17-Sep-2001
Disclaimers: I do not own Gundam Wing. The Gundam Wing characters and situations which appear in this story are being used entirely without permission. This is a fan work; no profit whatsoever is being made from this work of fiction, nor do I make any claim to copyright of those elements of the story which were not created by me. Also, I intend no disrespect toward the creators and rightful owners of this wonderful series.
Warnings: Yaoi (male/male) relationship, issues relating to past abuse, Lime (non-explicit) content.
The first golden-red hints of dawn brightened the sky, and bloodshot blue eyes snapped open. Heero stealthily wormed his way out of Trowa's arms and padded to the bathroom to relieve himself. His reflection in the mirror over the sink was haggard, with deep circles under the eyes. He wasn't used to sleepless nights of introspection; until very recently, when the memories began to surface, he'd always been in control of his sleep patterns, as well as everything else.
He splashed cold water on his face, and brushed his teeth in a mind-numbed haze of exhaustion. They said that dissociation was a bad thing, but he'd never experienced it that way. Up until recently, his life had been neatly compartmentalized, each aspect of his existence filed tidily away in its own separate little box. He'd thought everyone lived that way; it was such an efficient method of avoiding things that couldn't be dealt with.
It wasn't until Trowa had started counseling, and started unearthing memories of the horrors he'd survived, that Heero's own living nightmare had begun; as he held and comforted his lover, the horrible stories Trowa told him sparked gut-wrenching reactions he couldn't explain. At first, he'd thought he was merely being sympathetic, putting himself in his lover's shoes... but eventually he realized that was wishful thinking. The images and snippets of thought that came back to him weren't some sympathetic fantasy, but long-buried memories of his own horror and pain and endless, agonizing shame.
Trowa called Heero his rock. He depended on him to be solid and unshakable. Would Trowa stop loving him if he found out how fragile he really was?
Today, he'd go see the counselor himself, and begin the process. He dreaded it. He'd already seen what it had done to Trowa, remembering, feeling everything all over again. Worse, he knew that healing this would be one thing he couldn't control... but he couldn't just shut off that feeling, suffering part of his mind and go on as he had been, nor could he simply heal himself in one snap.
Setting broken bones was a hell of a lot easier than examining his own tortured mind.
It was less than a week later that everything broke apart. Heero lay in bed on his side, facing away from Trowa as he had done every night since he'd first sought counseling.
"Heero? ...are you upset with me?"
"No."
"Do you... no longer find me attractive?"
"Trowa. Of course you're still attractive." The words were spoken in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, but Heero hadn't turned to face him.
"You haven't made love to me in almost a week."
"You noticed?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Trowa asked, stung. Heero turned over to face him, and Trowa almost wished he'd face the other way again. That intense, piercing gaze was enough to make him feel... exposed, in a terrifying way.
"I wanted you to make the first move for a change," Heero said after several moments.
"But, I don't..."
"You don't. That's the point," Heero said, and the words all but tumbled out of his mouth; now that he'd started talking, he could barely stop himself. "All this time, you've always left it up to me to make the first move, to make all the decisions. You never say what you want. You never tell me what you think."
"Heero, I want what you want," Trowa said, reaching out to placate him and recoiling in shock when Heero shrugged his hands away.
"What I want is for you to speak your own goddamned mind!"
"Heero..."
"Why do you always wait to hear what I want before you decide you want it, too? Why do I have to choose what we eat, where we go, what you wear? Why do I always have to choose? And why is it that you want me to be on top every time?"
"If you had a problem with the way we make love-"
"I do have a problem with it. I like being on top. But top, bottom, or somewhere in the middle, I'd like it even more if you were really there."
"Heero, I am here! I'm here for you! You just have to..."
"I just have to what?"
"... tell me what you want..."
"Trowa, I can't be what you want," Heero said, and in the shadows his eyes looked like two dark wounds. "It's a cop-out. You're using me so you don't have to take responsibility for anything, so if things don't turn out the way you wanted you can blame me for it. But I can't take all the responsibility for you and myself as well. I can't... I can't do this. I need you to tell me what you want. I need you to make a decision on your own once in a while. Sometimes I feel like I don't even know you any more."
