A/N: For CylinaNightshade, one of my amazing patrons on . Here is your May fic, as requested.

A/N #2: For details on the request, please see the endnotes.

A/N#3: As always, thank you so very, very much to my amazing beta reader Ro. You not only save me from the curse of run-on sentences, but give me the motivation to keep writing.

Warnings: angst, language, sexy-times, CHARACTER DEATH

Pairings: 1x2, 1xR

Treading Water

Part One

Routines were important, which meant that Heero woke up at six in the morning, every morning, regardless of what he had planned for the day.

He woke up, performed his morning ablutions, and ate a breakfast of toast, black coffee and a banana while reading The Washington Post news feed on his Kindle.

That was the easy part. He had never liked sleep anyway, had always had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep for as long as he could remember, so getting out of bed every morning wasn't a chore. It was sad, probably, how good it felt sometimes to take his morning piss and, after washing his hands so thoroughly that they turned pink under the water, he brushed his teeth and flossed. Eating was dull, the dullest part of his routine, in fact, and he put the minimum effort into it. Just enough to ensure that he had something in his stomach.

But after breakfast, things got harder.

First there was the shower, always a difficult prospect because Heero often found himself focusing on the patch of grout closest to the rim of the tub, on the dark filling between the white tiles that, to him, looked more red than black. No matter how many times he scrubbed the tiles, he always saw red lining the tub and he always stared.

Heero had never cared much for masturbation - as a teenager he had had a brief fixation with it, but his enthusiasm had evaporated after his father had caught him in bed one morning and called him a worthless, disgusting pervert. The admonishment hadn't put a full stop to Heero's self-pleasure but it had made him more circumspect, and over the years Heero had found less and less motivation to bother.

But, it was a good distraction, and whenever he found himself staring at the tiles for too long he found that was the best - and often the only - way to force himself to look away from the grout.

So that too became part of his routine.

As Heero touched himself, running one soap-slicked hand over his erect shaft and alternating between massaging his balls and pinching his own nipples with the other, he squeezed his eyes shut tightly and tried to think of nothing at all except the building pressure in his groin, the staccato beat of his heart and the shallow puffs of his breaths.

In the heartbeats before orgasm, Heero always lost control, always lost his focus, as his body neared completion and his thighs quivered and his pulse stuttered. He hated those moments, hated that out-of-control feeling, hated being at the mercy of his impulses and desires.

After he came, he rinsed himself off and stepped out of the shower, very careful not to look at the grout, and the wave of emptiness and disappointment he felt as he stepped out of the shower and started to dry off stayed with him for most of the day.

If it was during the week, he dressed for work, selecting one non-descript dress shirt from the rest and tucking it into a pair of trousers - all the same cut, but he had a pair each of navy, gray and black. If he had a meeting scheduled, then he added a jacket and tie, but since his role buried in the bowels of a financial planning group's IT department kept him away from most meetings, it was rare for him to have to dress up.

Heero left his apartment at exactly 7:45 every day that he worked. He walked three blocks and caught the 8:15 bus, and he arrived at work at 8:45. He spent the half-hour on the bus reading science and tech blogs on his phone. He always put in his earbuds, though he never played music or listened to podcasts. But he had discovered that the best way to avoid conversations was to appear as unavailable as possible.

At 8:45 his bus stopped two blocks from the tower where Life Security Financial rented three floors, and Heero walked the remainder of his commute with hunched shoulders, hands in his pockets, earbuds still firmly in place.

He walked into the main lobby at 8:50 and swiped his keycard to gain access to the elevators.

At 8:54 the elevator doors opened on the seventeenth floor, and Heero stepped out after pocketing his earbuds and walked the twelve yards to his shared office.

At 8:56 he opened up his email and started to sort through the junk, the priorities, and the notifications from colleagues who felt that IT could - and should - cure everything to do with anything electronic in the office.

Heero spent the next hour sorting through his email queue. Replying and deleting and looking at the minutes pass with agonizing slowness.

