29-Oct-2002
Title: Seasonal Drift Part Two
Author: Ebonydove
Archived: aenai.steelsong.com
Spoilers: none from the series that actually give anything away.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Violence, language, shonen-ai, mild sap, slight OOC, mild angst.
Pairings: 2+1
I don't exactly know when it happened. The point at which my life became so inexorably intertwined with that of Heero Yuy's. Perhaps that fateful day I had first met him on those docks. Perhaps even before then we were destined to somehow affect eachother, but it hardly mattered to me now. My little epiphany had come too late, and I was beginning a mental spiral that was slow enough to make you glaze over the fact you were in trouble but fast enough to make you know you were gunna be sick.
I lay on the scratchy carpet of Heero's bedroom, curled up with my knees almost to my chin, and stared at his still form where he was unmoving beside the bed. I tried pulling myself together enough to crawl towards him before all my senses began to shut down, but it was as if something inside me shattered all to pieces from the moment I had stepped through the doorway to his room. It was the first time in a very long time that I felt so shell-shocked and numb to my surroundings. It was as if all my fears of losing him had manifested into some tangible thing, so close that I if I could will my hand to reach out, I could touch it. The last thing I was able to do, was punch up Wufei's number on my speed-dial and mumble something I hoped was coherent enough for him to understand into the phone, before letting it slip from my fingers and succumbing to the miserable, white noise in my head.
Then I was abruptly brought to my senses and found myself staring into a pair of dark worried eyes. Wufei was talking to me and the look on his face was one of plain panic, but I'd be damned to know what it was that he was saying to me. All I could hear was a soft hum and a sound that reminded me of the static from a television or vidscreen when you left it on for too long after the programming had ended. His voice just wasn't penetrating it.
"Damn it Duo, what in the nine levels of hell happened here?!"
I blinked and made a small noise that sounded embarrassingly close to a whimper.
A firm slap across my right cheek alleviated my prior issue, knocking the fuzz clear like throwing a switch. "W-Wu?"
All things considered, Wufei was amazingly calm given the circumstances. He had walked through the carnage in the other room and hadn't had a complete meltdown like I had just experienced. But then again I suppose his reaction would be different from mine. I had just walked through that carnage to find my best friend and partner lying dead on the floor in his bedroom.
Dead... the idea of it was simply ridiculous and my brain threw it out as quickly as it had flitted through. I heard a repulsive little chuckle and saw Wufei's eyes go impossibly wide as I realized the insane sound had come from me.
"Maxwell! Snap out of it!"
He gave me a little shake, which was the first instant I realized that I was no longer laying on the floor next to the doorway, but in a chair at Heero's desk. My eyes couldn't help but to be drawn to the smears of red on the closest wall and the slight spatterings of gore on the windowsill next to us. When I looked back to Wufei he was frowning darkly at me.
"I need you."
Maybe it was the tone he used, or the way he said it, but I suddenly felt things slip back into place. "H-Heero?" I groaned just as my stomach twisted painfully. I had to swallow the rising bile back down again as my eyes finally focused on his for a brief moment before flickering over to where two paramedics were hovering over Heero.
"He's fine, Duo. He sustained a hard blow to the head, but will recover. The girl though... " He paused and looked over his shoulder.
I followed his gaze to two other medics lifting the mangled form of a girl from around the other side of Heero's bed. She had been absolutely bludgeoned to death. One whole side of her face had been caved in and the blood and gore was still oozing and dripping as they lifted her from the carpet and placed her on Heero's bed.
Wufei didn't flinch as I fell out of the chair to my knees and heaved mightily onto the carpet in front of him. He just held my shoulders enough so I didn't fall face forward into it as I coughed and sputtered. When I was done, he dragged me back up into the chair and stepped over the mess to go in search of something to clean me up with. It took less than a minute for him to return with a damp washcloth from Heero's bathroom and began wiping my face with it. In those few moments I found myself more panic stricken that I had been when I first walked into this room. The stench from the remnants of my morning coffee with the sweet cloying scent of blood made my eyes begin to water as I repressed the urge to gag again.