"Of course you know me! I'm the same Trowa I always was!"
"The Trowa I fell in love with wasn't afraid to think for himself!"
It was the last straw. Trowa got up from the bed, naked, and stalked over to the closet, yanked on some clothing, and left. Heero lay in the bed, staring at the cooling spot where Trowa had been, and tried not to cry.
It had definitely been easier, being dissociative.
The next day, Quatre came over to collect Trowa's things; Heero barely spoke to him. Duo showed up later, to try and comfort him, but the best he was able to do was nag Heero into walking to the doughnut shop on the corner with him. Duo didn't understand why Heero seemed even more depressed when he made the suggestion, but the former Wing pilot agreed, and did a good enough impression of his old self that Duo left him alone that afternoon, thinking all would be well.
Heero re-organized the house. It started with alphabetizing the books, which made him realize how dusty the bookshelf was. Once he'd polished the bookshelf, he realized how dusty the whole house was... he dusted, then vacuumed, then mopped and polished and cleaned out the closets and reorganized the attic and then he did it all again.
The house positively gleamed with cleanliness... so he started on the yard, which had been neglected during the last month. Then he took his car's engine apart and put it back together again. Then... he started back on the house.
At his counselor's suggestion, Heero took up art as a means of self-expression. He covered one corner of the family room carpet with plastic tarp, then set up an easel there. He explored with paints, pastels, watercolors, pencils, clay... anything he could find. He found that sculpting appealed to him; he liked the three-dimensionality, and the opportunity to work with his hands. The problem was that sculpting brought out little jagged shards of rage, and he inevitably ruined his project, crushing it between his hands as though he were squeezing the life out of his abuser.
His counselor told him that was encouraging. Heero didn't see anything encouraging at all about losing control -- especially of his anger. He invested in a punching bag, and when he felt the anger welling up, he pounded it. He also started a few sculpting projects for the sole purpose of crushing them, and found it perversely satisfying.
Just when he thought he had a handle on his anger, the fear surfaced. Fear. He hadn't felt it -- hadn't allowed himself to feel it -- since the very early days of his training to be a soldier. He had no coping mechanisms at all for the fear. The first time it struck, it was in the middle of the night. Heero ended up clearing out a spot in the floor of the walk-in closet, and huddling there with blankets wrapped around him, shivering and trying not to whimper.
Fear was easy to paint. It came out in gobs of black and jags of nightmarish, glowing blue and green, shot through with lightning streaks of white.
His counselor found that very encouraging.
"Can we try again?"
Heero stood, still holding the garden shears poised above the hedges he'd been trimming, eyes wide with surprise and dark with emotions he hadn't learned to name yet.
"Trowa?"
"I want... I'd like to try again," Trowa said. "If you'll have me."
" If?"
"But I have to warn you; I wouldn't be as easy to live with as I used to."
"I wouldn't, either," Heero said, and the corners of his mouth lifted in the barest beginning of a smile.
"I'd like to try. If you would."
"I think... I would," Heero said.
Trowa smiled.
"What is all this?"
"It's... art therapy," Heero said, and Trowa wasn't sure what surprised him more -- that Heero was doing art therapy, or that he looked... bashful about it. He never would have imagined Heero Yuy looking bashful. He looked over the works-in-progress, and nodded.
"Rage," he said. "Anger. Fear."
"Yes."
"You've portrayed them beautifully. But everything you do is perfect."
"Not everything," Heero said, and looked away.
"No. I suppose not. Would you... mind if I tried, some day?"
"I don't mind."
"I'd like to."
That evening, when they went to bed, Trowa reached out to Heero, and pulled him in close. They kissed, and Trowa's hands slid down over Heero's back and under the waistband of his pajama bottoms, and Heero pulled away, shivering.
"I feel... fear," he whispered.
"Don't be afraid," Trowa replied. "You and I are safe here, together."
"Trowa..."
"I want to make love to you," Trowa said. "But just because I want it, doesn't mean you can't say no. I wouldn't do anything you don't want me to."
