1 Seeing You
I was lying awake in my bed in the middle of the night, trying to catch elusive sleep when it happened.
My parents were gone for the weekend, and, us being only a family with modest means, meaning we don't have any housekeepers to chaperone me through the days my mom and dad were gone, I was virtually alone in our modest country house. A country house surrounded by a thick copse of trees with the closest house two miles away from us.
Yes, yes… I know… how could we have a house in the country when I just told you that we were just a modest family?
Well, that's easy enough to explain. This is my father's ancestral home. We are of local nobility. Old blood, some call it. Old money. Though, the money's gone. It's been gone a long time ago, before I was born. Gone because of my grandpa's gambling days. And the only things our family salvaged from the loan collectors were our two most run down houses. One's a town house in London and the other is here, in this god-forsaken forest on nowhere land.
Oh, well… that's that.
As I was saying, I was trying to sleep when it happened.
It isn't really a long story. Just something quaint that happened in a quaint night on a quaint house in the quaint woods of the English country.
That night, I was dreaming dreams that could have been but cannot be.
I won't explain further. I know you know what kind of dreams these are. A lot of people have them. They need not be exactly like the dreams I had that night while I was trying to sleep and it happened.
What happened?
Oh, I was digressing again wasn't I?
Well… HE happened.
HE came.
All was silent. Almost all anyway. I could hear the house mumble its silent mumblings through the silent night. The usual noises that frighten little children so while they are still little.
And then out of the silence came a loud crash. A loud swoosh of air as something heavy landed on the ground. Then creaking noises, then something opening and slamming. Then silence again. Then I heard the back door's lock being picked. And opened.
A burglar? I asked myself. Once again I cursed the fates that led my family to its present means of living. And I cursed myself for not opening the lights for the simply reason that it was instilled in me by my parents to save money by saving electricity. Besides, I had thought that I could see well enough in the dark having had the free surgery I had two years ago with my eyes. I was going blind already. It started at the age of twelve, I don't understand how and why so don't ask. But since I was twelve, I've been having trouble with my vision. When I turned fourteen, my father, being a captain of the Federation and having some right connections had me examined by some university doctor who instead asked if I was willing to have my eyes 'enhanced'. Enhanced. Yes. That was the word he said while explaining what he was planning to do with my eyes. He didn't explain much on the side effects and what they had wanted me to do later on… Oh, sure I didn't go blind… but well… what happened is another thing.
Anyway, because of that operation, I could see better than most in the dark. Suffice it to say that I had near perfect eyesight afterwards. Such a near perfect eyesight that my hindsight must've gone blind.
I left the lights closed that night, I didn't have much use for them anyway, leaving the house in complete darkness and silence, except of course for the usual mumblings a house does at night, mumblings that frighten children.
As I heard the door being opened, I crept out of bed, as quiet as possible. My head whirled around, looking for a suitable weapon that could protect me from whoever the intruder was. I found my deceased brother's baseball bat.
My brother, his name was Jordan, I called him Danny. He was my big brother. He was five years older than me. He died serving as a soldier in one of the battles along the colonies in space. This was his room once. I don't know what possessed me to transfer to this room when he died. I guess I was trying to fill the space he left in my father's heart when he died. I never did manage to do that. Not with my mother so against my wanting to join the Federation. It's always so hard to fill up the spot left by someone else. It's such an impossible feat to do.
Then, also as silently as possible, I opened my bedroom door and peered out. The corridor was empty. Good. So far, anyway.
Clutching my brother's baseball bat, I stalked out of my room into the unlit night along the corridor of a big but quaint and rather modest house.
That was when I heard the footsteps coming up behind me.
I whirled around with the bat but was to late. A hand had caught my hand and held it in a death grip that made me lose hold on the bat. Then that hand pinned both my arms behind my back, still in a death grip while another hand held a gun's barrel to my temple. Holding my breath in, I heard a voice say…
"Go ahead, scream. No one's gonna hear you anyway. But if you do, remember that no one's also gonna hear my gun go off."
"I won't scream…" My voice faint for my heart was in my throat.
He grunted, released me from his stranglehold, and faced me. I looked at him for the first time.
Why, he was merely a boy.
Well, I really shouldn't say boy coz I myself am not *that* old. I'm sixteen, in case you wanted to know. And in case you haven't deduced that from what I said about myself before this.
He was about my age, maybe also sixteen or seventeen from the size of his body.
No. Don't mistake me on this. He was quite tall and all. He wasn't at all small. His body was exceptionally well muscled. But not like the muscles of those body builders on television. Their muscles are gross. All that bulging and flexing and oiling and all. It's just plain gross. No. HIS were just right. His muscles were like those of a Japanese martial artist. Very compact yet very light. I don't know how to explain it. Let's just say that he looked like someone who uses his body well.
But I couldn't tell his exact age. I can see that he's young. As I said, he looked about my age too. My age at the time HE happened. But he also looked old.
No. Not old old. Not wrinkled old. Wise old. He looked as though he had seen so many things far beyond what a mere sixteen year old would have possibly seen. He had THAT kind of look in his eyes.
And I don't mean that in any way sexual, alright.
He looked wise beyond his years.
And yet his eyes were scowling. They were blank. I could see that through the dark. I could see his sight was better and worse than mine for having seen all he had seen.
