16-Nov-2001
Title: Overcome, Behold
Author: Sparcck
Rating: PG-13
Archive: GW Addiction, Steel (www.steelsong.com), Moments of Rapture (zerotwofan.com/rapture/), Boys Next Door (www.discarnate.com/boysnextdoor/)
Genre: Angst, shonen ai
Warnings: Introspective!Heero, possible start of a series
Pairings: 1+2
Spoilers: None
Summary: Even perfect soldiers get scared.
Disclaimer: All characters, names, places, etc. belong to Bandai, Sunrise, and Sotsu Agency. Do I own them? Of course not. Will you sue me? I hope not.
Note: This was written for the Moments of Rapture Contest. I was having evil 1x2 block, and this totally cleared it up! Not to mention Sharon's one of my favorite people ever, so I hope you like it.
Thanks: To Chrissy and Maureen, the beta-readers from Heaven (or Beta-reading Heaven at least, because I'm pretty sure they're both a little evil despite that innocent routine they try to pull off).
Feedback: All comments, criticisms, flames, marriage proposals, and death threats should be sent, with care, to sparcck.
The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.
-Aeschylus
October 200
There are times when he looks so delicate, and all my old fears come back to me.
No. Not delicate. Brittle, maybe, is a better word.
I don't like spiders. I don't care for large bodies of water, except when viewed from the small cockpit of a mobile suit in outer space. Somehow, it's not the same from a shuttle's vantage point. It will never be the same.
But those things aren't real fears. They are things I will avoid if possible, accept if necessary.
Real fear I learned at the same time I learned about other things, better things. Like trust. And passion. And maybe love.
But that one I haven't quite gotten the hang of yet.
And I think Duo understands. He knows what I'm afraid of, but he doesn't know when. And he doesn't really know why or how.
The why and the how are my department. After years of being given duties to perform, it makes me feel better to have something to figure out.
The times when I get afraid again are getting fewer and further between. But still, they are present, and it makes me worry for him and for us.
It's when he stops sometimes, and looks far away for a moment. Or when he comes across an article about us as pilots. Or when he opens up that box he keeps under our bed, filled with mementos from a war I would rather forget.
How can he have been a soldier like me? How can such an expressive face and graceful hands have taken part in death? I see it on his face, but it's almost as if I can't reconcile it with the boy I knew in 195.
Such small things that make me afraid. I try to tell myself it's better than long, spindly legs crawling across my face in a prison cell. Better than waking up with legs stiff and numb from a crash landing in an ocean that, for all my research, never looked as expansive as it did close up.
But it's not. All because the fear itself stems from the very thing I'm supposed to love. Huge plum eyes and soft skin and a smile that is at times still deceptive.
So if I know, I should be able to overcome it.
It's more difficult than I thought it would be.
He shifts on the couch, rolling his head over the back and watching me move around the kitchen. "Hey."
"Hey."
"What do you think about taking a few days off. Maybe going out to Kobe."
"Mm. Maybe."
He seems to consider this, then pushes himself off the couch and comes into the kitchen. He leaves the television on, and I can hear the Channel 3 News with Tomoko Takahashi droning on softly to no one.
He stares at me a moment, leaning in the doorway. I pretend not to notice and very carefully put the milk back in the fridge.
I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. I wonder if he can reconcile my face with the time we spent with each other during the war. I worry that he can, much too easily.
"Heero."
"Yeah."
He comes close to me, standing close enough so I can feel the displacement of the air behind me. "You're doing it again."
"What?" It's a familiar opening line, with a familiar response.
And then he says: "That thing. That worrying thing."
"Hn." Not a lie, exactly. He knows I don't like to talk about this.
He sighs, slides his hands onto my waist and down to cup my hips. I feel the point of his chin against my back between my shoulder blades.
"Okay," he says. "But I think we should go away for a little while. Only a few days. Break up the routine a bit."
"You have a routine?"
He laughs softly, and now I feel his nose pressing against me. "Gotta love that sense of humor." His voice is muffled into my shirt.
"Let me finish up in here. Then we'll talk." My voice is calm only through years of training.
I feel his hands run down my arms and watch his fingers slip over my knuckles. They're white where I'm clutching the counter edge. I dip my head back to touch his.
He leans briefly into the movement then steps back. "You're the boss," he says and presses a kiss against my shoulder before quietly leaving the room.
