Shinu hodo itai zo...
Heero's bleak words echoed in his head as he continued to empty the forearm gun into the other mobile suit, destroying the Leo that had almost killed Cathrine.
He had organized this mission with the specific intent to destroy this enemy base completely, and now he was committed to the attack. The resolve and cool determination Heero had shown in his attempt to self-destruct had elicited in him a desire to prove he, too - he, a no-name nobody - could have the same courage and resolve. And now, with the destruction of Heavyarms, the base would be taken with him. He had to do it.
Dying hurts like hell... But he'd already resolved to show the same courage Heero had, by self-destructing. Dying hurts like hell... But he had to do this.
He had to do it, but why did he feel so empty?
Trowa turned his head, brushing bangs out of his eyes, and tried to forget what Heero had told him. Dying hurts like hell... But it had made him laugh, bleak as it was. It was probably the truth of it that had cut him to the bone, until there really was nothing to do but laugh. He had to do this. His finger hovered over the switch.
"Cathrine! Get out of the way, I have to kill myself!" As proof of his resolve he could feel the familiar coldness seeping over his features, the one that kept the pain away. Dying hurts like hell... It still stuttered in his brain, a broken moment. He would follow Heero's choice because it was what he should do. It was the only way his life could gain value, through his death. It would hurt. But he was not afraid of pain.
"What are you talking about!? Trowa, what are you saying?" Cathrine shouted furiously up at him, her fear and confusion scrawled all over her face.
Trowa considered her upturned, wide-eyed face. He supposed he owed her, at least in part, for covering for all of his absences. But he still didn't understand her. How could she care about something she knew nothing about? She had been raised to follow her feelings.
Knowing it was a mistake, he flipped open the hatch to the cockpit, hoping he could convince her face to face to leave now, so that he could blow up the base, and himself along with it.
"You'll be killed!" Her voice echoed in his ears from only a few moments before. He didn't care if he died.
But why did that thought ring hollow...?
Her face transformed upon seeing him with the weight of realization impacting upon her, seeing his face and knowing that he would do it. Then her expression changed in the next instant from confusion to fury. Cathrine leaped nimbly across the space between them into the cockpit, landing a solid right hook and Trowa rocked back in his restraints, stunned.
"How do you think about your life?"
Her voice was insistent, demanding, her presence not to be denied. He couldn't blow up Heavyarms with her in it, anyway. His life? It had never mattered. He was a tool for the mission, nothing more.
He wanted more...
"Have you ever thought about the people who care about you?"
Did people care about him?
He wanted something, anything to fill up the hollow spaces. And death could take that all away. But somehow...death didn't cut it...
"The people who live...who will live without you won't be able to do anything but cry!"
Trowa experienced a strange frisson, suddenly seeing Quatre's face in his mind's eye, inexplicably seeing that perfect golden-haired boy, crying. Because of him. Don't cry...
He looked up to meet Cathrine's eyes.
"You're not afraid of dying. But what about life? Ne, Trowa? Are you afraid to live?"
Trowa frowned as her words struck at him with greater accuracy than the knives she wielded. Before, she'd nicked his cheek. Now, she grazed...deeper.
"So how did the mission go?" Heero inquired casually as Trowa re-entered the room, still deep in thought and frowning.
". . . . ." He looked over at the Japanese pilot. "...just fine."
Heero was carefully peeling away the layers of bandages, wincing a little as he did so.
Trowa frowned. As usual, Heero thought he could go on treating himself, relying on no one else. Well, that would have to change. If he could recognize that he wasn't enough for himself, Heero would have to, too. Besides...he wanted...
"Here, let me do that," Trowa walked over to the bedside, fixing him with a look that tolerated no argument. Heero glared but let him do it. The tall pilot unwrapped the bandages carefully, nodding approvingly as he exposed mostly-healed skin. He replaced the bulky mass that Heero had been cocooned in with a light wrapping on his left arm, which looked like it had been the worst injury.
"You should be okay if you don't strain that," Trowa cautioned, and Heero nodded curtly, then caught his wrist as he finished tying off the light dressing.
Heero's eyes were deep and peculiarly intense, more aware than he'd been in that short time after he'd recently awoken. Then, Heero had still been in the grip of the mortality that had nearly taken him. Now, he was...
Trowa remained motionless, riveted by the look in Heero's eyes. Almost hungry.
He pulled his wrist away with a contained grimace; Heero's fingers had been branded onto his flesh. "Ano...Cathrine should be fixing some food, if you're hungry," he said mildly.
The Japanese pilot remained silent as Trowa busied himself about the room, trying to bury that awkward squirm that the sight of Heero's strangely intense expression had generated. He tidied up the bedside, throwing away the discarded bandages. He finally spoke.
"Trowa...why did you save me?"