He released me, yes. He wasn't holding me anymore. And yet, I felt no compulsion to run away screaming from him even though he was still pointing a gun to my head. I just looked at him as he looked at me.
The strangest feeling came over me and the thought that entered my head was… he has such sad, sad eyes.
And I wanted to know why he had such.
I opened my mouth to speak but then noticed his other arm holding his left side. I noticed the dark spot in his clothes. Dark spots in the night. Dark spots were blood was seeping through. They were supposed to be dark spots, but for my eyes they are red, only maybe darker. A darker more sinister red.
I went to him, trying not to notice his scowl turning harsher as I came closer. I came closer, holding up my hands out to let him know I wouldn't do anything odd. When I was standing in front of him, a mere step away from him, I reached out, touched the hand clutching his side and looked up at him.
"Let's see to this before you bleed to death, ok?"
He looked at me, his eyes softening up but still in a perpetual scowl. And lowered the gun. He gave a nod, motioned for me to lead, that he will follow. Maybe with a gun still trained on my head, I don't know. I didn't care then anyway.
I lead him to my parent's bedroom, had him sit on the old antique bed, something the loan collectors couldn't collect coz it was fixed to the floor though they did get the thick goose down mattress, and my parents are making do with the usual ones one could buy at the stores.
I left him there, he was clutching the bed's wooden side, to get the first aid kit my mother kept in her closet.
I came back with him still in that stance. I told him to strip off his shirt, he was wearing a denim jacket and a green tank top, and to lay on the bed, not minding what my parents would say about blood on their bed. Then I mended his wound.
It wasn't a mortal wound, that I could tell since my mother drilled me in caring for any wounds coz she's a Federation doctor. I knew about wounds. When I was younger, I often went to the hospital my mother was working for tailing her while she was doing her rounds like a second shadow. A shadow that wasn't as silent as the real one. I was a child, I was curious, who could blame a child for being curious? Thus my familiarity with wounds.
It wasn't a mortal wound. He would live. Though it was quite deep. But judging from the other scars in his body, old scars, most barely recognizable as scars if you didn't know what you were looking at, he was used to being hurt and wounded. I wondered again at what he did being so used to pain, absorbing it in his body that the only trace of it was in his eyes. Proud eyes. Dangerous eyes. Yet for me, lovely eyes, my eyes, only better and worse.
Having mended his side as best as I could, I told him to rest, that I'll ready some food for him to eat, and turned away. His hand caught mine as I turned and I turned back to him. He was still scowling, eyes in a perpetual glare. Though his voice was soft, husky even.
"Why did you help me?"
I only looked at him, not knowing what to say.
"Do you pity me?"
I shook my head. No. It wasn't pity I felt. No. Not even sympathy.
"Then why are you helping me?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"I just feel like helping you. You look so sad."
"Sad?" He asked his scowl deepening.
I don't know what came over me, but what I did next surprised me as much as it did him.
"No, don't do that." Saying so, I reached out and touched his creasing eyebrows. I did not want them to crease. I did not want him to scowl.
After a few moments of silence, he asked, "Do what?" His eyebrows starting to crease with the scowl again but once again I creased them away, touching his eyebrows ever so lightly in a massaging manner as he looked up at me.
"Don't scowl."
"I'm not." Creasing again.
"Yes you are. Stop it."
He just looked this time, no creasing. At least he was trying not to, which surprisingly delighted me, and surprised him too.
He tried to sit up, I pushed him down. "I told you to rest." Then I turned away again.
This time, he didn't stop me with his hand; he stopped me with his voice, asking, "Where are you going?"
"I'll ready something for you to eat. You look hungry to me. Besides you need food to compensate for the blood you lost."
I turned away before he could stop me again and went to the kitchen. There, humming a happy tune I didn't realize having hummed since the years I had my eye 'enhancement', I readied some hot soup for him to eat. Something easy to digest so that it would go straight to the bloodstream, that was what my mother said. I hummed the not-hummed-for-two-years tune and busily got the soup under way.
Then there came another sudden scuffling of shoes. Shoes trudging. I looked at the kitchen door's direction and saw him walking slowly towards me. His tank top was back covering the load of bandages I placed there over the wound.
"I told you to rest. What? You think I'd have poisoned whatever food I was gonna give you?" I looked at him. "I'm not like that you know. I don't help mend people's wounds then poison them."
"I wasn't thinking that."
"Then why didn't you rest up like I told you to?"
"I was wondering whether you needed any help cooking."
I raised an eyebrow at him, "What, you think I can't cook?!"
"No."
No. Flat and simple. Just a no. He was right too. I wonder how he knew? Of course I wouldn't admit on not knowing how to cook a simple soup.
"Why'd you say so?"
"Coz I can smell burning food." He nodded towards my steaming covered pan. "The flame is on too high."
"What are you a food guru?" I said sarcastically, as he walked up next to me.
"Don't do that." He said.
"Do what?" I said.
"This." Then he reached over and creased out the scowl forming between my eyes.
I was surprised. He was surprised. Though he kept his hand near my face.
His hand touched my cheek making me look up at him. We were eye to eye. So close. I was holding my breath in, not breathing. I was too caught up in the moment to breathe.
