24 Aug 2000
Title:
Archive: none yet
Category: Angsty romance
Pairings: 1x2/2x1
Disclaimers: I don't own these delightful people (Sunrise and the
Sotsu Agency do, and Bandai has a license to pass them around), nor
do I intend to infringe upon the rights of their owners.
Rating: a strong R (rather steamy)
Warnings: Shounen-ai/yaoi. Only lime, I believe. Yet more angst.
We find that Heero gets OOC when sloshed.
Notes: Ganymede was a boy in Greek/Roman mythology, the most beautiful of mortals; Zeus (the Greek father of the gods--parallel to the Norse Odin--get the connection?) fell in love with him, and brought Ganymede to Olympus to be his cupbearer. An arcane reason for choosing that particular moon for this cargo run, but I like it.
Feedback: Always welcome!
<> denotes thoughts.
Another run finished. Finally.
He let the hatch drop shut with a dull clank, and took a last speculative look down the curved hull of his cargo shuttle before turning wearily away. Tugging at the zipper of his worn jacket and shouldering his equally-battered duffel, he headed out of the hangar and down the corridor. It was wide enough to be a street, and even featured sidewalks and streetlights in a feeble attempt at verisimilitude, but the faux concrete couldn't disguise the fact that this wasn't even a colony--only a supply station, limping in a low orbit around Venus.
He was exhausted, he realized as he got closer to his quarters--he usually was, after the long looping run to Io and back, but these days he looked forward to being bone-tired. Entering the elevator, he thumbed a button before allowing himself to sag against the cool metal wall, eyes closed.
The ride was almost silent, only the distant hum of machinery making its way into the lift. He let the quiet wash over him, a soothing change after the din of his rickety shuttle. There would be plenty more silence in his room, he knew--no soulful conversation or idiot chatter to break the silence. As if waiting for the triggering reference, blue eyes, and then violet, opened in his mind. Not tired enough, he decided, since his ghosts still had power to intrude. It was going to take bourbon, again.
The elevator chimed, opening its doors on the 45th level. He yanked up on the strap of his bag and headed for his room. Grey walls, grey tile, grey-covered legs angled against the wall--his uncomprehending eyes followed them up, stopping in utter shock when they reached the face of the figure leaning against his door. That face.
He couldn't stop staring--this hallucination seemed so real. His eager imagination was even supplying the effects of three years' separation, adding new angles to the elfin face, new breadth to the familiar shoulders. The eyes were the same, though--wide, candid, irresistible. Right now, they seemed to be painfully uncertain. Heero gave his head a sharp shake, narrowing his eyes as the mirage remained stubbornly present.
Duo unfolded himself from the wall and stepped forward. "Been a while."
"Hn." He simply was not capable of further speech, but at least his jaw wasn't hanging on his chest. He fumbled for the key, and waved his unexpected guest inside.
Knocking back the long-awaited whiskey, he dropped into the room's only chair. Duo waited by the window, looking out at the cubist arrangement of living quarters and warehouses, dim in the station's approximation of night.
It took a long time before Heero trusted himself to speak. "I guess I didn't go deep enough undercover."
"No such thing, not with the connections Relena's got."
"Why was she looking for me?"
"Come off it--we've all been looking for you, every chance we got."
"That's an awfully cozy-sounding 'we.'" He poured another glass. "So the big happy family decided to find me. Why'd they send you?"
"Nobody sent me--" Duo checked himself, remembering that wasn't strictly true. Heero watched his eyes deepen, and felt unaccountably lonely. Revising his statement, Duo continued, "I came because I had to. Because I wanted to. When you left, I thought letting you go was the right thing to do. I was wrong."
"How exactly would you have stopped me?"
"I would have made you listen, or tried to--I would have done something. I mean, look at this place. You're honestly going to tell me you're happy here?"
"Happy." Heero's laugh was harsh. "Who said I'd get to be happy? When the war's over, you put the guns away in a nice, safe box. And you lock it. Don't you like my box, Maxwell? Nice, and safe, and far away from all the happy people. Ask Relena. I'm sure she'll agree with me."
