Title: Oceans Apart
Author: Mookie
Pairing: Heero/Duo
Rating: R bordering on NC17
Warnings: yaoi lime/lemon, sorta kinda supernatural/sci-fi in
nature
Notes: Written for the 2003/2004 Under the Bridge Contest using RHCP's
Don't Forget Me as inspiration.
He scrolled through the data on the screen, skimming through most of it, taking the time to read and re-read a few sections that caught his attention. He wasn't quite sure when it had become an obsession of his, to find out as much as he could about genetic engineering, but he sure as hell knew why.
He could kid himself about his motives. While it was true that he did want to put the knowledge he'd gained over the course of the war to work, that he did want to contribute something meaningful to society, he knew that there were a thousand different ways in which he could do that, and not one of them would come as close as he was now to trying to play God.
He couldn't help it. There had to be an explanation for the things he'd witnessed. Speed, endurance - those could be easily attributed to the excessive gravity on some of the colonies, but then, he himself had been rather fleet of foot on both the colonies and on earth.
One thing he couldn't explain was how the hell Heero Yuy had bent the bars on his cell door.
But he was determined to if it took him the rest of his life.
Duo followed the older man from one end of his laboratory to the other, pausing to watch him dial a knob here, read the output on the screen there, and continue along. He still couldn't believe he was here, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
"What is it you're after, Duo?" he asked finally, turning around to look at his colleague's young protegee.
Duo bit his tongue. He'd told J at least three times why he was here, varying the story not a bit each time. Perhaps that was why he wasn't getting anywhere.
"I want to know more about Heero," he said.
J's face was inscrutable, and Duo wished he knew what was going on behind those thick lenses. Finally the scientist asked, "What do you want to know?"
"You were there when he was trained. He was your 'weapon' after all." Duo would swear he saw the slightest of flinches at that term. "Super strength, incredibly remarkable healing abilities? What did you guys do to him?"
A snap of J's claw told Duo he'd hit a nerve. "Tell me what you think of Heero Yuy," he commanded abruptly.
Duo scowled a bit then relented. They both knew that J had information Duo wanted, and it was a matter of how much J was willing to share. Whether it was out of some secret scientist's code or some other reason for J's reluctance was something Duo would find out, but first he had to tell J what he wanted to hear.
"Heero is strong," Duo said slowly, "strong of mind and body and heart. He's dedicated, driven... stubborn."
J had turned his back to Duo again, giving no clues if the answers were at all what he was looking for. Duo joined him near the control console and stared unseeingly at the screen.
"I want to know what makes Heero tick," Duo said softly. "Because I need to know if there is room in his life for more."
Silence reigned over the lab following that statement. J typed in a few numbers with one hand before turning and walking away. He went to a small, outdated laptop set up on a folding table and sat down.
"I did nothing to Heero other than attempt to bring out his full potential." J's voice gave Duo a start, and he turned toward the scientist who was busily tapping away at his keyboard. "It would be impossible to alter Heero Yuy's genetic makeup after conception. People have tried and failed to manipulate embryos. What Heero possesses is something he was born with. I just helped him tap into it."
Duo stared. Part of him had suspected that somehow Heero had been tampered with, that they'd done unspeakable things to him. He knew that Heero had been willing to do anything for a cause, and he didn't doubt the same was true for J.
At least he'd thought so before today. Now, however, he wasn't so sure. Maybe the old geezer had a few morals in him, warped as they may be.
J turned the laptop around and an image of a familiar colony as seen from earth filled the screen.
"Do you think mankind only thought to colonize space?"
Duo was staring at the image, swamped with feelings, and he shook his head. "Excuse me?" he asked, raising his eyes to meet J's bespectacled gaze.
"Where else might man have considered living, before the colonies were built?" He hit a key and a picture of earth replaced that of L2. He tapped at the screen with a finger.