Then, as though waking up from a dream, his hand fell away. So did my eyes from his eyes. But his eyes stayed. I felt them bore into me. Dangerous eyes. My eyes. Only better and worse.
Moments later, I looked up and said, "Well, if you're such a food guru, then you better be the one to prepare the food. I never could do much other than reheat what my mother left in the fridge and boil water."
Still looking for the entire world serious, he nodded, like he was being given a mission he confidently knew he could handle.
I looked at his back, reliving the moment that had passed. The moment that I held my breath in, forgetting to breathe, forgetting to live. A moment the world was all eyes. His eyes. My eyes. Same eyes. Dangerous eyes. Only better and worse.
A few minutes later, we were sitting down on the kitchen/dinning table eating soup and some toaster-hot bread.
I hate to admit it, but though it was a simple fare, he made it taste better than what I would have been able to quip up.
"So, where'd you learn how to cook?"
"Here and there."
"Huh? Wha'd you mean?" I asked blowing at my soup filled spoon.
"I leaned how to cook along the way."
"Way where?"
"You're too curious."
"Is that bad?"
"No. It just reminds me of someone."
For a moment he had a faraway look in his eyes. His sad, dangerous eyes like mine that were better and worse.
"Who?"
"A girl."
"Your girlfriend?" A vice grip in my heart.
He looked at me. "I don't know. Nothing's clear about us."
"Tell me about it."
He still looked at me, only it seemed deeper now, like he was trying to read my soul. "She's a special girl. A very important girl whose life is the world's."
"What do you mean?"
"You haven't even asked me what my name is yet, you know."
I blinked at the sudden change of subject.
He's right. It never occurred to me to ask. It didn't seem needed anymore. Names. They're just words describing a person. Saying who that person is but not really. Names aren't needed to understand what it is we understand about people.
"You're right. It didn't occur to me."
"You still haven't asked."
"Will you answer me if I asked?"
"No."
"Why?"
"We both don't need names to understand each other."
Same thing as I was thinking. Same thoughts, same eyes. Only better and worse.
"I understand." Which is why I never learned what his name was. Though I really wanted to. "So what about her?"
"I wanted to kill her."
"Why?"
For once smiling, a very odd smile, "Coz she asked too many questions."
I blinked. "Ha-ha. Very funny."
"No, I'm serious."
"So you're saying you want to kill me now too?"
"No."
"What's the diff?"
"You don't know my name." With that he stood up, went to the sink and washed his empty bowl of soup.
I stared at him bewildered, he doesn't want me to know who he is but I was getting to know what he was inside. What in reality he was inside. Sadness and happiness both went to my heart.
"You better rest up. So that wound of yours could heal better. You can take my parent's room."
"No."
"Yes you are."
"No."
"Then were do you plan to sleep? At the couch? Be practical. My parents aren't here anyway."
"I know. That's why I'm going to sleep in your room."
"What?" My heart in my throat again.
"It's a good thing no one has tried breaking into this house before me. They would have made an easy job of you had they found you here."
"We're in the middle of the forest. Who'd break into an empty house anyway?" Then looking at him, "Well, besides you … Anyway, they wouldn't get anything of value coz nothing's left that's of value here."
"Yeah, I know. I checked. Nothing of value except you."
My heart leapt higher. "So what are you saying?"
"I'll sleep with you tonight. Don't worry… I'll stay on the floor. I won't bother you or anything."
My heart went back to its original position in my chest. Relief and disappointment coursed through me. And he saw it in my eyes. His ever- watchful eyes.
"Unless…"
"Unless what?"
"Unless you want me to."
I looked at him.
"Unless you want me to bother you, I mean." Looking at me as intently as before, he asked, "Do you?"
"I…"
He inclined his head sideways waiting for my answer. His ever-present scowl was back.
I stared up at his eyes. Does he think it an apt payment for my treating his wounds? A payment? If it is, I won't accept it.
As though reading my mind, he said, "It isn't a payment for this favor you did me," indicating his bandaged side, "Though I want to treat it as such, it isn't. I just want to."
"You do?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
He smiled, this time a genuine smile. A smile full of warmth. Such a disarming smile from a disarming boy. No man.
"I just want to. I don't usually submit to my own whims. I submit to orders. I'm a soldier. I'm used to orders. If you order me not to touch you, I won't."
"Then I won't order you not to touch me. And I won't order you to touch me too. Do what you like."
With that, I turned to leave the kitchen but then he caught my hand again and pulled me to him.
He stared at me before kissing me. Looking deep in my eyes as he did so. His eyes were open, so were mine. We looked at each other. I kissed him back. A light kiss. Light and compact as his Japanese martial artist muscles. A kiss full of feeling.
We both closed our eyes at the same time. My hands going around his shoulders, going up wrapped around his neck, his arms circling my waist and pulling me closer against him.
His body was hard. Not an ounce of fat could be felt through the tank top.
He pressed my body closer to his as his teeth made nibbling small bites on my lower lip teasing it open. Then I gasped as his tongue went into my mouth, touching my teeth and sucking at my own tongue. Our tongues played together drawing back and forth, back and forth to his mouth then my mouth to his mouth then my mouth again. A seemingly unending rhythm of going in and out, in and out.