At 10:01 he got up, took a piss in the bathroom at the opposite end of the floor and washed his hands for thirty-six seconds before drying them off with a single paper towel. Then he returned to his office.

At 10:30 he rose again and began making the rounds, going to the desks or offices who had sent him frantic emails about their computers or printers or phones or calculators or - this was a new one today - their staplers.

At 11:54 he finished whatever task he was working on and returned to his office for his earbuds.

It took him seven minutes to leave the office and walk to the diner one block away.

At 12:17 the waitress, usually Becky but sometimes Marie or Candy, placed a salad, half ham and swiss sandwich, and a glass of orange juice in front of him. She slid the check under the caddy of condiments that sat in the middle of the table. Invariably, at least the edge if not half of the check became wet, because she always put the glass of juice right beside it, and the condensation on the outside bled onto the check.

Heero hated the feel of the wet paper, the faded ink as it swirled away. But he always left it there, never bothered to save it, until he finished his meal.

At 12:52 he pulled a $10 bill from his wallet and left it on top of the check. It too, became wet, sometimes, if the glass of orange juice had just come from the dishwasher.

By 1:00 he was back in his office, opening emails again.

At 1:24 he made another round of fixes.

At 2:43 he was usually done for the day, unless someone managed to screw up something in a new and catastrophic fashion, and he spent the remaining two hours and seventeen minutes at work looking at posts in the science subreddits he followed. Occasionally, someone would walk past his office, but Heero never bothered to look up or hide what he was doing. No one cared. Not even Heero.

At 4:57 he checked his email one last time, and then he ran the update and shutdown sequence for his computer.

It took longer to get home than it did to arrive at work - traffic always seemed to be worse in the evening than in the morning - and it was 5:52 when he stepped off of the bus.

Instead of going straight back to his apartment, he walked a block further away and went to the bodega on the corner.

Heero only bought groceries for one day at a time. He didn't like things to spoil, didn't like the idea of things rotting away in his fridge or on his counter. The only things he bought weekly, instead of daily, was his orange juice and coffee. His monthly supplies - toilet paper, paper towels, dish soap - he usually purchased on a Saturday.

It was Monday, which meant he needed to buy more coffee, as well as his dinner and breakfast for Tuesday.

On Wednesday, he would buy the orange juice.

He walked down the produce section and selected a single banana before bagging a handful of green beans. Then he walked down to the meat section. It was Monday, which meant fish. He looked through the glass at the rows of dead things laid out on ice. Salmon was on sale this week.

Heero picked up a package of seran-wrapped mackerel and added it to his basket.

He stopped by the frozen food aisle and bought a frozen package of macaroni and cheese, and then he got into a checkout line.

At 6:27 he opened his apartment and put away the newly-purchased groceries.

He changed out of his work clothes and into one of the seven t-shirts he had kept, this one a U2 shirt from his first concert, and his gray sweatpants.

At 7:01, Relena called.

Sometimes she called a little earlier, sometimes a few minutes later. She had never said anything, but Heero knew she had figured out that whenever she called before seven or more than five minutes after, it threw off his schedule and irritated him. Heero wasn't chatty at the best of times, but when his schedule was thrown off, he was barely able to hold a conversation with her at all.

"How was work today?" she asked.

"Fine."

"Have they replaced Sam yet? Or are you still juggling all of the work by yourself?"

"It's not that much work."

"Still, you were hired to be part of a team. And I'm sure the day would pass quicker if you had company."

"I don't mind." In truth, Heero wasn't sure why he would want the day to pass by quicker. All that would mean was coming home to his empty apartment and spending the next sixteen hours alone. He didn't need the day to pass quicker.

"Well, my mother and brother say hello. I went to visit this weekend - did I tell you?"

She probably had, but Heero didn't remember. He made a noncommittal noise.

"Zechs finally came out. And, of course, he did it in spectacular Zechs fashion. He brought his boyfriend over to dinner - he's nice, Quatre Winner - and didn't bother to tell Quatre that mother didn't know. So it was horribly awkward for everyone. Mother started to cry and- well. Quatre and I escaped to the backyard with the wine. I like him. He's probably too good for my brother."

