A/N: It's been a long time in coming, and even longer has it sat, languishing, on my hard drive, waiting to be posted - the first chapter of One-Eared Neko's continuation. Be warned, though. This story is no where near as finished as Neko was finished when I posted that nearly two years ago. Considering how much other works I'm currently still dedicated to, seeing as how I can never really abandon a project, and the amount of work and planning it'll take, be willing to give it a little time to get on its feet. It's a lot more complex, plot-wise, than Neko ever was. But if you're looking for angst and a very moody Maxwell and his Traveler, then you've come to the right place, my friend.
Warnings: Language, Violence, Blood, Shameless Political Plugging
Pedigree
By Kaitsurinu
'Even trying to avoid war is war.'
Part 1 THE LAST GREAT BOHEMIAN
"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book." - Ronald Reagan
It was a familiar scene. The sets would change, inevitably, but they all held a striking and discouraging similarity to each other. They were no different beneath the skin and he no longer cared about how they appeared. Every single one of these hotel rooms could be nothing but velvet and champagne, or they could be bone-bare and already in use by a militant occupation of cockroaches, and Duo would still find a way to strip down the situation to the naked and unpleasant facts. He was alone. He had to get up out of an uncomfortable bed early the next morning for work. The lights were dull, the day before always had found its way to become stressful and never-ending, his conscience was prompt to remind him of his olden days, and most of all, that he was far from home. And to a gypsy soul like him, he had found his only true home in his lover. One who was currently miles and miles away, no doubt curled up with a good and lengthy book to medicate their separation. He would be just peachy to let himself be lost in the escapism provided by King and Dickens. He'd be fine, sleeping away the time so it eased the slow passing of the minutes.
That was one of the topics of discussion he'd opened up in his mind that night, while nursing his own withdrawal with another addiction. Nicotine was his companion, with a half-burnt cigarette glowing in the shadow of the hotel room like the only evidence he was alive. He watched down his nose as the tip illuminated orange red, dimmed, and brightened with each drag. He tilted his head back to free the curling smoke in a stream to the side. His single feline ear twitched as he did so.
It was silent in the room, save for the whirring of some distant ice machine and the gentle hum of a sleeping building. It was from the opened window that came the miscellaneous noise of engines going by, of feet passing on the sidewalk below, of the dull, audible pulse of the city. In the suite near the top of the Hyatt, the door had been closed and locked. The hallways just outside were calm and undisturbed, and almost eerily so. The floral print carpet was lovely and fine in itself, but it, like the rest of the impressive building, only seemed to remind him of what he'd left behind. And in turn, that loneliness only made him imagine the traveler reclining in the armchair in the living room of their temporary house, drifting off blissfully.
He would be a little past the middle of the book, whichever one he'd picked out of his collection to re-read, and he'd be eager to continue on, but his body would disagree. The picture was relatively clear in his head, though he was a little weary-eyed himself—he'd happened in on Heero while he'd fallen asleep many a time late at night. Sometimes he would start awake when Duo stepped in the room, and sometimes he'd be too far for retrieval and he would take pleasure in carrying him up to bed like he weighed nothing. And to him, he did weigh next to nothing. His full-blooded Nekonese grandparents would have been able to carry a full-grown elk bull and thin little Heero was as light as a feather in comparison. His head would loll drowsily off to the side, resting against Duo's shoulder as he was roused from his bed. Just recently he'd been diagnosed with a slowly growing farsightedness, and his reading glasses would be hanging on the edge of his handsome nose.
Duo sucked on the end of the cigarette with regret. This was why he hated "business trips." He always had to bring up the most endearing memories that would make his heart fill with frustration at his head for doing such a thing when his flight back wasn't for another three days. And each of those promised to stretch out as long as was physically possible in light of the unpleasant juggernaut of extensive press interviews, debates, and hours of strategy meetings planned for him in the days to come. Politics were peachy. Just fucking peachy.
The ambassador was seated in a room of uninterrupted darkness, highlighted by pale gray-orange glow from the glittering lights outside the windows. The lights had been off for a while. He had never minded the dark before, and it felt like a little sanctuary from even himself, where he couldn't be seen by anybody else and therefore reminded less by those people that he was only a certain percent human. And unlike most of the people he'd dealt with, the shadows could be counted on to be there every night at the same time, offering the same protection and anonymity. Each of the two queen-sized beds remained pristinely made as they had been that morning, and Duo had dragged a chair to the window, where he sat now, brooding with a cigarette. Occasionally, his stare would remained fixed out into nothing while he reached up to tap the ashes out into the ashtray on the table against the wall. Other than that, he simply watched the cold night proceed unimpeded by his little Heero-withdrawal dilemma.