I shut my eyes tight and let him wipe away the snot and lingering traces of puke from my mouth and pull me up out of the chair then push me gently into the other room. I stood there shakily with him not more than two inches away and holding my elbow, as the medics brought out Heero and began to prepare him for transport to the hospital. I made a staggering move to go to him, but Wufei held me firmly before I could take another step towards him.
"Just wait. We'll go too, but I'm just waiting for Trowa to arrive."
I nodded at his calmly spoken words and ran a shaky hand through my hair. "Where'd the girl come from?" I asked quietly as I watched them strap Heero in and begin the slow trek down the hall to the elevator.
"You mean you don't know?" He asked with more irritation in his tone than I think he had meant. I just shook my head slowly my eyes still trained on Heero's form. "I naturally assumed that you had been present when this all had occurred."
"I was already at work. Heero was late, so I came to see what was holding him up. I walked into this... " I shivered slightly and flung my arm out in a sweeping gesture to encompass the entirety of the blood spattered room. He raised an eyebrow at that and took in the room I'm sure not for the first time. It's not like you could enter it and not draw some conclusions about what had occurred.
"Then you are not injured."
I had the decency to blush at that. "Physically? No." I shook my head again and huffed out an aggravated breath. "I dunno Wu. I walked in and saw this... mess, and I thought that Heero...He's never late. He's so goddamned predictable about everything he does, so when he didn't show up to work this morning, I got worried about him and... " The shock that I was indeed worried about Heero Yuy and that I had wanted to think of him as more than my friend, hit me like a piano someone had dropped from the sky. To find said person lying on the floor in his a pool of his own blood thinking he had been murdered... my legs suddenly turned to mush.
I felt Wufei's hands grip my arms tightly as I began my slow decent to the floor. "Slowly, Maxwell. You are showing signs of shock. Stay with me."
I frowned and blinked at him as he swung my left arm over his shoulder and braced me with his other arm around my waist. Stay with him? I couldn't even get my legs to obey a simple command to stay under me.
"I think we'll let Trowa catch up with us outside."
We made it all the way to the elevators and down to the street level without further incident. The ambulance that had loaded Heero in it had already gone speeding off to the hospital leaving me and Wufei sitting on the curb outside the building while people scurried around us. It was strange watching them stealing glancing at us but at the same time trying not to look too obvious about it. People tended to give us a wide birth in general given our background and profession, and I suppose the glare Wufei was giving everyone did make them feel the need to add a feet few to their normally established parameters.
Trowa came racing up to a halt in front of us in a blue sedan and I swear I thought Wufei was going to have to tuck his feet closer to the curbside less he get them run over. Trowa left only a scant inch or two between the tire and us. He leaned out the window, not even bothering to get out and waved for us to get in. Next thing I knew Wufei was pulling me to my feet and shoving me unceremoniously into the backseat.
"What's going on?"
"I'm not entirely sure and Maxwell is in no condition to tell me much of anything."
"I thought he was here when it happened?"
"I did as well, but apparently that isn't the case. He was however the first on the scene."
I saw Trowa's eyes flick to the rearview mirror to look at me before returning to the road. I crossed my arms over my chest and scowled at them as they continued to ignore me completely and carry on their little dialogue about how shocked I had been, and how Wufei thought I had been hurt when he first arrived and saw the 'state' I was in. After a few minutes of listening them talk about me acting like I was some kind of walking zombie I finally cleared my throat to get their attention. "You don't need to talk about me like I'm not sitting here in the back seat of damn car."
"So then you can tell us why Naomi was there." Trowa asked in his matter of fact way.
