5 Sep 2002
Title: An Expert in the Field 3/3
Author: Lilias (Liliascrescens@cs.com)
Rating: R
Pairing: 2xH
What to expect: Hetero-ai, lime, occasional bad language. Set 3 or 4 years after EW, so it's AU in the way all possible-future fics necessarily are. Disclaimer: GW belongs to Sunrise, the Sotsu Agency, and Bandai, and I intend no infringement upon their rights.
Notes: This chapter is especially indebted to Em; when I was stuck at the beginning of the end, she turned to me and said, "They should be on the roof." And so they are.
This hasn't been beta-read, so don't blame anything on Dalton. -_-;;
Clari buzzed her in without asking any questions, but Hilde knew there would be a thorough interrogation as soon as she got upstairs. She leaned back against the mirrored wall of the elevator with a shuddering sigh, trying to get her racing thoughts under some semblance of control. Four years of self-control, of careful concealment--and all for nothing.
"I'm an idiot," she informed her reflection. "Look up 'stupid fool' in the dictionary, and there I'll be."
Her image regarded her scornfully, dull blue eyes set in a face so pale it looked greenish under the fluorescent lights. She sighed in frustrated annoyance and rubbed fiercely at her cheeks in an effort to bring healthy color to them. By the time the doors opened on the fifteenth floor, she had only succeeded in putting angry red streaks across the pallid skin.
"Lovely," she muttered. "Now Clari'll think I left because he was pummeling me." She stuck out her tongue at the mirror and dragged herself out of the elevator.
The door to Clari's apartment stood open, and her voice filtered out into the hall. "It sounds like she's--I will. You get some sleep." There was the sliding click of a phone being returned to its cradle.
As Hilde closed the door and set down her bag, her friend tripped briskly down the hallway in a cactus-print bathrobe and fuzzy purple slippers.
"You look terrible. Hug?" she offered, holding out both arms.
"Hug," Hilde agreed, leaning her forehead on Clari's shoulder with an exhausted sigh. "I want to hit the reset button and make it so tonight never happened."
"That bad, huh?" Clari drew back to gaze at her assessingly.
"Worse," Hilde groaned, sliding out of her jacket. "It's like a bad dream. I keep waiting to wake up--" She winced, remembering her most recent awakening, and buried her burning face in her coat while she waited for Clari to extract a hanger from the closet.
"Whatever it is, it can't be that horrible," Clari assured her. "Come on--I've got a half-gallon of mocha ripple and a couple of spoons."
An hour later, Clari was sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, licking her spoon while she fixed Hilde with a thoughtful stare. "Go over this one more time, Schbeiker. You read him the riot act about flirting with you, right?"
"Right," Hilde confirmed dully, shoveling another scoop of melting brown goo into her mouth. "And he said he was sorry. And then we watched 'Bride of the Monster.'"
"And then you fell asleep," Clari prompted. "Together. What was the thought process behind that decision, again?"
Hilde shook her head in mute despair.
"So then you had a--you know, a tasty dream. And when you woke up, you were all over him like a horny Pekingese," Clari finished thoughtfully. "Whoa. So much for the riot act."
Hilde shoved the carton aside. "Can I hit the reset button on me, and make it so I wasn't ever born?"
"A little late," Clari observed. "But I'm missing the part where you explain why this situation has to be a train wreck; it takes two to tangle, after all."
"It's tango, you nut. And we weren't--I mean, he wasn't--" Hilde put both hands over her face, pressing her palms against her eyelids until she saw nothing but stars. "If you could have seen the look on his face. He was so--"
"Surprised?" Clari offered hopefully. "Caught up in a whirlwind of passion?"
"Disgusted." Hilde spoke around her shielding hands. "He looked like somebody just dumped a bucket of rats in his lap."
"I don't believe it for a minute," her friend insisted. "It was dark, right? Maybe you didn't have your eyes all the way open?"
"They were open. And it wasn't that dark."
"But what about--I mean, there are other ways of knowing his position on all this, if you get me."
Hilde blushed hotly, but shook her head. "That's not proof of anything but good circulation. Probably he was dreaming about somebody else, and then he woke up and 'Ew, it's not this month's centerfold after all.'"