Like a big blue marble, Duo remembered hearing as a child. He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking of another set of eyes, ones as deep blue as the oceans. His eyes snapped open as realization dawned.
"Underwater."
J nodded, and Duo thought he caught something that resembled a smile beneath the gray mustache. "Good, good," he said approvingly. A tap of the backspace button brought the photo of L2 back on screen.
"I doubt very highly that Heero is the only colonist who has untapped potential."
The computer was turned back around and J got to his feet.
"If you see G," he said, moving back to the bank of screens along the wall. "Tell him I said hi."
Duo recognized a dismissal when he heard it. Repressing a snort, he replied, "I'll do that."
Heero nipped at his neck, and Duo flipped them over so he was lying atop Heero, grinning down at him. "Now who's the 'big man on campus'?" he leered, rubbing his arousal against Heero's. A hand behind his neck pulled his face down for a kiss, and a shiver ran through his body.
The last thing Duo had expected to engage in here, now, and with Heero, was a bout or two of dry humping, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Tomorrow they could die.
Heero's hand slid under Duo's shirt, caressing the base of his spine and teasing the skin just below the waistband of his pants. Duo's fingers were buried in Heero's hair and he ground himself against Heero again.
When he felt the warmth against his belly, his pants sticking to his skin and Heero shuddering beneath him, he laid his head next to Heero's and flicked a tongue against his earlobe.
It felt good, he thought, the warmth. Tomorrow they'd set out for the OZ base and the cold would set in once again, but at least they had tonight.
"Santa Claw says hi."
The mushroom shaped head didn't turn around right away, but Duo had no doubt G had heard him.
"You can't fool me," the man he'd once referred to as Pestilence finally replied. "I know you didn't come all the way here to give me that message."
"Glad to see senility hasn't set in," Duo retorted. "Otherwise this was a wasted trip."
G turned, scratching his nose as he looked at Duo speculatively. "Why are you here, Duo?"
Duo told him.
When he left a few hours later, he wondered if he had it in him to push his body to the limits it would take to tap into his own hidden abilities. Duo smiled grimly. He had nothing better to do, now, did he?
Finding the right stimulus, G had said. Only one thing sprang to mind immediately when Duo thought about stimulation.
Correction. Not a thing.
A person.
"Heero," Duo whispered into his ear as he struggled to unfasten his pants one-handed. The fingers of his other hand were wrapped around the Heero's arousal and his thumb swiped across the tip.
Heero groaned Duo's name in response, sliding back on the metal table and sending a collection of hand tools to the floor with a crash. This was their farewell. Duo knew it, Heero knew it, and they were both going to live up to their promise.
A promise that had been made in the warmth of Heero's bed, in the darkest of nights, in the afterglow of climax. To finish what they'd started long ago in one of the schools they'd attended as a cover.
Duo's erection sprang free of his pants and he hesitated. Heero's eyes, half-lidded with lust, bore into him. Despite the urgency of his raging libido, Duo thought he might be content just to remember the way Heero looked that day, bangs clinging damply to his forehead, eyes framed with thick, dark lashes, cheeks slightly flushed with desire.
There was nothing to worry about. Heero had survived blowing up his Gundam; how much could this possibly hurt?
He spit into his hand several times, coating his cock with it and hoping it wouldn't evaporate before he'd worked himself into Heero. It was tight, and he might have gone more slowly if Heero's legs, one completely bare and his pants dangling around the other, hadn't wrapped around him then. Duo leaned forward, impaling himself fully, and once he was in, his arms snaked around Heero. He squeezed tightly before pulling back and slamming into him again.
It was a bit uncomfortable, but he ignored that in favor of the warmth that surrounded him, the way Heero's body tightened around his cock, the way Heero's seed spattered his belly.
The warmth that filled him as he saw Heero's head tilt back and his mouth open in a silent scream as he came.
Heero left the tool shed first, and Duo felt a small measure of pride as he watched Heero's first tentative steps. He was obviously a bit sore but he quickly concealed it before the door slid open.