Duo had gone very still. "You don't know her any more. If you ever did. She'd do anything for you."
"I don't see her unlocking the box, Maxwell."
<That's how far she'd go for you. She'd send me to do it, instead. Lena, how do I do this? What do you want me to do?> He shook his head. Heero was obviously exhausted, besides being well on his way to being hammered, and further discussion could wait. He took the glass out of the former pilot's almost-shaking hand, setting it on the miniscule kitchen counter next to the half-empty bottle.
"You're wiped out, Yuy. And this isn't the time to debate the finer points of war and peace. Go to sleep."
"Always tellin' me that."
"Bed, Yuy. Now. We'll talk tomorrow." He helped get him out of the jacket, wincing at how thin Heero had become, then pointed him firmly in the direction of the bathroom. Heero padded off almost obediently, then came back to topple onto the narrow bed. Already crashing, he lifted his head. "Stay." It was almost a question.
"Of course. Go to sleep." Shaking his head again, Duo curled up on the equally narrow couch and gave in to his own jet lag.
As the daytime lights powered up across the station, Duo yawned and stretched, trying to force circulation back into his cramped limbs. Sitting up, he looked again around the godawful apartment. A room and a half, if you counted the tiny kitchen. A room and three-quarters, if you added in the bathroom. Hardly any furniture, nothing on the walls. It was a box.
Heero slept on, crashed out on his worn pillow. It was like looking back in time, or confronting a ghost. He had barely changed, except that the lines of his face--the ascetic profile of a monk, or a fanatic--were even more sharply drawn. That face. It always seemed to be a line drawing until the eyes opened--wary or furious or <only a couple of times, Maxwell> laughing--but once they did, the whole world was in color.
Duo turned away from watching him sleep. There was nothing in the cupboard, even less in the fridge, so he gathered up the apartment key and let himself out to get supplies.
When Heero woke up, some time later, he knew the previous night had been a dream. It hadn't even had a chance to get good, he thought, wincing as the motion of sitting up jarred his already woozy head. He made his way to the shower, welcoming the oblivion of hot water on his face. It wasn't as effective as liquor, or the unconsciousness that followed, but it still felt good to let himself go boneless under the spray.
So he didn't hear the front door open, or Duo's whistling as he unpacked groceries and started the coffee. And so it came as a total shock when he came out of the bathroom, stark naked, to find last night's hallucination calmly stirring eggs in a skillet. At least, Duo was calm until he looked up--though he did manage not to drop the spatula.
Heero stood blinking in the doorway, still not believing his eyes. "You're real."
"Um, yep."
"You're here."
"Mm-hm."
"I'm--I'm going to get clothes, now."
"Good idea." <Take your time,> he thought, watching from the stove as the familiar body moved to the battered dresser, then to the closet. <Don't bother blushing, Heero,> for all his feigned nonchalance, Heero's back looked miserably tense, <I already know every inch of you, remember? Great.> He turned over the now-crispy eggs and tried to fight his own nearly desperate arousal. <One look and I'm a fifteen-year-old sex fiend again.>
//Still!// He could almost hear Relena say, laughing.
<Oh, koi, if you could only see this....>
Heero's scowl when he returned to the tiny kitchen dared Duo to comment, and he wisely refrained.
A plate of dubious eggs in front of him, Heero turned a chipped mug around and around in his hands. "Tell me again. Why exactly are you here?"
"To see you. To see if I could bring you back." Too much, too fast--Heero's face slammed shut again.
"I'm out here for a reason."
"Yeah, like United Freight couldn't find another crate jockey? You're not a human forklift, Yuy, and despite what you seem to believe, you're not an obsolete beam cannon either." He had intended to delay this conversation until they'd had some time to at least get used to looking at each other again; but now that he had started, might as well get it over with. "Why did you really walk out on us? Come too close to feeling something?"
The answer was surprisingly candid. "Close enough to know there are rules for--feelings. Relationships. And I don't know what they are until I break them."
"What exactly do you mean?" Duo was too close, having left his stool to stand behind Heero, hands on his tight shoulders. "What rules did you break?"
