24 Aug 2000
Emily, this one's for you -- good to know someone else's twisty mind works like mine!
This one also goes out to all you happy people obsessed with the boys-in-boarding-school angle -- you know who you are! <<makes smooching sounds>> Well, hey, I'm one too.... -- Lilias
Warnings: Shounen-ai headed in the general direction of yaoi (2x1) -- we may
have lemon sign, folks. I don't think it breaks an R rating, though, so
maybe it's just lime.
OOC? Not to me!
Disclaimer: I don't own these delightful people (Sunrise and the Sotsu Agency do, and Bandai gets to pass them around), nor do I intend to infringe upon the rights of their owners. I don't own the song, either, obviously.
Like it? More's on the way....
/When nothing remains
I come to you/
Two nights after their basketball game, when the new moon and a low fog made conditions perfect, they made efficient work of the Oz base. It was a clean strike -- no one ever saw Deathscythe coming, and Wing's long-range capabilities were ideal for shooting past the defending Leos to blow the tower to smithereens. Not even a challenge. But afterwards, Duo had to admit he was concerned.
He'd thought maybe having that girl around would change things, bring Heero back to himself. It wasn't happening, though, and the situation was becoming critical. Wing's pilot didn't seem to be sleeping at all, and the strain was starting to show. All his training wouldn't keep him alive if he went into a real battle like this, and they both knew it. Sometimes Duo wanted to march across the hallway and pound some sense into him. <What was that again, Maxwell? A clever double entendre? Oh, that's a good one. Your late-night fantasies aside, what would jumping him really accomplish? You won't be much good to the cause once he decapitates you.> But as with most delusions, the more he thought about it, the better the idea seemed. It could be just the thing to shock him out of this potentially deadly paralysis.
All of which was why he was at the door in the middle of the night, shifting his bare feet on the cold tiles of the hallway floor. Must've been nightmares again -- through the thin walls, he'd heard a strangled cry, and then slightly quieter cursing. And now he was in there pacing. Duo knew the pattern -- any minute now he was going to switch on his laptop, and its blue light would come shining through the gaps above and below the door. It had to be now, before he managed to clamp it all down again.
And if you're storming a lion's den, why bother to knock? He pushed the door open, closing it behind him so he could lean against it with mock nonchalance.
The lion stopped pacing, but only long enough to register his intrusion. "What do you want?"
"You okay?"
"Aa."
"You don't look okay. You don't sound okay. How much sleep have you gotten in the past month? Sooner or later it's going to break you, if you don't find a way of dealing with it."
"I am dealing with it."
"Oh, yeah. Denial's working really well for you, I can tell. That's why you wake up screaming, right? Let me guess. Slow-motion footage of a certain Oz shuttle going down in flames. On a continuous loop. Shutting down those nukes didn't shut down the projector, did it?"
Heero had stopped moving, finally, and his eyes were intent. Dangerously so. At least he was listening, for once.
"So was that the only mistake you've ever made? Maybe not. Tell me if I nail this one, too: first the shuttle, then every other slip-up. Neatly catalogued, date-stamped, in handy chronological order. Is that what finally does it?"
Heero wheeled away from him, staring fixedly out the window. It hurt to drag all this out of him, and Duo could only hope that this was going to work. "You know what you need?"
The other pilot turned only his head, as if to indicate _very_ reluctant attention.
"A distraction." He came closer, not quite daring to touch. Not yet. "My specialty."
His voice was even closer -- close enough that Heero could feel warmth against his back. He turned around, and Maxwell was right under his nose. His eyes -- they were huge in his pointed face, full of something he didn't quite understand. Hungry, almost. Did they always look like that, and he just hadn't been paying attention? He swallowed, trying to make sense of this bizarre one-sided conversation. Maybe Maxwell was right, and the sleep deprivation was starting to get to him.
He was definitely too tired to sort this out, his defenses were too close to being down, for one thing -- and then all his systems went off-line when Maxwell leaned in and kissed him. He wasn't sure how long it lasted, but it felt like a long, long time before Maxwell stepped back, breathing unevenly. His face was flushed, eyes dark with heat. "Distracted yet?"
He thought about it. "More."
It was all he could manage, but it was enough. Duo smiled. <Anytime, anytime. Jesus, I can't believe he isn't throttling me. Okay. Easy, Maxwell. Go slow, or you'll just be adding another nightmare to the pile.> Had to keep this simple. No way of knowing how far Heero'd gone before -- although, judging from the way he was shaking, he might never have been even this far. So he deliberately limited his invasion, trying to keep himself from losing it entirely while backing Heero carefully to the bed.