I was stunned. "You mean that... mess was Naomi? From accounting?" She had been hovering over Heero like a fly over rotting meat for weeks and had even asked him out for drinks. She aggravated me, but I did my best to blow it off. Heero is always polite to the girls in the office. And I had encouraged him to be more social after all. He tended to be standoffish around people he didn't know well. I mean around me he was his normal self, and around the other guys too I supposed, but he didn't go out of his way to make nice with people. I swallowed as my throat suddenly got very dry.
There was a very pregnant pause in the car and even in my distracted state I could tell that the two of them were communicating something back and forth. "W-What?" I croaked out glaring hard at Wufei.
"Heero was supposed to take Miss Naomi out to dinner last night. I only assumed that he had told you about his... uhm... date."
Wow. Heero had a date and Wufei actually said: 'uhm'. I felt myself slipping back into a state of shock. I sat back in the seat and ignored the sidelong glances Trowa and Wufei were exchanging. Well then. "No. No, I didn't know about it. He must have forgotten to tell me." I mumbled and turned my attention to the rapidly passing city blocks.
I chewed on that tidbit of information for the rest of our trip to the hospital. Heero and Naomi, huh? I had no friggin' clue that Heero was interested in her socially. I thought he was just putting up with her flirting out of a sense of being polite. I mean, I couldn't help notice her long legs and obviously large breasts, but then again I had a pulse when it came to sex. It was pretty stupid of me to think that Heero wouldn't. Or couldn't. I was surprised he hadn't told me though. We were close. Best friends and spent almost all our time together. I mean, I went on plenty of dates. All meaningless and pointless, but the sex was usually okay. Heero and I would even talk about it sometimes. He always claimed I had a problem with commitment... But that was different, wasn't it?
I suddenly felt very angry. Maybe everything I had ever thought about him was superficial. I had never really allowed myself to see him as anything other than... Heero. He was my friend and partner of course, but I never looked at him like a regular joe who went on dates, and ate pizza, and laughed at the stupid shit in movies. When had he decided to get a social life anyway? And how in the hell had I missed it? I never had a problem being social with people, like he did. How the hell did I miss such an important transition when I was so busy keeping him in my line of sights? I had noticed every nuance and quirk the guy ever had throughout two damn wars for Christ's sake...
"Duo?" Trowa was looking at me with the strangest expression on his face and when I looked around, I noticed we were parked outside of the hospital's emergency entrance. "Are you getting out?" He quirked an eyebrow at me as I continued to gape at him like a loon.
"Y-yeah. Thanks." I opened the door and practically fell out of the car, earning me an odd look from a passing orderly. I could see Wufei already inside through the glass and talking to a nurse, most probably checking on Heero's location and status. I meant to rush in there to hear what the lady had to say about Heero's condition, but couldn't seem to move forward from the spot I was in. I shut the car door and watched as Trowa pulled away and headed for the short term parking, as I just stood there like an idiot staring up at the huge, blue light-up sign that said: 'Emergency Entrance Only'. I must have stood there for a full five minutes before Trowa finally jogged up next to me and put a hand on my shoulder.
"Everything is going to be okay. It's easy to think the worst, but you haven't lost him. We should just go inside."
I stared at him for another whole minute before I shoved my shaking hands into my pockets and followed behind him. I hadn't been thinking that I had lost him. I'd been thinking that once I walked through those double-wide doors and saw him that there would be no going back from this one.
How I felt for him was as plain as there was a sun in the sky and Heero would know something had changed between us from the moment he saw me. Just like Wufei and Trowa did. Hell, everyone seemed to know it but us two dumb fucks. What was I going to say to him? 'Hey Heero I stumbled into your blood covered apartment and thought you were dead next to the mutilated corpse of your soon-to-be girlfriend, and wanted to tell you that I am completely and hopelessly in love with you, but I didn't know it until I thought you had been almost bludgeoned to death?' Well, if that wasn't a kick in the crotch I didn't know what was.
"Duo?"
"Yeah, Tro. I'm coming." I shoved my way through the doors and shook my head. There was definitely no going back from this one.
End Part 2
(:./ebony/drift2)