I felt him carry me to the nearest room, my parents' room. Laid me on the not-as-thick-as-the-goose-down bed's mattress and followed my body there. His body covering my body. Delicious weight upon mine.
What we did that night. The remainder of the night, I won't tell you. It's a secret kept by almost all lovers in the world. I need not tell you about it except that it was as though both our souls met several times that night. So many times that I learned almost everything about him that night. That had I been quizzed about him, his life, his character, his emotions, the trace of his face, the contours of his body, I'd have aced all the tests in the world. It felt like I knew all there was to know about him and he knew all there was to know about me for we also talked that night; as deeply as one who was baring his soul to another. We learned everything there was to know about each other, all the pains and hurts, every emotional scar. We learned everything and all, except each other's names.
* * *
That morning I woke up with him smiling down at me, watching me sleep from the looks of it. His perpetual scowl gone for the moment, crease between the eyebrows gone. I stretched; smiled up at him and reached up to touch his cheek and he turned his face to kiss my palm.
Then he stood up, put his denim pants back on, combed his fingers through his hair and reached for his tank top.
"Going anywhere?"
"I'll make breakfast."
I laughed. He laughed. A private joke about my cooking.
"Common, sleepy head." He said, hauling me out of bed with me clutching the blanket to my chest. He pulled me close for another kiss, the blanket wrapped around me and trailing to the floor like a ball gown and he on his denim jeans and green top. His tousled hair looked more tousled this morning, I reached up and playfully tousled more while he smiled benignly down at me.
"Common, get some clothes on." He reached for the oversized shirt I was wearing last night that covered me to my knees, and pulled it over my head. I let the blanket drop. "I want to show you something."
"What?"
"Breakfast first."
"Hn. Men and their stomachs."
"Women and their questions." He countered.
After eating breakfast, of course he was the one who cooked, we showered and went out for a walk in the woods.
Something was different about the woods that day. They weren't as sinister- looking as they were before. Weren't as dark. Was it any wonder why?
* * *
"You have to go soon, don't you?"
He didn't say a word, just looked at me in that usual calm face he had ever since that first night, and looked back down and continued retying his shoes.
It didn't really change him, his stay with me. It's been five days now ever since that night, and though he was different than during those first few minutes when he pointed a gun at me, these five days haven't really changed anything in either of us. It's like… I don't know, a rest, for us both. It's like we're both in some kind of dream state. I haven't felt this relaxed with regards to myself ever since the 'enhancement'. I don't know if this is what you call happy… I don't know at all. What I do know is that if I can do anything about it, I don't want this to end. For once, I've found someone I can relate to, someone who is so much like me.
But I know it IS just a state. We both know that. No commitments, no regrets. That's what we promised each other. We go back to our lives. Our separate lives. Separate.
"Yes."
I nodded and looked down. See? He hasn't changed at all. So haven't I. "When?"
"Tomorrow." Not even a pause. He looked up and met my eyes. His softened. "I'm sorry."
"You are?" My eyebrows went up. I didn't expect to hear that.
He smiled a genuine smile; those very rare smile of his and nodded. "You're surprised, aren't you?"
"Yes. To put it simply, yes. I am just a bit surprised. I-"
He moved fast. I've only seen him move that fast twice. That first night he grabbed my hand, and two days after when we I saw him go out of the house to the woods. He moved fast. Fast, so fast that if not for my enhanced eyes, I wouldn't have seen him. He moved fast. One instant he was a couple of yards away foot up a chair fixing his shoelaces, and the next instant, he was holding me in a crushing embrace. He was whispering words to me I didn't expect. Again. Unexpected words. Words, like him when he first came, unexpected. Who'd have thought I'd hear such things from him. "I don't want to go, but I have to. You understand that, don't you? I don't want to leave you, but I have to finish what I've started…"
"Hush…" I pulled back and took his face in my hands. "I understand."
* * *
Those were the last words we exchanged. The next day, when I woke up, he was gone. In the bed where I lay, there was a space that screamed this was supposed to be his space. The space where he lay that night, after the last time we made love. The space where he lay, still holding me until I fell asleep. But today, as I woke up, that was the only hint that he had been present in my life for a brief five days. No other traces were left of the days we had together. Everything was tidied up as it was before he came into the house.
It was all so quiet. As quiet as before he came.
I trudged out of bed into the sunlit. Light that hurt my eyes. I looked in the kitchen for any clues that could tell me that the whole thing was not just a dream.
Nothing.
All the pots and pans and plates we used to cook and eat the bread and soup were where they were as I had left them after having a solitary dinner five days ago.
Not a speck differed.
Nothing.
My brother's baseball bat was at its usual place. Everything was the same, even the food rations stocked at the pantry.
I was alone.
Alone.
Again.
And yet…
I know it wasn't a dream. I remembered too much, too vividly for it to be a dream.
But why is it that I couldn't find any clues about him being here for those five days and nights?
Then it came to mind. My mother's first aid kit. Of course. How stupid. There should be some left-over bandages. I hurriedly went to my mother's closet to check.
But found nothing. No trace of him. Except in my mind. And the empty space beside me on my parent's bed.
* * *
To be continued
* * *
Standard Disclaimers:
Gundam Wing isn't mine. I'm just borrowing its characters for nonprofit- oriented entertainment. Please don't sue me, ne?