Trowa stopped. "I wasn't sure myself. And then I thought...you never had a chance to live before, did you, Heero? Like me. I guess I thought, with Wing Gundam gone, you'd have a better chance."
Heero closed his eyes. A chance to live, huh? he thought bitterly, pushing aside thoughts of a certain boy with bright eyes the color of lavender he'd spent several months with. Duo had known how to live. Maybe he could have done something with this second chance. But he, Heero, had nothing outside of the mission to turn to. And now, without a mission...
Nothing, indeed.
He could still feel Trowa's green eyes on him.
"Sure," he finally said emptily, mechanically, knowing that the lanky pilot expected him to say something.
"Why am I not convinced?" Trowa murmured.
Heero glanced over at him, then pushed himself off the bed, drawing the curtain aside to survey his surroundings. Nothing. He turned and gave Trowa a flat, dead-eyed stare. The one he used to prove he wasn't afraid of pain. To keep the emptiness at bay.
The pain, at least, he had fooled.
Trowa returned the stare. He wasn't fooled any more than the emptiness was.
"Maybe Cathrine was right," Trowa murmured, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Heero crossed his arms and faced him, scowling.
"We aren't afraid to die. We kill and we face the pain and the hurt and even...not caring...but when it comes to living..." Trowa stopped abruptly.
Heero frowned harder. These were the things he tried not to think about. This was why each mission had to consume him, why he devoted every part of himself to the mission, only the mission.
"What would you do if someone cared about you, Heero?"
Heero's eyes jerked over, startled, confronted by green eyes as intense as his own. Resolutely he pushed aside memories of clinging long strands of chestnut brown hair, wrapping around both of their bodies. The smiling mouth that had kissed him, one day. Showing him everything from A to C. All they'd had were some brief interludes. Just sex.
He blinked. Trowa was still talking. "...ne? Would you still have self-destructed?" Trowa pressed.
"Yes," Heero grated, eyes unwavering. It didn't matter. Because Duo didn't care. If he had, he would've said so. He sure ran off the mouth about everything else.
What was Trowa trying to say, anyway? That he cared? Massaka. He snorted disbelievingly.
"And another thing-" Trowa began, voice quiet but intense.
"Do you ever shut up?" Heero growled, shoving away from the wall.
Trowa almost smiled at that - him, the thought of him being considered talkative, of all people. Quiet Trowa, Cathrine called him. But he wasn't finished, and Heero would just have to listen to what he had to say. Heero was out of the war now, he had a chance to live. The way Trowa couldn't; hadn't ever. "Despite your being a perfect soldier-"
Heero was still moving forward, making thought synonymous with action. He had recalled something that had never failed to shut Duo up. He covered Trowa's lips with his own.
By default, Trowa stopped talking.
*Mission accomplished,* Heero thought with satisfaction. Trowa's tongue was stilled against his own, his lips slack and mushy with surprise. Well, at least he'd stopped talking. He pulled back.
Trowa looked like he'd been hit in the back of the head with a two-by-four. "Wh-what. . .was that?"
"That was...A," Heero replied somewhat lamely.
Trowa looked a bit puzzled. "...oh."
Heero was a bit disappointed. Duo would've gotten the joke.
"Why?"
Heero shrugged and sat on the bed, somewhat awkwardly. The silence between them almost crackled, but not with tension - he could nearly feel Trowa's confusion. "I don't love you," he replied. "And I won't pretend I do. But it helps keep the emptiness away."
Trowa turned to him, a little frown puckering his brow. "You...and Duo?"
Heero remained silent, stonily glaring at his hands.
"Damn you."
Heero looked up. "Nani?"
"Damn you," Trowa repeated, a flush of...something...staining the normally indifferent glass chips of his eyes. "That was my first kiss." He pushed away the thought of blue eyes. He hadn't been sure how to respond to Quatre's overtures of friendship, and his resulting welter of confused feelings that he'd put a careful lid over - but he realized, now that Heero had taken action, that it was Quatre he wished was in the Japanese pilot's place.
Heero shrugged uncomfortably.
He wondered what to do. He wasn't Duo - he couldn't just smooth away the awkward moment with his mouth, either talking or otherwise. Maybe it would be easiest to just leave.
"What do you want from me?" Trowa finally broke the silence.
Heero got up. "Nothing," he replied curtly. I don't need anything from you, or anyone. He closed his eyes and turned away, seeing a wide impish grin imprinted on the inside of his eyelids, that teasing grin... and something caught at his wrist. Trowa's long slender fingers were wrapped around his wrist, as he himself had caught at Trowa's earlier.
Heero gave him a sharp look. Trowa's face was inscrutable, but he tugged at Heero's wrist, a light pressure. "Don't go. You're still not healed. We can stick together, if you like."
Heero frowned. "Are you offering what I think you're offering? Do you even know?"
