. He began sorting through the mess on the counters.
"So how much more of a fucking saint can you be?" Duo asked from the living room.
Heero dropped the emptied egg carton-the second in two days-into the trash, and turned to face Duo, who had come to lean against the counter. "That depends," Heero told him. "How much more of an asshole do you plan on being?"
Duo's answering smirk was full of sharp edges. "I haven't even begun to plumb the depths of my potential."
Heero turned back to his cleaning, picking at the eggshells glued to the counter with dried egg white. "You know, we could have this argument again, or you could just grow up. Nothing you do is going to change anything."
"Wanna bet?"
Heero fetched that trashcan and swept the eggshells into it and then turned his attention to the jug of milk that seemed to have sat out all day. He poured it down the drain. "You've wrecked my cars and trashed my apartment more times than I care to remember. You act like a spoiled two year old. You walked out on the biggest case the Preventers had ever had, and every time you disappear, I don't know whether you're dead or alive until you show up again." Heero dampened a washrag and began wiping chocolate syrup off the cabinets. "I won't let Une assign me another partner, and I've been stuck on desk work for the past five years. Do you have any idea how awful five solid years of paperwork can be? If I haven't given up on you yet, what makes you think I ever will?"
Duo was quiet for a minute. "This is the part where I get all weepy and go, 'Heero, you really *do* care!' isn't it?"
"Not unless you want to."
"Fuck that." Duo opened the refrigerator and grabbed a soda. "It's not my style."
"No, it's not," Heero agreed. He rinsed out his washrag and continued to scrub at the cabinets. "See you in six months, I guess."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"This is the part where you get so pissed off that you walk out, and then six months from now I'll find you crashed on my couch again." Heero paused. "I wouldn't throw that, if I were you."
Duo glared at Heero's turned back and lowered the can of soda. "Maybe this time I won't come back."
"Maybe not." Heero set the rag down, and turned to look at Duo. "But if you do, I'll still be here."
"I hate you." Duo continued to glare at him.
"No you don't," Heero replied. There was a knock on the door. "See if you can find a couple of clean plates in this mess to eat off of," he said, brushing past duo to go pay for the food.
When he came back, Duo was standing in the middle of the devastated kitchen. "I think I broke all the plates," he said, examining a spot somewhere on the ceiling.
"Then we'll use napkins."
"Stuffed them down the john."
Heero sighed and put the boxes of pizza on the table. "Then we'll use the boxes," he said. "All right?"
"I guess it'll do," Duo said, sliding into his seat.
They ate in silence and afterwards, Heero put the kitchen in order while Duo watched, and then headed into the bathroom with a plunger and a grim expression. It took a while and a lot of swearing to restore the toilet to working order, and when Heero emerged from the bathroom, he found Duo working on the carpet of the living room, scrubbing melted ice cream out of the pile. "You look surprised to see me," Duo said, with a sideways glance.
"I thought you might be gone by now," Heero said.
"Maybe I'm not so predictable after all."
"I've been wrong before." Heero stooped and began picking up the scattered books.
"Don't worry about those," Duo said, waving his rag at Heero. "I'll get them. Go to bed; you've had a long day."
Heero straightened, arms full of books. "Are you still going to be here in the morning?"
"Are you?" Duo countered.
"Yes."
"Then there's your answer." Duo's smile was tiny and rueful. "Go to bed, Heero."
Heero set the books down and did as he was told.
In the morning, when his alarm went off, he ventured into the living room, which was in considerably better shape than it had been the night before, and Duo was asleep on the couch. Heero smiled and went to start the coffee.
--end
(:./lys/steady)