Meanwhile, Heero was trying unsuccessfully to navigate sensory overload. It felt strangely as if his joints were melting -- all of him coming unglued. It was all coming back to him: all the times he'd watched those hands (steering the carrier, handling a basketball, curled loosely on an iron railing). And now they were gradually unmaking him. For just how long had Duo Maxwell been driving him crazy? If this was distraction, he wasn't sure he ever wanted to focus again. Oh, but lying down was even better. Now it didn't matter anymore that his knees wouldn't hold him up. Letting the world narrow to the feeling of that mouth on him, the sounds escaping both of them as their bodies rocked together. Unbelievable.
Duo decided he had never seen anything as beautiful as that face below him: steel-blue eyes unfocused, flailing for comprehension, still not sure what this was building to. <Let it go, Heero. Let me show you.> They were still mostly dressed (part of his 'take-it-slow' campaign), but that wasn't doing anything to deaden the sensations that were overtaking him. This wasn't supposed to be about himself, after all -- but the mere friction of Heero's restless thrashing was threatening to send him straight into orbit. Summoning all his concentration, he shifted to his side, able now to get a hand past the stubborn elastic. Heero almost came off the bed as skin slid against skin, biting back a cry that turned into a long moan as the patient hand didn't stop -- didn't even pause. Slow, hard strokes alternated with light ones, keeping him from relaxing into a rhythm. Duo made it last as long as he could, but long abstinence had made him impatient. <Please, let there be a next time, so I can do this right.> Grinding helplessly against him, Duo felt the inevitable building inside -- and went willingly up and over the edge after him when Heero arched with release.
Gratefully easing his weight off his stiffened left elbow, Duo relaxed down into the available square inches of pillow. It had definitely been too long, if all it took was a little friction. God, but just looking at him might have done it. A hand tightened in his loosened hair, so he stopped trying to find a comfortable position and just burrowed into the salty curve of the other pilot's neck. Smiling, he told himself he would just nap for a minute.
Waking up hours later, he smiled again. <Finally, he's asleep.> The bed wasn't exactly wide enough for both of them -- but Heero's grip on him hadn't loosened, and he didn't want to wake him. So he gave up on the idea of getting any more sleep, at least that night. It wasn't even a sacrifice, trading sleep and circulation for this. Besides, there was always the chance that he might have another nightmare.
He finally did wriggle out of that grip a bit before dawn, making it to the shower and back to his room before the hallways filled with sleepy dorm-mates on their way to breakfast. The door across the hall was still closed when he checked back after first period psychology, still closed at noon when he ducked into the dorm during lunch. Starting to worry, he risked knocking, then risked opening the door when there was no answer.
The room was empty; the bed had been made, the laptop was shut, and Heero's books were piled neatly on his desk. <This is so very not good. Should have known this would happen. Why didn't I keep my hands off him?> But he knew the answer to that one, didn't he? <Can't let him disappear like this. Where would he go? Wing.> Cursing under his breath, he headed for the wooded parkland south of the school.
The two Gundams were hidden several miles apart, and he needed Deathscythe's specialized sensors to figure out where Wing had been stashed -- so it was late in the afternoon before he slid out of the undergrowth next to the white mobile suit. And stopped.
Heero was sitting calmly in the open hatch, surrounded by a tangle of wires, using a screwdriver to close one of a number of open panels in the side of the cockpit. He looked down just as calmly when Duo vaulted onto one of Wing's huge metal feet.
Duo looked confused, staring up as if asking for some sort of explanation. "You're -- you're okay. Right? So why are you out here?" Heero definitely looked fine -- he looked great, in fact, but he also didn't act as if anything out of the ordinary had happened last night. Anything at all. Duo felt like he'd taken a swift kick to the gut.
Tightening his brows in an effort to understand what he'd done wrong, Heero felt uncomfortably at a loss. He'd awakened with an idea about how to reroute Wing's communications circuits so as to maximize sensor efficiency -- for some reason, it had seemed easier to concentrate this morning -- and so naturally he hadn't wasted any time getting out here to see if it worked. And it had. He didn't think that explanation would take the hurt out of the other pilot's eyes, though, and to his acute discomfort he realized that was something he wanted to do. But he hadn't come up with an answer fast enough, it seemed, and Maxwell was already gone.
End of Part 3
-- -to be continued, of course!
(:./lilias/beauty3)