Trowa looked away. "...Yes. I - I admire you." He paused, his mouth shaping silent words hesitantly. "And I...I am tired, too, of being empty."
He leaned over and kissed the pilot of Heavyarms, keeping his face in place with one hand. When Trowa didn't pull away, gradually he worked his lips open and slipped his tongue inside. Trowa's responses were slow, somewhat uncertain, but he didn't pull away.
Trowa closed his eyes when Heero eased him back onto the bed, pushing at his turtleneck, and a momentary bolt of unease rippled up Trowa's spine. Resolutely he pushed it away. It keeps the emptiness away... If it could do that, maybe it could distract him from thoughts about...things he shouldn't think.
One hand moved over his chest, tracking a shivery sensation over the flat plane of muscle, causing goosebumps to rise and his mouth fell open as something else rose into Heero's touch, the lightning-quick zing of a nipple. Heero's mouth sucked hard, his tongue probing to pry that jagged shock of sensation out of him as the other hand traced a track up his inner thigh, then unzipped his pants. So fast...Heero was going so quickly...
The Japanese pilot disrobed quickly, casually, making his own clothes practically vanish. Then he knelt between Trowa's legs, pushing them apart.
"What-what are you-?" Trowa started, then his head flipped back against the bed as Heero's mouth descended, cutting off thought as that tongue teased the first drops of agitation out of him. All thoughts of too fast dissolved as the pressure, the rough suction elicited more of the pleasant shocks singing across his nerves, his skin alight. Not fast enough...
He wriggled his hips anxiously then pushed upwards, wanting more, wanting it harder and faster and his breath hitching in fits and Heero's mouth seemed just as anxious and accommodating, taking him even further.
Heero moved his head up and down more furiously, shoving a finger into Trowa, and then another one. The other pilot yelped in surprise and pain but he was already coming in Heero's mouth, and he arched his back, body thrumming with pleasure as his world narrowed down to the focused heat rushing through him, exploding into Heero's busy mouth. He released a long sigh, his body growing limp against the sheets with the exhalation.
Surreptitiously Heero spat the liquid out, using the warm fluid against the tight ring of flesh. Trowa wriggled uncomfortably as his fingers continued to move down there, then Heero pulled a startled "ah!" out of him as the probing digits encountered a spot buried deep that stoked the warmth that had just filled him.
"H-Heero...what are you doing?" Trowa was confused.
"Hold still," Heero uttered, fingers still moving, pressing that spot.
Trowa shuddered then his hips began to rock upwards, trying to meet that wonderful sensation. His breath trembled from his lips. Too much...it was too much, he'd just come so fast and now Heero was trying to pull even more from his body.
Heero pulled his fingers out abruptly, and Trowa started, snapped out of the delightful haze that was coming over him again. "Get up and turn over," he ordered.
"Huh?" Trowa frowned. He wasn't sure...he'd heard something once...was Heero going to do what he thought he was going to do?
Heero's face was every bit as contained as it normally was, but there was a wild glitter in his bright blue eyes. And he was very aroused, from the look of it. Trowa blinked a bit as he caught sight of Heero's hard-on.
Then Heero was pushing him over and he was on his hands and knees. He could feel something wet pressing up in the crack of his bottom and his face suddenly went blank. Heero was going to do it.
Heero paused, his hands hooking around Trowa's body. With a slow, determined shove, Heero pushed himself into the other pilot. Trowa's body was very still underneath him, and for a brief instant he wondered if he should be doing this - at least Duo had asked him, first, before he'd done it - he wasn't entirely sure that Trowa knew what was going on.
Then he was diverted by the warm soft heat surrounding him, and began to thrust, pushing himself all the way inside and gripping Trowa's waist in both hands as he retreated and rocked back, mouth open in a silent cry of ecstasy.
Duo...Duo...
Heero's hipbones beat a staccato rhythm against Trowa's bottom, and the brown-banged pilot bit his lip hard, his fists clutching at the sheets. He hung his head, trying to drive the image of Quatre's face from his head even as Heero pushed harder and faster, his fingers digging bruises into Trowa's hips. He shouldn't be thinking about Quatre like this. Quatre...he wouldn't want what Heero was giving to him, not this.
Heero stilled, pumping his seed deep inside of him. He rested on top of Trowa for an instant, frowning irritably. He was just glad he hadn't said it out loud. Then he pulled out and relaxed onto the sheets, noticing only when Trowa lowered himself carefully to the bed that the other boy was bleeding.
Trowa avoided Heero's eyes. He didn't know what was wrong with him. The Japanese pilot had said it helped keep the emptiness away. Instead, he only felt worse. And somehow those thoughts were tangled up with a bright-haired, innocently smiling blue-eyed....
Innocent.
"I didn't mean to."
Trowa rolled over, pulled a fold of the sheet to drape over his body. "I know."
End of Part 1
(:./talya/loss1)