I was lying awake in my bed in the middle of the night, trying to catch elusive sleep when it happened.
My parents were gone for the weekend, and, us being only a family with modest means, meaning we don't have any housekeepers to chaperone me through the days my mom and dad were gone, I was virtually alone in our modest country house. A country house surrounded by a thick copse of trees with the closest house two miles away from us.
Yes, yes… I know… how could we have a house in the country when I just told you that we were just a modest family?
Well, that's easy enough to explain. This is my father's ancestral home. We are of local nobility. Old blood, some call it. Old money. Though, the money's gone. It's been gone a long time ago, before I was born. Gone because of my grandpa's gambling days. And the only things our family salvaged from the loan collectors were our two most run down houses. One's a town house in London and the other is here, in this god-forsaken forest on nowhere land.
Oh, well… that's that.
As I was saying, I was trying to sleep when it happened.
It isn't really a long story. Just something quaint that happened in a quaint night on a quaint house in the quaint woods of the English country.
That night, I was dreaming dreams that could have been but cannot be.
I won't explain further. I know you know what kind of dreams these are. A lot of people have them. They need not be exactly like the dreams I had that night while I was trying to sleep and it happened.
What happened?
Oh, I was digressing again wasn't I?
Well… HE happened.
HE came.
All was silent. Almost all anyway. I could hear the house mumble its silent mumblings through the silent night. The usual noises that frighten little children so while they are still little.
And then out of the silence came a loud crash. A loud swoosh of air as something heavy landed on the ground. Then creaking noises, then something opening and slamming. Then silence again. Then I heard the back door's lock being picked. And opened.
A burglar? I asked myself. Once again I cursed the fates that led my family to its present means of living. And I cursed myself for not opening the lights for the simply reason that it was instilled in me by my parents to save money by saving electricity. Besides, I had thought that I could see well enough in the dark having had the free surgery I had two years ago with my eyes. I was going blind already. It started at the age of twelve, I don't understand how and why so don't ask. But since I was twelve, I've been having trouble with my vision. When I turned fourteen, my father, being a captain of the Federation and having some right connections had me examined by some university doctor who instead asked if I was willing to have my eyes 'enhanced'. Enhanced. Yes. That was the word he said while explaining what he was planning to do with my eyes. He didn't explain much on the side effects and what they had wanted me to do later on… Oh, sure I didn't go blind… but well… what happened is another thing.
Anyway, because of that operation, I could see better than most in the dark. Suffice it to say that I had near perfect eyesight afterwards. Such a near perfect eyesight that my hindsight must've gone blind.
I left the lights closed that night, I didn't have much use for them anyway, leaving the house in complete darkness and silence, except of course for the usual mumblings a house does at night, mumblings that frighten children.
As I heard the door being opened, I crept out of bed, as quiet as possible. My head whirled around, looking for a suitable weapon that could protect me from whoever the intruder was. I found my deceased brother's baseball bat.
My brother, his name was Jordan, I called him Danny. He was my big brother. He was five years older than me. He died serving as a soldier in one of the battles along the colonies in space. This was his room once. I don't know what possessed me to transfer to this room when he died. I guess I was trying to fill the space he left in my father's heart when he died. I never did manage to do that. Not with my mother so against my wanting to join the Federation. It's always so hard to fill up the spot left by someone else. It's such an impossible feat to do.
Then, also as silently as possible, I opened my bedroom door and peered out. The corridor was empty. Good. So far, anyway.
Clutching my brother's baseball bat, I stalked out of my room into the unlit night along the corridor of a big but quaint and rather modest house.
That was when I heard the footsteps coming up behind me.
I whirled around with the bat but was to late. A hand had caught my hand and held it in a death grip that made me lose hold on the bat. Then that hand pinned both my arms behind my back, still in a death grip while another hand held a gun's barrel to my temple. Holding my breath in, I heard a voice say…
"Go ahead, scream. No one's gonna hear you anyway. But if you do, remember that no one's also gonna hear my gun go off."
"I won't scream…" My voice faint for my heart was in my throat.
He grunted, released me from his stranglehold, and faced me. I looked at him for the first time.
Why, he was merely a boy.
Well, I really shouldn't say boy coz I myself am not *that* old. I'm sixteen, in case you wanted to know. And in case you haven't deduced that from what I said about myself before this.
He was about my age, maybe also sixteen or seventeen from the size of his body.
No. Don't mistake me on this. He was quite tall and all. He wasn't at all small. His body was exceptionally well muscled. But not like the muscles of those body builders on television. Their muscles are gross. All that bulging and flexing and oiling and all. It's just plain gross. No. HIS were just right. His muscles were like those of a Japanese martial artist. Very compact yet very light. I don't know how to explain it. Let's just say that he looked like someone who uses his body well.
But I couldn't tell his exact age. I can see that he's young. As I said, he looked about my age too. My age at the time HE happened. But he also looked old.
No. Not old old. Not wrinkled old. Wise old. He looked as though he had seen so many things far beyond what a mere sixteen year old would have possibly seen. He had THAT kind of look in his eyes.
And I don't mean that in any way sexual, alright.
He looked wise beyond his years.
And yet his eyes were scowling. They were blank. I could see that through the dark. I could see his sight was better and worse than mine for having seen all he had seen.