"Huh." Clari twiddled her toes for a moment, thinking. "I'm just having trouble believing that he'd feel that way, I guess." She paused, and her toes wiggled more quickly. "Are you sure--"
"What?" Hilde demanded.
"Hilde. What kind of look d'you suppose you had on your face?"
Hilde stared at her, a strange stillness taking over her limbs. "What are you talking about?" she asked slowly.
Clari seemed to have settled on a plan of attack, and now she continued with more confidence. "He called over here, you know. Before."
"Oh." Hilde pulled her knees up to her chest in a defensive huddle.
"To make sure I'd be up when you got here. He sounded terrible, Hil--not frantic, just really quiet."
Hilde winced. How long would it take, she wondered, before she stopped feeling his emotions as sharply as her own?
"He said he'd screwed up big time, and that you were really upset. But I shouldn't make you talk about it unless you wanted to." She snorted. "Right, like I'd let you sit around and stew, when--"
Hilde was still processing Clari's first words. "Wait a minute. He screwed up?"
Clari nodded. "Didn't sound to me like he was icked. Sounded more like he thought you were."
"Oh." Hilde stared into the bowl of her spoon, finding no answers in her own distorted, upside-down reflection.
"Of course, there's only one way to know for sure...." Clari trailed off with a meaningful shrug.
Hilde winced again. Of course there was. "You make it sound like it's easy, and it's not. You know how I feel about--"
"Exactly. And that's the problem." Clari pointed her spoon sternly at Hilde. "I know how you feel. Don't you think it's about time he did?"
"I can't," Hilde insisted miserably. "Maybe there'll be a right time to tell him, someday. But this isn't it."
"Just don't wait too long," Clari advised. She hooked a finger over the limp rim of the ice-cream carton and stood up, holding out a hand for Hilde's spoon before sweeping off to the kitchen.
Left alone with her thoughts, Hilde dropped her head into her hands. She felt numb, bruised, as though she had been buffeted by repeated blows. Certainly too numb to make huge, important decisions. Tomorrow would be soon enough, she assured herself. There was plenty of time to look this in the eye.
But was there? How much longer could she go on like this, living in limbo, waiting for 'someday?' And if, by some cosmic freak of chance, Clari was actually right about Duo's reaction....
Her head came up. "Clari?"
"Mm?"
"I need to go home." Hilde scrambled to her feet and started scouting around for her shoes.
"Of course you do." Clari looked very pleased with herself. "I'll drive you."
Hilde had her key in the lock and one hand on the knob when she stopped, turning to stare along the empty hallway toward the stairwell door. After several minutes of deliberation, she extracted the key and headed for the stairs.
Five flights to the roof: a familiar trek, one she had made a hundred times with an armload of beers or sodas. A telescope, once. So it couldn't be the climb that was making her short of breath.
Three more cracked concrete steps, and she had reached the door; one last deep breath, and she turned the corner.
Tucked into the space between the brick tower of the stairwell and the roof's edge was an unlikely oasis: a battered lawn chair and an even more rickety chaise longue, both of them trailing limp ribbons of loose webbing. An upended milk crate with a radio perched on top. The stand for a telescope.
It was an extra living room, an escape hatch, a secret hideout--the place where they'd had half a million conversations since the war. Their place.
And as she had suspected, Duo was already there: stretched out on the chaise, staring up toward the curving cityscape overhead. He glanced over at her as she approached, then looked away again.
"Didn't know if you'd be coming back."
Hilde curled herself into the vacant chair, wrapping her arms around her knees. "Looks like I did."
"You okay?" He still wasn't looking at her.
"Yeah. You?"
"Yeah."
A long silence. She leaned her head against the back of the chair, trying to think of a place to start.
Just as Hilde was about to speak, Duo began, "I was thinking that once it gets to be eight-thirty or so, I could go down and talk to Bruce."
Hilde lifted her head to stare at him. What could their landlord possibly have to do with anything?
"About the lease," Duo continued. "We've always been on time with rent, so I figure he won't screw us over too much if you want out early. Or you could always find somebody else to take over my room, if you'd rather keep the place."