Those hands were moving, now, working the knotted muscles of his neck and shoulders, and it was hard to think. All these years on autopilot hadn't clinched his self-control, he realized, but only left him with no immunity to the languor induced by those steady, knowing fingers. All he could do was lean into Duo's touch, head drooping.
"I--I hurt people. I mean, I'm supposed to kill people--"
"Were supposed to."
"Aa. I was supposed to. But I hurt other people. Relena. You." He sounded like a monosyllabic three-year-old, even to himself, but it didn't seem to matter.
"You were fifteen, Heero. We were supposed to act like idiots. And you'd been raised by a guy who did think of you as a walking beam cannon." His voice was low, gentle. "But even then, you did give us something we could keep. Even when you didn't think you had anything to give." Relena had taught him that, about himself--he hoped he had learned enough to pass the lesson on.
The words were soothing, but the hands on his shoulders were delicious--and then Duo changed tactics, drawing his fingers through the tousled brown hair, bending his lips to the vulnerable neck. "I don't know what you were trying to give us by leaving--but all I wanted was to have you back."
The only answer was a small sound, somewhere between a sigh and a moan, as Heero gave in to the embrace, leaning back to open his body to the slow hands that stroked across his chest.
Until the phone shrilled, and he bolted from his seat to pick it up, knocking over his innocent stool in the process. It was the main office, offering him their most lucrative assignment: hauling beryllium to Ganymede, a two-month round trip. It was a real coup, getting that run, and he could really use the funds. But now?
He came back from the phone, his face uncharacteristically uncertain. When he explained, Duo was firm. "Take it. I'll come with you." He felt his heart clench in the same old way as Heero lit up like a candle and went to call them back.
They spent most of the trip just talking--catching up on recent history, sometimes just remembering more distant things out loud. It was easily the longest uninterrupted time they had ever had together, at least without enemy mobile suits to distract them. There also wasn't much room in the cramped crew module to do anything but talk; some brilliant engineer had decided to go with sleeping cubbies instead of actual bunks, and even Duo couldn't figure out how to get two people into one of those mole holes. So they remained at something of a frustrated distance from one another--which was probably a good thing, in the end, since they also needed this time to remember how to be together. Really together. Sex had never been completely easy, at least not for them, but it had always been easier than real intimacy.
There was a problem, however, and it was a big one. Duo had no idea how to broach the subject of Relena--how do you tell your true love that you've been sleeping with--with his other true love for the past year? So he put it off, until he could do so no longer.
Over their reconstituted dinner, on the third night of the return trip, Heero finally asked the right questions.
"Don't tell me you've been alone for the past three years."
"You're giving me too much credit." Duo parried, but couldn't quite escape.
"Duo. When you were talking, that first day after you came. About relationships. You kept saying 'us'."
"I did? When?" Feigned innocence--always a good thing, right?
"You did. You said I left you--plural. You said 'us.'"
"Turning into a broken record, are we?"
"Duo. Who was the other half of that 'us'?"
Oh, lord. There was no way for this to go well. "Well, it's complicated, really. I mean, I was on L2, and turning into a real mess, and then..." He trailed off, looking panicky.
Heero was waiting, patiently, but this wasn't making any sense. "And then what?"
His head went down. "Relena found me."
"And?" He wasn't sure where this was going, but Duo looked like he was expecting a blow.
"And then we were together."
This was certainly unexpected. "Together, like--?"
"Together. Not at first--she asked me to be her security chief. Hilde had some fool idea that I was self-destructive, or something, and Relena and Quatre cooked up this job, as some kind of distraction. But then I stayed. And, well, she's--" He risked a look up, then wished he hadn't.
Steel-blue eyes were staring at him in a mixture of confusion and betrayal.
He stuck to his guns. "She's amazing, Heero. You of all people should know that."
Heero got up very slowly, moving to the hatch between the cabin and the cargo bay. "I need to check on something."
"Don't run away from me, Heero. That's my gig, not yours. Talk to me."
He sat back down, holding very still. "So why did you come after me? Why did she let you, if the two of you are so--'together'?"
"Because we were so happy to have found you. Because both of us loved you first. We still do. Are you sorry I came?"