He released me, yes. He wasn't holding me anymore. And yet, I felt no compulsion to run away screaming from him even though he was still pointing a gun to my head. I just looked at him as he looked at me.
The strangest feeling came over me and the thought that entered my head was… he has such sad, sad eyes.
And I wanted to know why he had such.
I opened my mouth to speak but then noticed his other arm holding his left side. I noticed the dark spot in his clothes. Dark spots in the night. Dark spots were blood was seeping through. They were supposed to be dark spots, but for my eyes they are red, only maybe darker. A darker more sinister red.
I went to him, trying not to notice his scowl turning harsher as I came closer. I came closer, holding up my hands out to let him know I wouldn't do anything odd. When I was standing in front of him, a mere step away from him, I reached out, touched the hand clutching his side and looked up at him.
"Let's see to this before you bleed to death, ok?"
He looked at me, his eyes softening up but still in a perpetual scowl. And lowered the gun. He gave a nod, motioned for me to lead, that he will follow. Maybe with a gun still trained on my head, I don't know. I didn't care then anyway.
I lead him to my parent's bedroom, had him sit on the old antique bed, something the loan collectors couldn't collect coz it was fixed to the floor though they did get the thick goose down mattress, and my parents are making do with the usual ones one could buy at the stores.
I left him there, he was clutching the bed's wooden side, to get the first aid kit my mother kept in her closet.
I came back with him still in that stance. I told him to strip off his shirt, he was wearing a denim jacket and a green tank top, and to lay on the bed, not minding what my parents would say about blood on their bed. Then I mended his wound.
It wasn't a mortal wound, that I could tell since my mother drilled me in caring for any wounds coz she's a Federation doctor. I knew about wounds. When I was younger, I often went to the hospital my mother was working for tailing her while she was doing her rounds like a second shadow. A shadow that wasn't as silent as the real one. I was a child, I was curious, who could blame a child for being curious? Thus my familiarity with wounds.
It wasn't a mortal wound. He would live. Though it was quite deep. But judging from the other scars in his body, old scars, most barely recognizable as scars if you didn't know what you were looking at, he was used to being hurt and wounded. I wondered again at what he did being so used to pain, absorbing it in his body that the only trace of it was in his eyes. Proud eyes. Dangerous eyes. Yet for me, lovely eyes, my eyes, only better and worse.
Having mended his side as best as I could, I told him to rest, that I'll ready some food for him to eat, and turned away. His hand caught mine as I turned and I turned back to him. He was still scowling, eyes in a perpetual glare. Though his voice was soft, husky even.
"Why did you help me?"
I only looked at him, not knowing what to say.
"Do you pity me?"
I shook my head. No. It wasn't pity I felt. No. Not even sympathy.
"Then why are you helping me?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"I just feel like helping you. You look so sad."
"Sad?" He asked his scowl deepening.
I don't know what came over me, but what I did next surprised me as much as it did him.
"No, don't do that." Saying so, I reached out and touched his creasing eyebrows. I did not want them to crease. I did not want him to scowl.
After a few moments of silence, he asked, "Do what?" His eyebrows starting to crease with the scowl again but once again I creased them away, touching his eyebrows ever so lightly in a massaging manner as he looked up at me.
"Don't scowl."
"I'm not." Creasing again.
"Yes you are. Stop it."
He just looked this time, no creasing. At least he was trying not to, which surprisingly delighted me, and surprised him too.
He tried to sit up, I pushed him down. "I told you to rest." Then I turned away again.
This time, he didn't stop me with his hand; he stopped me with his voice, asking, "Where are you going?"
"I'll ready something for you to eat. You look hungry to me. Besides you need food to compensate for the blood you lost."
I turned away before he could stop me again and went to the kitchen. There, humming a happy tune I didn't realize having hummed since the years I had my eye 'enhancement', I readied some hot soup for him to eat. Something easy to digest so that it would go straight to the bloodstream, that was what my mother said. I hummed the not-hummed-for-two-years tune and busily got the soup under way.
Then there came another sudden scuffling of shoes. Shoes trudging. I looked at the kitchen door's direction and saw him walking slowly towards me. His tank top was back covering the load of bandages I placed there over the wound.
"I told you to rest. What? You think I'd have poisoned whatever food I was gonna give you?" I looked at him. "I'm not like that you know. I don't help mend people's wounds then poison them."
"I wasn't thinking that."
"Then why didn't you rest up like I told you to?"
"I was wondering whether you needed any help cooking."
I raised an eyebrow at him, "What, you think I can't cook?!"
"No."
No. Flat and simple. Just a no. He was right too. I wonder how he knew? Of course I wouldn't admit on not knowing how to cook a simple soup.
"Why'd you say so?"
"Coz I can smell burning food." He nodded towards my steaming covered pan. "The flame is on too high."
"What are you a food guru?" I said sarcastically, as he walked up next to me.
"Don't do that." He said.
"Do what?" I said.
"This." Then he reached over and creased out the scowl forming between my eyes.
I was surprised. He was surprised. Though he kept his hand near my face.
His hand touched my cheek making me look up at him. We were eye to eye. So close. I was holding my breath in, not breathing. I was too caught up in the moment to breathe.