Funny, it was pretty important to him. He was convinced that Time should either get the lead out and bring him back to his traveler, or just stop all together. Enough with this slow crawl already. Make up your mind.
There was a suitcase chucked onto the floor. There were a few articles of clothes lying around, discarded suits and ties, and remnants of frequent, anxious meals scattered on almost every flat surface to be found. An empty cigarette pack sat next to the sink on the other side of the hotel suite. Nestled between the two lush, untouched beds, the digital read-out of the clock declared it to be 2:02 in the morning. Eventually, Duo tired of his pointless vigilance, and his cigarette ran down to the filter and he was forced to abandon this endeavor and whatever he had been trying to accomplish by it. Before he stood up, though, he felt he should have come away with a moral from his lonely watch. Well, he should stop smoking, yes—but there was nothing else he could think of.
He snorted. Well, whoop-de-do. There's one for the philosophy books.
He turned his head, observed the time, and packed up his moping station. He took a final, drawing drag off his spent cigarette and dug the butt into the ashtray. Standing up, sore and drawn, he put his hand on the lifted windowsill and let the breath of smoke out into the cold air before shutting it and twisting the lock with a flick of his wrist. He let the chair sit there without him and continue the watch. The ambassador ambled toward one of the beds with no real hurry and peeled off clothing and tossed it to haphazard corners of the room. A leonine yawn manifested itself and his jaw stretched wide as he sat down on the edge of the bed to peel off his socks. He felt hampered by the stuffy clothing on such a humid night. As soon as he got them off and let 'em fall to the floor, he rolled onto the covers. He sighed, dressed in little else than boxers, the watch he'd forgotten to take off, and his hair in a braid that now reached just below the bottom tip of his shoulder blades. One last pining movement with his hand dragging over his tired face, and he wrestled himself under just the cover and rolled over onto his side. Sleep came a short time after that, though it begrudgingly granted him his repose.
That particular floor of the Hyatt finally had its peace and the dominating silence returned, while everybody slept and the midnight-shifters downstairs sat around idly, as if asleep.
The one-eared Neko lay heavily in exhaustion on the forty-ninth floor, and in security. He himself could defend himself just fine and his wounds healed much quicker than they ought to, but that didn't make him immune to a well-placed gunshot. So, like many of the other politicians who had stayed at the hotel, there was security posted in every corner to carefully monitor who came and went past his door. While the ambassador slept, there was a small sign of life in the third elevator shaft and the polished metallic doors parted to let out its passengers on the forty-ninth floor. The security guards nodded to them when they presented their laminated id as they passed and exchanged goodnights. And when they had passed out of sight, the idyllic trance returned to the entire floor, permeated by soft, golden lighting.
The only occupied room on the floor was encrypted by the silence of the night, and the tomb-like serenity was only disturbed when the ambassador would roll over in his exhausted sleep and growl through his teeth at some dream-generated enemy. Other than that, it remained a dark, disordered and lonely hotel room faintly smelling of cigarettes, and Duo remained terribly lonesome for his home in his gypsy heart. He finally drifted off into a deep, weary sleep, and his senses didn't give so much as a twitch when the lock on the door to his room whirred slightly as the card key went through. He slept motionless when it swung open.
A glowing orange square flowed into the hallway, and the open door was filled with two bodies, one much smaller than the other, until the taller form shifted a luggage bag onto the other shoulder and shut the door behind them. The intruders remained silently in the hallway, and the smaller peered cautiously at the sleeping ambassador through the dark, who was too far deep to know what was happening. The younger smiled brightly, pleased they had not woken him.
Moving cautiously, mindful not to make a noise more than what was necessary, the older intruder reached down and gently took the younger's bag and put it and his own on the floor as silently as he could. Two dimly glowing blue-green eyes turned to look up at him, over a smile, and the older put a finger to his lips. The message was understood and the small shadow enthusiastically crept toward and hopped onto the other bed, making as little noise as possible. The springs creaked beneath his weight as he landed, and both paused to look at the sleeping one-eared Neko to see if it produced any reaction.