Before it shut behind Heero, Duo's eyes fell to the concrete below, unwilling to watch the other ex-pilot walk away and out of his life. He bent to pick up the tools they'd knocked off the table, and he rubbed his fingers together as they made contact with a bit of gritty powder.
When he left the shed two full minutes after Heero, he paused in the doorway and glanced behind him. A bag of cement lay propped against the wall. The gray powder coating the ground in front of it resembled dirty snow.
Duo looked ahead, blinking out in the sunlight as he stepped out, and slid the shed door shut behind him.
Maybe, he thought. Maybe, some day, he'd come back here, to earth.
Some day.
Duo's arms were growing tired, but he ignored the pain in his shoulders and back as he pushed himself to make the next lap in the swimming pool. His lung capacity had greatly improved, although holding his breath for longer and longer periods often sent flickers of memory through his mind, of the certainty he'd had back then of asphyxiating in an OZ cell.
It wasn't a pleasant way to die.
He swam to the far end and pulled himself out, sitting on the ledge and letting his feet dangle in the water.
Duo pressed against one nostril and snorted water out his nose, then repeated the process with the opposite side. He'd probably spent more time in OZ prisons than the rest of them put together, something that had nipped at his pride. He'd been doomed to die many times, and yet it hadn't happened.
His escapes from certain execution didn't even come close to Heero's self-detonation, but perhaps there was a reason why he'd survived. Maybe he was meant to tap into whatever weird hocus-pocus mutation lie dormant within most colonists.
Suffocating in that cell with Wufei would have been humiliating. He wondered if whatever he'd find in the afterlife would have ridiculed him for such a lame demise. Being executed wouldn't have been much better, but at least it would have been going out with a bang.
Being killed by Heero Yuy would have been the most fitting end, and Duo had known that's why Heero had come that day. Yet the moment the cell door had opened and Heero had thrown one of the guards to the floor like a sack of potatoes, a glimmer of hope had radiated through Duo. He'd actually been surprised to see Heero point that gun at him - and hadn't he expected that Heero would kill him rather than chance letting him compromise their mission?
Still the hope had crept in, like the rainbow after a storm. He'd been through a lot of gray and cold in his life, and he knew better than to give in to optimism... but hadn't they all shown a reluctance to just lie down and die, despite the odds stacked against them?
Heero had let him live, even though doing so had made it damn near impossible for both of them to escape - together. If that wasn't Heero being optimistic they'd both make it out alive, Duo didn't know what was.
Those damn steel bars. It had started then.
He swung his foot in the water, noting the drag he felt in the forward and back motions. The mint green interior of the pool couldn't compare with the blue of the ocean.
Duo got to his feet. He had an idea.
The spring season on earth had been a trying time. Duo hadn't been able to tolerate the lower temperatures for long periods, often coming out of the water, his teeth chattering and water streaming from his braid down the backs of his thighs, cursing both his weakness and his stubbornly insatiable curiosity.
It was the only time he was almost guaranteed to be here alone on the beach, though, just before sunrise. Duo had found that there was something magical about walking to the shore just as the sky began to lighten, as if he were reborn each time he emerged, leaving a trail of water in his wake.
It was no wonder that people used to worship water deities. Poseidon, Neptune, Hapi, Roan, Llyre... so many of them as mercurial and relentless as the ocean itself. So much like Heero.
Heero. Why hadn't he realized back then that he'd wanted more than a single afternoon in a shed? It was all water under the bridge now. He only wished it were that simple to accept.
The water lapped gently around his ankles and he glanced down at it.
Still waters run deep.
Anyone who'd ever looked Heero Yuy straight in the eye could have seen that. Duo shook his head, spattering water on the sand around him. Heero Yuy, quiet? No, he thought, Heero wasn't afraid to speak up when the mood struck him, and if he were passionate about something, it was impossible to shut him up.