Then, as though waking up from a dream, his hand fell away. So did my eyes from his eyes. But his eyes stayed. I felt them bore into me. Dangerous eyes. My eyes. Only better and worse.
Moments later, I looked up and said, "Well, if you're such a food guru, then you better be the one to prepare the food. I never could do much other than reheat what my mother left in the fridge and boil water."
Still looking for the entire world serious, he nodded, like he was being given a mission he confidently knew he could handle.
I looked at his back, reliving the moment that had passed. The moment that I held my breath in, forgetting to breathe, forgetting to live. A moment the world was all eyes. His eyes. My eyes. Same eyes. Dangerous eyes. Only better and worse.
A few minutes later, we were sitting down on the kitchen/dinning table eating soup and some toaster-hot bread.
I hate to admit it, but though it was a simple fare, he made it taste better than what I would have been able to quip up.
"So, where'd you learn how to cook?"
"Here and there."
"Huh? Wha'd you mean?" I asked blowing at my soup filled spoon.
"I leaned how to cook along the way."
"Way where?"
"You're too curious."
"Is that bad?"
"No. It just reminds me of someone."
For a moment he had a faraway look in his eyes. His sad, dangerous eyes like mine that were better and worse.
"Who?"
"A girl."
"Your girlfriend?" A vice grip in my heart.
He looked at me. "I don't know. Nothing's clear about us."
"Tell me about it."
He still looked at me, only it seemed deeper now, like he was trying to read my soul. "She's a special girl. A very important girl whose life is the world's."
"What do you mean?"
"You haven't even asked me what my name is yet, you know."
I blinked at the sudden change of subject.
He's right. It never occurred to me to ask. It didn't seem needed anymore. Names. They're just words describing a person. Saying who that person is but not really. Names aren't needed to understand what it is we understand about people.
"You're right. It didn't occur to me."
"You still haven't asked."
"Will you answer me if I asked?"
"No."
"Why?"
"We both don't need names to understand each other."
Same thing as I was thinking. Same thoughts, same eyes. Only better and worse.
"I understand." Which is why I never learned what his name was. Though I really wanted to. "So what about her?"
"I wanted to kill her."
"Why?"
For once smiling, a very odd smile, "Coz she asked too many questions."
I blinked. "Ha-ha. Very funny."
"No, I'm serious."
"So you're saying you want to kill me now too?"
"No."
"What's the diff?"
"You don't know my name." With that he stood up, went to the sink and washed his empty bowl of soup.
I stared at him bewildered, he doesn't want me to know who he is but I was getting to know what he was inside. What in reality he was inside. Sadness and happiness both went to my heart.
"You better rest up. So that wound of yours could heal better. You can take my parent's room."
"No."
"Yes you are."
"No."
"Then were do you plan to sleep? At the couch? Be practical. My parents aren't here anyway."
"I know. That's why I'm going to sleep in your room."
"What?" My heart in my throat again.
"It's a good thing no one has tried breaking into this house before me. They would have made an easy job of you had they found you here."
"We're in the middle of the forest. Who'd break into an empty house anyway?" Then looking at him, "Well, besides you … Anyway, they wouldn't get anything of value coz nothing's left that's of value here."
"Yeah, I know. I checked. Nothing of value except you."
My heart leapt higher. "So what are you saying?"
"I'll sleep with you tonight. Don't worry… I'll stay on the floor. I won't bother you or anything."
My heart went back to its original position in my chest. Relief and disappointment coursed through me. And he saw it in my eyes. His ever- watchful eyes.
"Unless…"
"Unless what?"
"Unless you want me to."
I looked at him.
"Unless you want me to bother you, I mean." Looking at me as intently as before, he asked, "Do you?"
"I…"
He inclined his head sideways waiting for my answer. His ever-present scowl was back.
I stared up at his eyes. Does he think it an apt payment for my treating his wounds? A payment? If it is, I won't accept it.
As though reading my mind, he said, "It isn't a payment for this favor you did me," indicating his bandaged side, "Though I want to treat it as such, it isn't. I just want to."
"You do?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
He smiled, this time a genuine smile. A smile full of warmth. Such a disarming smile from a disarming boy. No man.
"I just want to. I don't usually submit to my own whims. I submit to orders. I'm a soldier. I'm used to orders. If you order me not to touch you, I won't."
"Then I won't order you not to touch me. And I won't order you to touch me too. Do what you like."
With that, I turned to leave the kitchen but then he caught my hand again and pulled me to him.
He stared at me before kissing me. Looking deep in my eyes as he did so. His eyes were open, so were mine. We looked at each other. I kissed him back. A light kiss. Light and compact as his Japanese martial artist muscles. A kiss full of feeling.
We both closed our eyes at the same time. My hands going around his shoulders, going up wrapped around his neck, his arms circling my waist and pulling me closer against him.
His body was hard. Not an ounce of fat could be felt through the tank top.
He pressed my body closer to his as his teeth made nibbling small bites on my lower lip teasing it open. Then I gasped as his tongue went into my mouth, touching my teeth and sucking at my own tongue. Our tongues played together drawing back and forth, back and forth to his mouth then my mouth to his mouth then my mouth again. A seemingly unending rhythm of going in and out, in and out.