"I want to," Heero replied. "I really do. But I still feel it."
"Then, we'll go slowly. And if you need to stop, you say so and we'll stop. And if I need to stop, we'll stop. Do you trust me?"
"With my life." The words were a release, and the tension ebbed out of Heero's body, and when Trowa kissed him again, he responded whole-heartedly.
It was something of a revelation for them both.
The next day, Heero painted fear and longing, and mixed it in with love in pastels. It didn't work the way he'd wanted it to; the love should have encompassed the fear and longing, but instead the pastels were overshadowed by the paint. He tried mixing love in paint, but the colors didn't come out right. He'd have to find something else...
Trowa somehow managed not to laugh when he walked in a few minutes later to find Heero painting love with Pepto Bismol and white paint on his fear canvas.
They had been living together for a few weeks when Heero hit the first pocket of sorrow. He woke up from a half-remembered dream, sobbing like a child, and Trowa was there to hold him and rock him and tell him everything would be Ok.
The next morning, they made a list together titled "Things to Do When We're Sad." It included, among other things, drinking hot chocolate, talking to Duo, and watching "Noises Off." They went to a toy store and bought a huge teddy bear, and put it in Heero's "safe place" in the floor of the walk-in closet, now comfortably padded with enough pillows and blankets for two. They also bought several containers of Play-Doh, two boxes of crayons, a package of construction paper, some Silly Putty and a yo-yo.
Heero's counselor was delighted that he was getting in touch with his "inner child." Heero was taken with the idea of having an inner child, and went home to paint a picture of him -- a boy with huge blue eyes, a crafty grin and a detonator in one hand, which led to a bomb placed under a bridge where an oversized bird daintily pecked at a pile of birdseed. Apparently, Heero's inner child was a Wile E. Coyote fan.
Trowa's inner child was more subtle, but just as inclined to humor. Trowa did a rough painting of him with his eyes closed, playing the flute... and there was a line of blind mice dancing behind him. Trowa found more release in music than in painting, and since they only had room for one easel, he told Heero it was just as well.
Trowa also found that he liked sculpting, but the heavy clay Heero preferred didn't suit him, and the Play-Doh they'd bought had dried out. He and Heero spent a day clearing out a section of their back yard, which they filled in with sand. Trowa was much more satisfied with raking patterns into the sand than he had been with the clay. Heero helped him position a few large rocks just so, and Trowa spent a large part of the afternoon making new patterns.
Heero painted a picture of Trowa, and tried to do the Zen garden behind him. It didn't look right, so he took the canvas outside, drew lines on it with glue, and threw sand at it.
Trowa smiled, and started a new pattern where Heero had disrupted the old one.
Things didn't always go smoothly. There were times when anger or sorrow or fear surfaced unexpectedly. There were times when one or both of them withdrew; it was a survival tactic they'd both been practicing all their lives. There were times when they went through the entire Sad List and had to repeat it. The punching bag got the stuffing beat out of it, and they had to replace it. Twice.
But on the whole... they were making progress. They reached a real breakthrough the day Heero told Trowa about the memories he'd been reliving. Trowa hugged and reassured him, filling a void he'd lived with his whole life, an empty place he hadn't even realized was there.
It was then that he began to understand what Trowa meant, when he referred to Heero as his rock. It wasn't that he thought Heero was perfect or unbreakable... it was merely that he was there.
"You know... you're my rock, too," Heero whispered, pressing his face into the crook of Trowa's neck and revelling in the security of his lover's arms.
"Thank you, Heero," Trowa said. "I'm glad."
"Mm," Heero sighed, and slowly realized that he was feeling another new emotion. "Trowa?"
"Yes?"
"Do you mind if I paint? Before I forget what it feels like?"
"Go ahead," Trowa said, giving him one last squeeze and then letting him go. "I'll take care of dinner."
Heero smiled at him; Trowa was finally making some of the decisions, and it felt... good. Trowa stretched, and headed off to the kitchen, and Heero hurried to his easel, covering the canvas with yellow and white and little bursts of citrusy-orange.
When he finished, he decided he'd done a good job painting happiness.
~owari~
Yoiko
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