I have to force my hands to relax on the metal edge of the counter.
Go away to Kobe for a little while. Maybe that will help me feel better.
But I know it won't. Because there will always be a next time, when I feel like this again. I need a permanent solution.
I stare at the formica counter. We're going to have to talk to our landlord about getting a new runner for where the sink meets the counter, because this was rusting when we moved in here.
It makes me think of the only other time Duo and I shared quarters, too close, for too long. It's the stem of all my fears about Duo, the scene I imagine he's imagining when he looks past me sometimes. I don't know how he couldn't be thinking it, how he couldn't remember it.
It's such a sharp memory, so clear even after all this time: back during the war, in the boy's dormitory of our third school jump -- one particular day when my control had slipped.
Duo and I had slept together the night before for the first time. He introduced me to passion, a frighteningly easy emotion that I seemed to have taken to immediately.
But looking back on it, I can barely remember how it happened. Just that it had.
When Duo got out of the shower that morning, I noticed bruises on his pale skin, bite marks on his shoulder, fingerprints indented on his thighs.
He just smiled at me, a lazy grin, and asked me what I wanted to do that night.
My body reacted instantly, heat surging through me.
"Why are you looking at me like I have eight heads?" He licked two fingers and was scrubbing at his cheek, letting long digits brush the corners of full lips. "Is there toothpaste on my face?"
I shook my head slowly, and he shrugged, pulling on his uniform.
My fingers tingled, and I fisted my hands at my sides, trying to calm my pulse, steady my breathing. It was so difficult to breathe. I tugged on my collar.
He slanted a glance at me in the mirror as he fastened his tie. "Hot in here, or what?"
I was on him in two strides, pushing him up against the wall and holding him there with my lower body. He laughed breathlessly, and all I could think about was wiping that look from his face, making him feel like I felt -- hot, dizzy, out of control.
I remember the feel of his skull under my hand, the ridges defined against my palm as I dug through his thick mass of hair. I remember him swallowing around my other hand where it pressed him into the wall by his throat. I remember just feeling a heaviness in my belly, something trying to get out, and this sound in his throat like I was hurting him as he sagged against me...
I didn't touch him for weeks after that, not until much later, when I broke him out of prison, not until I was able to look at him without him burning me up inside.
Is this the passion that Duo's tried to teach me about? Or is this the reaction of an animal to stimulus? Because I don't want that for Duo.
So until I figure it out--
A familiar hand on the juncture of my shoulder and neck. "Until you figure what out?"
I snap my head up and find him very close to me, leaning his hip on the counter. "What?"
"Were you talking to yourself?" He eyes me suspiciously, like I'm keeping something from him.
I don't say anything.
"Heero." A familiar opening line.
I can't do it. "Duo."
"Heero," he says again, a bit more sharply.
I give in. He knew I would. "Yeah."
"You're doing it again," he says, his hands on my face.
"What?"
"That thing." Softly now, and his hands move into my hair. "That worrying thing."
There's a heavy pause and his hands tighten, fisting in my hair, pulling it uncomfortably tight against my skull.
"I know."
There's another pause and he smiles suddenly, brilliantly. And for one moment, I forget my fear.
"There. That wasn't so hard, now was it?"
My mouth quirks up on one side, in a gesture that he taught me years ago. "You know it was."
He waves his hand. "Regardless. Now. What's going on?"
I move away from him and into the living room, sitting on the couch. He doesn't like talking on the couch.
He frowns, his eyes narrowing, and he perches on the coffee table directly across from me, his knees bumping mine.
"Do I ever scare you?"
He cocks his head back a bit, his brow furrowing. "Scare me. Like jumping out of a closet scare me or forgetting to call when you work late scare me?"
I roll my eyes. "No, like physically."
"No," he says immediately, then he looks over my shoulder for just a moment, leaning back with his hands flat on the table and his face gets very still, and it's moments like these that make fear run cold though my veins. Fear that he'll leave me, fear that he can't leave me, fear that somewhere I screwed up and I won't be able to fix it this time.
My belly tightens.
"No," he says again, more decisively. Matter of fact. Duo-like.
I nod slowly but I don't speak. He's looking at me, seems to be waiting for something else, another part to this. But there is no other part. There's only me and him and this fear.