Summer was right around the corner, but spring seemed reluctant to leave. The chill mornings lingered long into June.
After nearly a week of belatedly warm days Duo rushed to the beach, realizing too late that he'd forgotten his swim trunks at the bungalow he'd been renting. He considered going back to get them, but discarded that idea, along with his clothes, and dove into the water. This was what he'd been missing. He closed his eyes and let it surround him in warmth, wondering if this was what it had felt like in the womb. A stream of bubbles escaped his mouth and he began his strokes eagerly, remaining underwater as long as he could.
By the time Duo had finished his swim, the sky had gone from dark gray to azure. He stopped and stood, his chin breaking the surface of the water, and gazed out at the seemingly endless ocean. No wonder people had wanted to see if they could build underwater civilizations. So much of the earth was covered by it. There was no mystery why people had once thought the earth was flat. The ocean looked like it just dropped off in the distance, right where two shades of blue met and formed a neat unruffled line across the horizon.
He closed his eyes. Why was he doing this? He'd been attempting to unleash something he didn't even know really existed. Duo Maxwell wasn't anything special. Opening his eyes again, he realized the infinite blue was just the right shade this morning. No, he reminded himself. He was special - all five of them had been.
Especially Heero.
His toes dug into the sand and seaweed. Maybe in his quest to find out more about Heero, he'd not come up entirely empty. Wufei undoubtedly would agree that there was no gain in knowledge that could be considered a waste of time. He slogged through the water, barely aware that his strides were quicker, that the water didn't seem so heavily resistant.
It was more than possible that he'd spend the rest of his life trying to figure out who Duo Maxwell was. When he got closer to shore, his foot came down on a shell and he dropped to one knee, cursing his luck and thankful there was no one to witness his less than graceful stumble.
His fingers dug around in the sand looking for the shell. The moment he found the culprit he noticed a shadow fall over him.
The hand extended to him brought back so many memories, and for a moment he thought the palm and fingers really were covered with blood.
Give me your knife.
Duo blinked up at Heero. "What?"
Heero smiled at him. "Give me your hand," he repeated.
Duo placed his hand in Heero's and allowed the other man to pull him to a standing position. His other hand gripped the shell so hard he thought it might break.
He wanted to ask Heero why he was here, why here, why now, where he'd been, what he'd been up to.
The shell cracked slightly.
Heero looked good. The crisp white of his shirt, sleeves cuffed and top buttons undone, were in sharp contrast to the golden tone his skin had acquired. He'd obviously spent a lot of time outdoors. His shorts clung to his wet legs - a loose cargo style replacing the sleek black ones Heero had worn through the first war, and Duo felt a sharp pang of regret.
He nervously lifted his gaze from Heero's bare legs and muscled thighs to the eyes that put both sky and sea to shame and offered a crooked grin. Heero was still holding his hand.
He mouthed Heero's name, his voice stuck in his throat as he recognized the question in Heero's eyes - the answer to what he'd been looking for.
Heero's hand cupped the side of Duo's neck. "How long have you been here?" he asked, tilting his head to the side. "You look blue."
It was funny, Duo thought as Heero drew his face down for a kiss. He didn't feel the slightest bit cold.
Their kiss deepened. Heero's fingers grazed the edge of Duo's earlobe and a hot, eager tongue thrust into Heero's mouth.
The tip of Duo's ear began to elongate slightly, and small feathery bits of translucent blue flesh fluttered in the breeze where they had emerged along the side of Duo's thigh.
Like G had said, all he'd needed was the right stimulus.
The End
Title inspired by Judy Garland's Oceans Apart:
Oceans apart and with only the blue between us
Since we're apart
I'm yearning
I'll kiss him again
He'll know right from the very start
that we were never meant to be oceans apart.
Additional fic inspiration provided bythis doodled sketch by Link Worshiper.
(:./mookie/oceans)