Hilde finally found her voice. "What are you talking about, exactly?"
"It's just--I mean, I'd understand if you didn't want to live together any more, if--" He took a deep breath, hands curling into fists. "If you didn't feel safe here. With me."
"No." Hilde shook her head quickly, then realized with horror that Duo thought she was confirming his fears. She swung her legs down, turning in her chair until she could grip the arm of his chaise. "I feel safe with you," she insisted. "Safest."
Duo glanced up only for a moment, but the disbelief in his eyes made her throat ache.
"We can talk about this," she told him, hoping it was true.
"What's to talk about?" he demanded. "You said not to do it again. And I did. End of story."
Hilde flinched at the finality of his tone. Nice work, Schbeiker: way to trigger every guilt complex he's got. Good thing Deathscythe wasn't parked out back any more, or he'd have been halfway across the solar system by now. No more time for stalling; she had to fix this.
"That--that wasn't--" She stopped, took a bracing breath, and tried again. "Who says you did anything?"
Duo was staring at her as though she had sprouted an extra head. "What?"
"Seems to me you're the one who should be applying for a restraining order," she muttered.
His expression shifted, confusion giving way to a focused concentration that was all too familiar. Hilde could practically see the puzzle pieces being rearranged inside his head as he considered the implications of this revelation, oblique though it was. "But you said--"
"I know what I said. It just--it wasn't really what I--it's more complicated than that." Her cheeks felt incandescent, and she wondered just how red her face must be.
When she risked a look up, Duo was still watching her with the same intent stare--as though Hilde were a sparking circuit board, and he was seconds away from finding the faulty connection.
And even though she had come back to do precisely this--to drop her guard, to get everything into the open--at the moment of revelation, Hilde lost all forward momentum.
"What I mean is, I--" She dropped her head into her hands. "Oh, help."
The chaise creaked, scooting closer on the concrete. "Hilde?" When she didn't answer right away, a warm hand ruffled her hair. "C'mon, Hil. Remember me? The one you tell stuff to? Help me out here."
Hilde dragged the back of her wrist across her stinging eyes and straightened to face him.
His look of sharp speculation was gone, replaced by a cautious understanding that was almost more unnerving. "Why did you run out on me at the club, then?" he asked. "The real reason."
Hilde opened and closed her mouth twice, then shook her head. If there were words for the way she had been feeling, she didn't know what they were.
"Try," he prodded.
"I didn't want to be a statistic," she blurted at last. "Roadkill."
He looked at her blankly. "Roadkill?"
Hilde nodded, sucking in a deep breath to gain momentum for her next words. "You just--you run people over, with the way you look at them and the way you talk, and even Bella thinks you're going to marry her someday, just because you dance with her like--like that, and how am I supposed to believe anything you say means anything, when you say it to everybody?"
Duo sat there for a long moment, picking his way through her convoluted syntax. Finally he leaned forward to fix her with intent blue eyes. "What do you want it to mean?"
"I--" She swallowed, unable to look away as he moved closer.
"Tell me what you want, Hil." His hand came to rest against her cheek with almost painful gentleness, his thumb barely grazing the outline of her lips.
"Don't," Hilde whispered.
Duo paused, but didn't move away. "Why not?"
Bitter tears threatened to well up in her eyes, so she clamped them shut. "Because you don't mean it." You can't, she thought. There's no way--
"Like hell I don't," he said roughly. He took her face between his hands and lifted her lips to his, kissing her until stars danced behind her eyes. After a moment of stunned disbelief, she gave in to the impossible, swaying forward until she nearly slid right out of her chair. She probably wouldn't have noticed; she was drowning, soaring, and nothing in the world existed except the searching pressure of his mouth on hers.
When at last they drew apart, reluctantly admitting the need for air, he blinked at her over a dazed grin. "Whoa."
"Um," Hilde agreed weakly. Already she felt bereft; a foot of space between them was far too much. Before she had time to backslide into cowardice again, she scooted forward until she could put her arms around his neck, pushing her face into his collar.