What can I say to that expectant face? I have an overwhelming urge to hit something.
He tilts his head, brushes his bangs out of his eyes.
I suddenly don't want to talk about this anymore and I lean back, putting my hands behind my head. "So when do you want to take off?"
His eyes darken. "Are you kidding me? Do you think I'm that easily distracted?"
I shift uncomfortably on the couch.
"I want to help you," he says, an edge to his voice. "I want to see you okay."
Frustrated, I ball my hands into fists in my hair. "I am okay--"
Almost without thinking, he leans forward and pulls my hands away from my head, lacing his fingers through mine. "Most of the time, yeah, you are. But sometimes you get this look--"
"Sometimes you get this look," I say sharply and I jerk my hands away.
A confused frown mars his forehead.
"I'm sorry," I say.
"For what?" He chuckles softly. "Geez, Heero, I'm not gonna cry if you yell at me."
"I didn't yell," I say sullenly.
"Uh-huh." His eyes are narrowed again, pensive, trying to peel away my layers in that uncanny way he's had since the day we met. Purple irises glitter behind half-lowered lids.
I know he would never lie to me. Why can't I tell him?
"I'm not afraid of you, Heero."
"Have you ever been?" My heart is pounding. I don't want to hear him say yes. I honestly don't know what I'd do, as irrational as it is. More and more this seems to be about something I'm not yet able to grasp, or, if I'm being honest with myself, something I'm not yet able to admit to myself or to Duo. It makes all off this so much harder. So I have to steel myself for what may come.
Cold.
"No, never."
Disbelief.
I sit up and I grab his face. Pure instinct. "Never?"
He winces a bit and I hastily let go, jerking away from him. There are little red marks where my thumb and forefinger held his chin.
Sick.
I honestly feel like I'm going to throw up. I always lose control, even though I try so hard not to.
"Hey, hey. You didn't hurt me. And I wasn't afraid," he says, leaning forward and putting his hands on my knees.
"I was," I choke out.
He's silent, his thumbs slowly stroking the inner indentations of my kneecaps.
"I'm afraid of losing control around you. I'm afraid I'll hurt you."
"Just me?" he asks quietly.
I nod.
"Why?"
"I don't think when I'm with you."
"But why?" he insists.
I'm silent, studying his face. Upturned nose, cheeks finally losing their baby-fat, wide mouth, pointed chin. Thick-lashed, oddly colored eyes. But it's what's behind all that that makes me feel heady and unbalanced.
"I can't," I say, and I have to struggle to keep the flatness out of my tone, imagining the look on his face if I try to shut him out. "Do you know why I feel like this?"
He shakes his head, a smile pulling at his lips. Then he braces himself on my knees and leans over my lap, his breath warm on my face. "I was a soldier, too, you know."
I flinch. "I know."
"I was there with you through everything. And you were next to me, too. Right? Partner?"
I'm silent as he studies my face. He was there, it just seems like so long ago, yet like yesterday and I don't understand how people move past things like this. He told me not to bury it after we moved in together but it's like there's nothing to say even though there's so much...
He pushes an index finger against the middle of my forehead, an odd little gesture he's just always done and I never questioned. "We'll figure it out," he says.
"Duo." I bridge the small distance between us and press my lips to his gently. But there's something about his smooth mouth under mine, the way he tilts his head to better fit himself to me that gets my heart pounding.
He slips his tongue into my mouth quickly before pulling back.
"Does this hurt?" he asks, crawling into my lap, pressing me back against the couch.
"No." I furrow my brow.
"Does this hurt?" He puts two hands on my shoulders, slides them to frame my throat.
"Duo--"
He squeezes a bit, his tongue peeking out from between two rows of straight white teeth that he's bared unconsciously.
I move my head a little, twisting it to the right, and the pressure grows. He grinds his hips into my lap and I feel myself respond, my heart rate increasing.
"Does this. Hurt."
"No," I say, and my voice is a bit breathless. "No, it feels... it's good."
"Mm." He leans forward and bites my shoulder through the thin cotton of my t-shirt. Hard. Slow.
My hips jerk up and a sound that I've heard in my dreams a million times since the day it happened pierces the still air around us. Only it's not him this time. It's me. And it's not a sound of pain. It sounds like one, but it doesn't mean that.