His answer was swift, his eyes sure. "No."
A harder question. "Are you sorry I told you?"
"No."
"So--what do you want to do now?"
Long silence. Duo was starting to worry.
"I don't know yet."
"I know I should have told you before. But things were going so well, and I--well, I didn't want to wreck it. So I--" <So you left your foot on the gas and took your hands off the wheel, and now you're surprised that you hit that oncoming truck? Brilliant.>
When he looked up, Heero was still watching him. "I'm babbling, aren't I?"
"Always."
"Look, take your time. Just--" He shook his head, at a loss for words. Moving toward the cargo bay again, Heero laid a hand on his hair, then bent to lean his forehead against the heavy plait.
"Duo. Don't you know by now? Haven't you always known? Even when I came all the way out here, it wasn't because I didn't--" He stopped. "Whatever I decide to do, it'll be with you." The door whicked shut behind him, but somehow it wasn't a final sort of sound.
It was even easier, after that, since Duo didn't have to bite his tongue in half to keep from mentioning Relena. And when that run was over, they returned wearily to the same gray residential block, took the same elevator. Unlocked the door.
"Heero."
"Mm?"
"You know how you said we shouldn't--you know. In the shuttle. Not enough room."
"Mm-hm." Somewhat distracted, Heero was setting down his bag, looking around the apartment as if to make sure everything was still there. Then he sat down on one of the stools to take off his boots.
"This room's. . .a little bigger than the module."
That got his attention. It helped that Duo had put both arms around his waist, and was kissing his neck. That helped a lot. He leaned back into those arms, remembering with the hint of a smile the last time he had been sitting on this stool, encircled just like this.
"Duo. Unplug the phone."
He did, smiling devilishly. "Now, where was I? I believe I was about to do this--" his mouth was a spot of heat against Heero's temple, "and this--" his teeth worried at one earlobe, "and this--" butting against the arch of that neck, Duo deliberately let his hands descend dangerously low, brushing against the aching heat between Heero's legs. Why was he going so slowly? He arched into those hands, feeling Duo chuckle against his back.
"Shhhh."
"Since when are you so patient?" Gritting his teeth.
"Oh, I've learned restraint."
"Riiight." Heero's mock-derision held up for about a second, and he turned on the stool to pull Duo closer, between his knees. There. Right there, hips tight against him. And Duo wasn't holding still--he hadn't gotten any better at that, for all his claims to restraint. Rubbing hungrily against him, moaning as Heero's hands slid under his shirt, cruising in slow circles over his skin. It was almost unbearable, the feel of him, the sound of his cries, but Heero didn't want it to stop. For so long he'd had this only in his fevered dreams--and it still didn't seem real, didn't seem even remotely likely even after all these weeks that Duo was here, that he seemed so willing to just fall into his arms like this. But here he was, incredibly, deliciously real, gasping even more deliciously as Heero's roughened fingers found the familiar spots (just below the ear, behind the knee, just to the left of...) that made him breathless. Duo's grin was unsteady as he repeated that first night's directive: "Bed, Yuy. Now." Tripping over clothing as fast as they could discard it, they made it to the bed. It was too narrow for two--side by side, at least--but they managed.
Over the next months, they settled into a routine that quickly became comfortable. Duo took a job in one of the warehouses, mainly to have something to do while Heero was away during the day, and they spent most evenings doing ordinary things. Couple things--shopping, walking, watching stupid vid programs that made Duo laugh himself silly. The room didn't seem like a box any more, and not just because Duo had insisted on investing in a futon mattress more than twice the size of the infamous bunk. It had started to feel like a home.
Duo kept reminding himself to get in touch with Relena, to make a call, drop a line, something. But he always seemed to forget, and he admitted to himself that it was because he didn't want to break the almost-enchantment, the everyday wonder of just waking up with Heero every morning, lying down beside him every night. She would understand, he knew. Besides, he could explain it all when he finally got Heero to overcome his reluctance to return to Earth, and to her. Slow and steady would do it, he was sure. She would understand.
End of Part 6.
(:./lilias/complicated6)