He snored a little. The small intruder stifled a cute laugh at the ungraceful noise and the taller one also couldn't help a grin as he sauntered in. While the young shadow quickly went about taking the pillows and blankets from the opposite hotel bed and constructing a cozy circle of fabric, his older accomplice peeled off his shoes and socks as he tread over to the bed where the ambassador snored obliviously. Even as he was unbuttoning his shirt and still reveling in a grin at how preoccupied the bohemian was with his sleep, Duo did not even stir. Standing on the opposite side of the bed, the intruder kicked off his blue jeans before lifting up the covers and slipping beneath.
Peeking over the circle of pillow and blanket he'd formed on the other bed, the smaller one simply smiled and laid his head down.
With the covers momentarily lifted, Duo's bare back could be seen as he lay nearly perfectly still in a heavy sleep, facing the wall where he had spent the night with a fuming cigarette and a mulling mind as his obscure bedfellows. The man slipping cautiously in beside him had to smile again in amazement at the lengths Duo's depressing nights alone would drive him to simultaneously neglect himself and try to forget, but at the same time, recall every heart-breaking detail of just why the night was so lonely. His hair, now brushing at the ending curve of the small of his back, lay on the pillow beside him, braided still and knotted to hell, no doubt. Five gentle fingertips wrapped around it and clutched it in his hand as the silent shadow drew close. Running his fingers over the long plait of hair, he chuckled huskily, and still he went unnoticed. While the ambassador snored soundly, the hair-tie binding his rat-nest was taken out and the tangles gently worked through by the comb sitting in the night stand drawer and the intruder's fingers.
When it was fully unraveled, each of the three individual sections were as combed through as could be managed, and he admired the sheen to the sublime wave in the artificial moonlight of the orange glow from outside the window. The ambassador was subconsciously stirred by the ministrations and hummed pleasantly in his sleep. Finally, the intruder was able to get close to Duo, guiding his precious hair out of the way for him to nuzzle against his back. Immediately, the one-eared Neko let out a satisfied purr and began to slowly awake. The warm pair of lips traveled from his shoulder, to the crook of his neck, and brushed temptingly past his lips to his temple. With another smile, they parted to whisper in his ikkunnoi in such a sensuous fashion it could have electrified Duo, had he been fully conscious to process it.
"Welcome home, Duo," he bid him in his best husky voice.
The sleeping ambassador was now filled with a sublime, rolling purr, something he rarely did while fully wakeful and something Heero relished and pursued. He rolled over immediately to bury his face deep into the skin of his lover and inhale deeply his smell, ten times better and more intoxicating than any stick of nicotine. Too drowsy to open his eyes yet or even realize what was happening, Duo simply purred happily at the familiar scent of his husband and his swimming mind was quick to urge him to grab ahold of the comfort he'd found and hold tight.
Heero found himself being commandeered into the grip of his bohemian's arms, powerful enough despite their deceptive appearance to crush him, but as tender as grace when they wanted to be. The one-eared Neko's face warmed with a lazy smile as he rolled over, heated by the new source of heat pressed to his body. While Heero chuckled quietly, watching the sleepy Duo clumsily but surely wrap his arms around him, his hands also wandered to find his face and to kiss him when he finally found his lips.
Duo hummed, running his fingers through the traveler's hair and bringing their mouths together again, tighter, hungrier. He purred still, and Heero welcomed it all as his husband lazily curled over on top of him with the effortless prowess and the casual passion of a panther. After all, he wasn't the only one who suffered solitary nights staring out windows at the rising white chalk of the moon. He didn't mind being kissed, and so slowly and intimately at all, but as Duo began to slowly regain his mind from the claws of sleep, he felt the lips regretfully relent and draw away.
The ambassador's feline ear twitched and flittered back and forth drowsily and finally his eyes blinked open, still ringed with heavily indebted black bags. He blinked again in mild confusion while the haze in his mind cleared. The irises were glowing a faint violet as they fluttered at him. "Heero?" he asked, the purr melting away. The surprise was beginning to take hold, now with their bodies entangled. "What are you doing here?"
"Coming home," he answered happily, content to simply lay beneath the bohemian and watch those eyes glow at him all night. He laid a hand on his husband's warm back to let him know that he was not another figment and it shifted when he took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh of surprise.
"What? Weren't you going to stay back in Boston for the week? I never thought you'd actually come to New York—I thought you hated this city!" he said, shaking his head in shock.