Something is nagging at the back of my brain, but I can't comprehend it, not with Duo squirming on my lap the way he is, his teeth locked onto the fleshy cap of my shoulder, a slow burn making its way through me.
"Duo," I manage to get out, his hands squeezing even tighter. I twist my head again and graze my open mouth against his temple. I want something so badly... "Duo, don't-- I can't--"
He releases my throat and the rush of air into my lungs spins me further out of reality. He grabs my chin and kisses me hard, our teeth clicking together before he angles my head to the right and sighs contentedly.
Duo. Duo. I'm so safe here.
His long fingers splay across my chest, kneading the muscles there; I make that noise again and it doesn't sound at all like I remembered it sounding.
My arms lock around him. I can almost understand this, if he would let me think for a second.
He pulls away abruptly, his lips reddened, pulled into a little smirk. "Did that hurt?"
"No." Almost have it.
I reach for him again, but he presses a kiss to my forehead then stands, walking backwards towards the hall. "Think about when you want to take off. I'll tell Une on Monday morning."
"Duo." I'm frustrated. I want an answer to this. "Duo. I don't understand. I'm going to need a more permanent solution."
He pauses in the hallway and his small smile blooms into a full-fledged grin. "You got it, babe." He winks and then is off towards our room, his maddening off-key whistling trailing behind him.
I consider this for a moment. I got it?
His boots and mine next to the front door. Magnets on the fridge like a normal couple. Our uniform jackets side by side in the front closet and him whistling as he opens and closes drawers in our room down the hall.
I got it.
It's not Duo, I realize, that makes me afraid. He doesn't do anything other than be himself. No apologies; this is something we agreed on after the war was over. We were who we were. Duo Maxwell and Heero Yuy. Fake names hiding real people. Strong people. Partners in war and partners in this after war life we're trying to get used to.
Partners. I look again at our boots next to each other, one of his leaning up against one of mine, laces done up almost uncharacteristically neat.
Partners.
I find myself at our bedroom threshold, watching him fold clothes -- poorly -- that he brought back from the coin-laundry this morning.
He seems to sense me there and stops to look at me. "You get it?"
I cross to him, remove the shirt he's clutching like a lifeline and slowly draw him towards me. His arms naturally curl around my waist and ribcage. "Yes. I think so."
He leans against me in that Duo-way of his: it's an aggressive lean, one with force behind it like he's daring me to hold him up.
So I push back in my way, my arms crossing over his back and pulling him closer. "Yes," I say again, a little more forcefully.
"Good," he says roughly, and the nimble fingers of one hand steal up the back of my shirt to play along my spine, knuckles pressing into the small of my back.
He has issues that need to be resolved, too. It makes me feel better and worse at the same time. "It'll..." I pause, toying with the end of his braid, pulling the strands between clenched fingers. "Adjusting will take a while."
"Duh." He turns his head and his tongue flickers out to wet my collarbone.
I shiver with pleasure this time; fears forgotten. Just another thing to overcome, like the tickle of spider's legs against my cheek.
"Hm." He pushes my sleeve up to bunch into my armpit, and the fingers of his right hand smooth over the teeth marks in my flesh. "Not bad."
"I bet I could do better," I hear myself say.
He leans his forehead against mine and smiles. "Oh, yeah, tough guy?"
I snap my mouth closed and he leaps back, flinging a not-so-folded shirt into my face.
"Gotta catch me first!"
He dashes past me before I can even move to get the material off my head. I hear his laughter trailing behind him and the thump of a body bouncing off the wall as he rounds the corner into the living room.
There are all these things I still don't know, all these emotions I can't puzzle out.
"Heero, I said catch me!"
But if I can overcome this one thing, I think it'll get better. Just a little bit.
No apologies.
"Dammit, Yuy, don't make me come back in there!"
Later, when I catch him, I'll throw him to the floor in front of the bathroom and all the air will come rushing from his lungs, but the thought that I'm hurting him won't even enter my mind because of the way his eyes light up with determination and the equal strength he shows when he suddenly kicks out, sweeping my feet from under me. I'll go crashing to the floor and he'll laugh at the look on my face until he can barely move.
Mission: overcome my fears.
"Hee-ee-ro," he whines and I smile.
Behold: my permanent solution.
The End
Hit me baby one more time --> sparcck
(:./sparcck/overcome)