His arms came carefully around her, and he stroked her hair. "Is this okay?"
She nodded without lifting her head. "Definitely okay."
"I mean it, Hil." The words emerged slowly, as if they came from a very deep place. "I've always meant it."
Hilde tightened her already desperate hold, hoping the action would convey the emotion she couldn't put into words. Her fingers kept curling into the fabric of his shirt, as if he might disappear without the firmest possible grip. He leaned his cheek against the top of her head, and his arm settled more comfortably around her waist.
After a little while Duo shifted on the unsteady chaise, tugging gently at her hands; when he leaned back, Hilde followed, climbing gingerly onto the chair with him. Still safe in his embrace, she reached out with wonder to touch his collarbone, his brow, the sweep of his lashes. He blinked, but held obediently still while she continued her explorations.
Something occurred to her; she paused, observing him narrowly. "Your eyes are open."
"What?"
He tried to draw her back down, but Hilde braced her arms, holding her position.
"You always shut them when you dance. But now they're open."
It was a moment before Duo answered. "It's really you," he said quietly. "Don't have to pretend."
Overcome, Hilde hid her face against his shirt. Then she started to laugh.
"What?" he wanted to know.
Hilde had trouble getting enough air to reply. "You pretended Bella was me?" The mental image of herself in one of Bella's siren get-ups was enough to send her off into another gale of laughter.
"It never really worked with Bella," Duo admitted. "She talks all the time. And there's the wiggling."
Hilde really intended to respond with words, but what came out was a proprietary snarl.
"Hey, now." He patted her back soothingly. "She won't be wiggling anywhere near me ever again."
Hilde affected shocked disbelief. "Now, why would you go and limit your options like that? Good wiggling's hard to come by."
"Well, as I understand it," he said, smoothing a wisp of dark hair back from her eyes, "I'm taken."
"Got that right." She leaned down slowly, deliberately, feeling him tense with anticipation. When she was only a breath away, she kissed him just as slowly, coaxing his mouth open with hers and delighting in his stifled groan of pleasure. His hands slid from her waist to her shoulder blades, pulling her closer; Hilde needed no urging to settle against him, and even ventured to rock her hips cautiously against his. Duo made another low sound of approval, groping for the lever on the side of the chair that would make it recline.
The overloaded chaise promptly collapsed, dumping them onto the concrete in a tangle of arms, legs, and bent aluminum. It took a while to extract themselves from the snarled webbing, especially since they were laughing too hard to breathe. At last, though, they were fully unwound.
Hilde lay flat on her back on the cool concrete until her aching lungs had a chance to rest, and then propped herself on one elbow to look down at him. He tucked one hand behind his head, watching her. The dawn was deepening into morning, its mellow light glinting off the occasional metallic strands in his hair. She chose one copper thread, following it up along the braid until he captured her fingers and laced them between his own.
She took an unsteady breath. "So."
"So," he repeated.
"What do we do now?" she asked quietly.
His face was solemn; only his eyes were smiling at her. "Everything."
It was a slow Thursday night at Binary. Only a handful of couples were dancing, and only a few more patrons lingered by the bar or at the little round tables. The music was languid, conversations were muted, and the bartender looked half-asleep.
And Bella Dutton was bored to tears.
"Honestly," she announced to no one in particular. "This place is so dead."
Sitting a few bar stools down, Clari took pity on her. "It's because of the game. All the nice college boys will be back by tomorrow night," she promised.
Bella sighed. "It'll still be dull. I remember when this place used to be fun."
Clari raised an eyebrow. "Still is, for some people."
Bella turned to follow Clari's meaningful gaze. "Some people," she repeated with a lofty sniff, "need to get a room."
"Oh, come on." Clari leaned over and nudged Bella in the shoulder. "You've got to admit it's pretty cute."
"Well--all right. They're cute." Bella's shoulders drooped in uncharacteristic acknowledgement of defeat. "But do they have to be cute here?"
"I don't think they can help it," Clari said thoughtfully.
On the other side of the room, revolving slowly on the dance floor, Duo and Hilde didn't even seem to be trying.
-end-
(:./lilias/expert3)