"I hate listening to the air conditioning all night long even more," Heero confided in him with a subtle smile. That lovable comment earned him another brilliant smile in return and an enthusiastic kiss on the lips. The traveler smiled and fell into it, all the worries and stings of reality lost on him as he returned the gesture. He'd really missed him, that mouth, that grin. They took their time getting reacquainted and both thoroughly enjoyed it, kissing his husband, filling with the heat of Heero's passionate mouth and body, both moving to the nocturnal, humming rhythm of the dark room. Heero's enthusiastic lips were at Duo's neck and the one-eared Neko's hand fisted in the pillow next to his head when there could be heard a tiny little snicker.
Both froze, one ikkunnoi twitched, and the little blonde head that had been peering out from over the wall of blankets and pillows on the adjacent bed ducked down quickly, but the tips of Quatre's feline ears still showed as they swiveled back and forth.
Duo was the first to react, and he started laughing, still raised up on his arms and burying his nose into his husband's disheveled hair. Heero, however, was not so casual about it and felt a little heat rising up in his face to be caught making out in front of his child—and to get a snicker, no less! Eventually, he managed a smile and his embarrassment was lessened when Duo crawled out of bed and crept over to the other bed, grinning madly and reaching out toward the giggling lump.
"Look what we have here! An intruder?" He made a mock-growling sound as he swept down and scooped up the giggling kit.
Quatre laughed as he struggled to break free of Duo's grip, kicking as he was held tightly against his father's chest and kept prisoner. He was older now, growing rapidly as well, and, in Duo's opinion, he'd probably make a four feet by the end of next week. Not the tiny, red-eyed kit that had been rescued from a fire in a scar seared in the Congo, but not yet a full-grown Neko. He shook his head, his cinnamon-colored ears flattening on the top of his head. "No, no, I wasn't—"
"I don't know," he drawled, tilting his head to glance back at Heero in counsel. "Should we believe a scoundrel like this one? I mean, he looks like an awfully tricky fellow. And you know you can never trust those types!"
"Oh, definitely not," Heero said with a smirk, catching the implication.
While their son struggled to get free from his father's strong grip and not to simultaneously laugh, Duo turned and looked sideways at Heero. "Well, you know what happens to troublemakers when they caught—" he drawled, his arms containing a wriggling, giggling, and pushing bundle of energy with ease, lined by the hazy, pale orange tint of the city lights outside. The honestly playful look in his eyes as they glowed silver in the dark, catching slivers of light, told Heero silently just how much he had missed them, his family. He felt nothing short of euphoric and it made his face ache trying to contain all of that bliss in just one smile.
"They get 'the Slammer'," he said as seriously as he could with his lips running happily away with him.
" 'The Slammer'," Duo repeated, grinning.
Trapped, Quatre let out a squeak and, still resisting a laugh, began pushing his feet off his father's chest. "No, no, not 'the Slammer'!"
"Oh, yes, yes!"
And he was dropped into the pile of pillows and promptly tickled with enthusiasm. The play-fight continued when Quatre rebounded, with a pillow in hand as he pounced in return on Duo, trying to pin him with his soft, fluffy weapon. He gave into the overwhelming attack with a groan and a dramatic hand over his heart, playing it up, doing anything to make his precious adopted son happy. It had felt like ages since they had last been together. All of them, their family. It made Heero's heart swell to think of the word in context of the once raging and distrustful bohemian, to place the image of his impassioned faces and exhilarated smiles in the same thought as the memories of his embittered eyes. Compelled to his feet by the thought of his lover, he decided to get in on the game and when Duo turned his head to face him, sprawled on the bed, defeated by Quatre and hair mussed from the pillow, and was about to open his mouth and ask for a little assistance, he brought his own pillow swinging down.
Sometime later, the ambassador's son, as the press had so affectionately dubbed him, lay in a lump of blankets and pillows, sleeping soundly. His blonde hair splayed out and two cinnamon-colored ikkunoi twitching in his dreams, it was the only visible part of him, the rest otherwise concealed by the comforter thrown over him. To the dim hum of the night was added the sounds of the young Neko snoring lightly, and the comforting, ocean-like rhythm of Heero's breathing next to him. Duo could feel it running over his skin; he sensed it like the tides felt the pull of the moon, constant and fulfilling as he silently kept vigilance over his sleeping husband.
Even surrounded by the loved ones who had once been the rational reason for his insomnia, even warmed by the body of his lover, even with his restless heart put at peace, he still lay wake deep into the unseen hours of the night, unvisited by even the slightest drowse. And he hated it.