I felt him carry me to the nearest room, my parents' room. Laid me on the not-as-thick-as-the-goose-down bed's mattress and followed my body there. His body covering my body. Delicious weight upon mine.
What we did that night. The remainder of the night, I won't tell you. It's a secret kept by almost all lovers in the world. I need not tell you about it except that it was as though both our souls met several times that night. So many times that I learned almost everything about him that night. That had I been quizzed about him, his life, his character, his emotions, the trace of his face, the contours of his body, I'd have aced all the tests in the world. It felt like I knew all there was to know about him and he knew all there was to know about me for we also talked that night; as deeply as one who was baring his soul to another. We learned everything there was to know about each other, all the pains and hurts, every emotional scar. We learned everything and all, except each other's names.
* * *
That morning I woke up with him smiling down at me, watching me sleep from the looks of it. His perpetual scowl gone for the moment, crease between the eyebrows gone. I stretched; smiled up at him and reached up to touch his cheek and he turned his face to kiss my palm.
Then he stood up, put his denim pants back on, combed his fingers through his hair and reached for his tank top.
"Going anywhere?"
"I'll make breakfast."
I laughed. He laughed. A private joke about my cooking.
"Common, sleepy head." He said, hauling me out of bed with me clutching the blanket to my chest. He pulled me close for another kiss, the blanket wrapped around me and trailing to the floor like a ball gown and he on his denim jeans and green top. His tousled hair looked more tousled this morning, I reached up and playfully tousled more while he smiled benignly down at me.
"Common, get some clothes on." He reached for the oversized shirt I was wearing last night that covered me to my knees, and pulled it over my head. I let the blanket drop. "I want to show you something."
"What?"
"Breakfast first."
"Hn. Men and their stomachs."
"Women and their questions." He countered.
After eating breakfast, of course he was the one who cooked, we showered and went out for a walk in the woods.
Something was different about the woods that day. They weren't as sinister- looking as they were before. Weren't as dark. Was it any wonder why?
* * *
"You have to go soon, don't you?"
He didn't say a word, just looked at me in that usual calm face he had ever since that first night, and looked back down and continued retying his shoes.
It didn't really change him, his stay with me. It's been five days now ever since that night, and though he was different than during those first few minutes when he pointed a gun at me, these five days haven't really changed anything in either of us. It's like… I don't know, a rest, for us both. It's like we're both in some kind of dream state. I haven't felt this relaxed with regards to myself ever since the 'enhancement'. I don't know if this is what you call happy… I don't know at all. What I do know is that if I can do anything about it, I don't want this to end. For once, I've found someone I can relate to, someone who is so much like me.
But I know it IS just a state. We both know that. No commitments, no regrets. That's what we promised each other. We go back to our lives. Our separate lives. Separate.
"Yes."
I nodded and looked down. See? He hasn't changed at all. So haven't I. "When?"
"Tomorrow." Not even a pause. He looked up and met my eyes. His softened. "I'm sorry."
"You are?" My eyebrows went up. I didn't expect to hear that.
He smiled a genuine smile; those very rare smile of his and nodded. "You're surprised, aren't you?"
"Yes. To put it simply, yes. I am just a bit surprised. I-"
He moved fast. I've only seen him move that fast twice. That first night he grabbed my hand, and two days after when we I saw him go out of the house to the woods. He moved fast. Fast, so fast that if not for my enhanced eyes, I wouldn't have seen him. He moved fast. One instant he was a couple of yards away foot up a chair fixing his shoelaces, and the next instant, he was holding me in a crushing embrace. He was whispering words to me I didn't expect. Again. Unexpected words. Words, like him when he first came, unexpected. Who'd have thought I'd hear such things from him. "I don't want to go, but I have to. You understand that, don't you? I don't want to leave you, but I have to finish what I've started…"
"Hush…" I pulled back and took his face in my hands. "I understand."
* * *
Those were the last words we exchanged. The next day, when I woke up, he was gone. In the bed where I lay, there was a space that screamed this was supposed to be his space. The space where he lay that night, after the last time we made love. The space where he lay, still holding me until I fell asleep. But today, as I woke up, that was the only hint that he had been present in my life for a brief five days. No other traces were left of the days we had together. Everything was tidied up as it was before he came into the house.
It was all so quiet. As quiet as before he came.
I trudged out of bed into the sunlit. Light that hurt my eyes. I looked in the kitchen for any clues that could tell me that the whole thing was not just a dream.
Nothing.
All the pots and pans and plates we used to cook and eat the bread and soup were where they were as I had left them after having a solitary dinner five days ago.
Not a speck differed.
Nothing.
My brother's baseball bat was at its usual place. Everything was the same, even the food rations stocked at the pantry.
I was alone.
Alone.
Again.
And yet…
I know it wasn't a dream. I remembered too much, too vividly for it to be a dream.
But why is it that I couldn't find any clues about him being here for those five days and nights?
Then it came to mind. My mother's first aid kit. Of course. How stupid. There should be some left-over bandages. I hurriedly went to my mother's closet to check.
But found nothing. No trace of him. Except in my mind. And the empty space beside me on my parent's bed.
* * *
To be continued
* * *
Standard Disclaimers:
Gundam Wing isn't mine. I'm just borrowing its characters for nonprofit- oriented entertainment. Please don't sue me, ne?