09-Aug-2000
Title:Deliberate Caution
Author:Traed (Rayjahr@hotmail.com)
rated: R
note: this took a while to get out and sad to say the next one will probably take even longer...notice the format it out of synch, but I'm rushed so...please...enjoy.
feedback? appreciated greatly.
note: not betaed sad to say...and I apologize to my beta but like I said I'm rushed, but later, please...I'll send e-mail. I promise, forgive me :-)
--I am walking in footsteps painted in a color I cannot name,
with shame
to face my own nothingness
and your repeated words
that I felt as a casual blow.--(yet another line from a poem)
There is trouble in our cloistered paradise. I have noticed things as I do, and the tranquil waters of our closeness has been muddied.
Heero is gone.
Duo returned last night subdued and thoughtful, words that I have never before thought to put in a sentence in reference to Maxwell. He was quiet, which in itself is such an anomoly that it rates concern on many levels. But beyond that is Yuy's conspicuous absence. Quatre is puzzled and concerned, and Barton is contemplative. They feel as I do, the grey clouds that haunts us now. It has been coming for some time this disturbance, an epiphany of sorts. Our missions have been erratic and half-formed, plans that have fallen through, allowing us to survive by nothing but the skin of our teeth on too many occasions to rate coincidence. And Heero is gone.
Maxwell has yet to say anything on the subject, he just came in the house bypassing all form of greeting and heading straight for, of all things, my room. Well not my room per se, they are not asigned or anything, but it has been established silently within our ranks the way of things, and the room to the far back of the house is always mine. It is ultilitarian, and stark, comfortable for my meager needs, and simply put, mine. In his typical arrogance, or disregard, I never quite know how to catagorize this part of his personality, he just dropped his duffel, cocked his gun, shoving it under *my* pillow, closed his eyes and went to sleep. The absolute *nerve*. Hn. I don't know how Yuy puts up with it. How do you react to such unnatural change in a friend? I have never had friends before and couldn't trust myself to handle the situation suitably, so I did the next best thing. I waited.
It never occured to me to go to Winner or Barton, these moments of calm are sporadic at best and far be it for me to disturb their personal time together, besides, judging from the noise coming from behind it earlier, if I had dared to knock on the door, I might not be seeing the dawn of a new day. Winner is very particular about his pleasure.
The morning came with mocking mists of grey fog, belying the promised beauty of the day. A premonition of something. Maxwell rolled off my futon and ingnoring completely my crouched form, made his way to the bathroom. Once he was finished doing whatever, still ignoring me and walking as if in a trance he made his way to the kitchen, me trailing silently behind. Winner was of course there, with his costomary cup of tea, and a very relaxed air about him. Sometimes his morning after smugness is so cloying, it fills the room, a separate entity itself. Barton has very good hands. Normally it is a duality, Maxwell and Winner entrenched in their relaxed states almost glowing with satiation, surounding me in phermones I know I should not be able to sense, but the sensation is there none the less. The contrast between him and Maxwell is even more glaring without the shared moment. Something was very wrong.
Tired of being kept in the dark and feeling like I've sacrificed a thousand virigins to the god of my patience I finally ask, "Where's Heero?"
The flinch was infintestimal and I would have missed the minute tightening of his hand around his spoon if I had blinked, but it was there, and a telling sign. He was silent, a strange look to his eyes, and then the sides of his lips start to lift, then pause, as if he suddenly realized that his mask had fallen and that it was too late to recover his flippancy. He simply shrugged. And that was that. I inquired several more times in as many variations as I could, yet time after time the only answer was the silent lifting of his shoulders and a shuttered coldness more natural to his missing significant other.
Of course the others noticed, and by lunch time Winner was ready to crack, he does not possess much patience outside his relationship with Barton. Surprisingly though it was Barton who snapped midway through yet another of my inquiry's "Duo where the hell is Heero!? And what the fuck is going on?" Honestly I swear my jaw just dropped.
And just as Duo finally, *finally* opened his mouth to answer, our Comms. sounded. I swear God is a woman. That is the only excuse for such injustice.
End Part 3
(:./traed/caution3)