With his ear flattened in frustration, he simply ran his eyes over Heero's face without end, hoping and simultaneously knowing that he would not find sleep waiting for him, only taunting him from an unreachable distance. Without his Traveler, he was kept awake by his thoughts, and with him, his innocent face of sleep and his undying urge to keep watch over him stole any chance for some shut-eye. He just could not win at this strange game named sleep, and that resigned depression manifested itself in one, long, tired sigh. Through a half-lidded stare, he watched the shadows and the dim, gray-orange haze doze upon the finely expressive features of the hienn that lay with him. Duo still felt his heart keen out for him as if he were only an illusion created by his loneliness to further excruciate him, he still felt the cold riff of separation even when he could count every eyelash, feel the very croon of his pumping heart in the air.
It broke his heart to be away; it broke his heart again to see him. Just to see how beautiful he was and to know that he'd ever once had the nerve to even think of pushing away that face and that equally powerful spirit that lay beneath it. That was Duo Maxwell's eternal dilemma. Not did one day pass where he had ever not thought of his family's untimely slaughter, he had told his traveler once, back in those painful and hazy days where he had told himself so many times he hated him if only to prevent him from falling for that unaware, naive creature. And now, that still held true—But to that burden was added the fact that he could not go a day without thinking about Heero, either cursing his luck if they were apart or wondering how he could have fallen so heavily for him while they spent the morning avoiding the rest of the day together in an unmade bed. His heart ached a little everyday, fearful when he ran his fingers through his hair or just watched him sit at the table with his coffee and newspaper that his heart would simply cease to function if he should just be gone the next morning.
It had always had been his greatest fear. It had hid beneath a thick layer of distrust for the entire human race, masqueraded as hatred of his innocence, took last resort in contempt for his stubbornness and refusal to let him die for his crime, as he had finally resigned himself to do. And Heero had simply overlooked that and bared him open anyway—no matter how many empty threats Duo had thrown at him in the process. That was what made the one-eared Neko still find it difficult to keep his heart in his chest when he looked at Heero, even as the months and the years heaped upon him. That passion that became his stubbornness to stay with him was something he never got completely used to, never felt indifferent to, not something he took for granted. And it was all for him. That was a nice feeling as well, when he'd spent so many years alone and bitter.
Duo sighed again, shifting again beneath the comforter that could not comfort him to sleep again, so that he could lift his hand. Though his hands were much rougher than Heero's, covered in scars and nicks and calluses from his previous thieving lifestyle, he needed only to be close to be able to feel the actual throb of his heartbeat, and ran his fingers over his face and down to his chest. He felt it humming through his skin like a pounding electric wire, reassuring and absolute proof of life. Such a simple rhythm meant the difference between life and death to him, between night and day in Duo's heart, and he swore that he'd die to protect if he had to, for he wouldn't live without it.
Funny, how much he had come to need one single person more than he needed to eat, to drink, to sleep, and it all had probably been in place after that night at the carnival. There had been no pivotal moment; Heero had gotten under his skin even seconds before he had met him and crept beneath it, smelling of alcohol and boredom and even hopelessness as he walked toward his fortune-telling tent. Duo had been aware of his tendencies to fall into addictions back then, but the severity with which it effected him in the Traveler's case had straddled the line between ridiculous and terrifying. And it still was, for he had many nights like this.
Duo felt Heero coming awake before he moved, feeling the tiny fluctuations as his heart slowly woke up and brought his mind with it. He drew in a long, sleepy breath as he managed to crack his eyes open for a moment, looking drowsily at him, and moved his arm thrown over Duo's waist to take hold of the hand resting over his heart. Their fingers intertwined and Heero made a sleepy, incoherent sound as he mumbled, only partly conscious of what he was doing.
"I'll still be here tomorrow morning," he slurred sleepily, his face softening as he started to fall back into dreaming. "Just get some sleep, Duo."
The bohemian smiled at him and gave in willingly to the command, though he secretly doubted how likely sleep was for him, especially of late. "Alright," he told him, taking his hand from Heero's chest and being pulled closer by his husband. He looked one more longing time at that flawless, dreaming face as he fell back into the arms of sleep, and then finally nestled his head into the pillow and let his burdened lids fall over his eyes.
And in a few minutes time, the shadows found the ambassador curled up against his traveler, snoring again.