"Is he smart enough to realize that?"

Relena laughed, as caught off-guard as she always was when Heero went to the effort of making a joke, and Heero found himself relaxing at the bright sound.

"Oh, he's definitely smart enough. I'm not sure Zechs realizes just how brilliant he is. My brother is so used to being the smartest one in the room, he-"

"You've always been smarter than him," Heero interrupted.

Relena made a sound, like a huff of breath.

"Well. You've always thought so," she acknowledged.

"Princeton thought so too," he had to say. "And-"

"Yes, I remember the list of colleges that accepted me," she cut him off. "But thank you, for saying that," she added quickly, as if afraid of hurting Heero's feelings.

Heero sighed. She was always afraid of that.

"How is your father?" he asked, because she hadn't mentioned him.

"I- I didn't go see him, this time. I will. Next time I visit. But I just… Zechs and- it was just-"

"It was too much," he supplied for her.

"Yes," she agreed, her voice a little ragged.

He probably shouldn't have brought up her father. He always felt guilty for doing it, but he always seemed to forget.

"Anyway," she continued in a forced tone, "I thought maybe we could get lunch on Wednesday this week?"

"Instead of dinner on Saturday?"

"No, I thought maybe both. Unless you have plans, or-"

"I never have plans."

"Well, would you like to have lunch on Wednesday?"

"I always have lunch on Wednesday."

"With me, Heero," she sounded exasperated, and Heero felt a thread of amusement at that.

"You don't have to. You can say no to me, Heero. If you-" He had waited too long to answer, and she was assuming the worst.

"Lunch is fine. On Wednesday."

"Yes. Good. I'll stop by your office? Will you give the lobby my name as a guest?"

"Yes." He wrote it down on a note, because it was something he would normally forget to do.

"Wonderful. I'm excited. Well. I should let you go- Oh, what are you having for dinner tonight? Have you tried that tilapia recipe I sent you?"

"Mackerel tonight," he said.

"Oh. I didn't think you liked strong-tasting fish."

"I don't."

She was silent for a long moment.

"Is there- can I- you're okay? One to Ten?"

"Four," he said, and she was silent again.

"Heero-"

"I'm fine. It's-"

"I know you're fine, Heero. Just. You'll tell me if it gets worse, won't you? Tell me if it's a two."

"I promised you I would."

"You'll call me? Or text me if you don't want to hear my voice. But you'll tell me?"

"I promised."

"I know. And you keep your promises. I just- I'm here, Heero. I'm always here for you."

Heero ignored the raw, burning feeling in his throat and eyes.

"Heero?"

"I know," he managed to say.

She cleared her throat. "Well, I'll let you enjoy your mackerel. I'll talk to you tomorrow?"

"Yes."

"Have a good night."

"You too."

He waited for her to end the call, and then he set his phone down on the kitchen counter.

7:34.

At 8:01 his dinner was ready, and Heero sat down at the small breakfast table in his kitchen and ate it while the last light of the day faded beyond the horizon.

At 8:24 he finished his dinner and rinsed off his plate and pans, and put them in the dishwasher with his dishes from breakfast. He started the cycle.

Heero went to the bathroom and took a piss, washing his hands for thirty-six seconds afterwards, until his hands turned pink.

At 8:39 he sat down on the couch in his living room and turned on his television, pulling up Netflix and scrolling until he found Gotham and the episode he had watched last.

At 9:27 he turned off the television and went into the bathroom to perform his nightly ablutions.

At 9:35 he took off his t-shirt and sweatpants. He plugged in his phone and picked up his Kindle.

He laid down in his bed and opened the Asimov book he had purchased over the weekend, Foundation.

At 10:25 he put down his Kindle and tried to get comfortable in the lonely darkness of his room.

At 11:49 he turned away from his alarm clock and forced himself to close his eyes.

-o-

TBC in June

End Notes:

Cylina requested a 1x2/ 1xR based on Kal Ho Naa Ho, an incredibly successful Bollywood movie. I've simplified the plot immensely, but if the story catches your attention you might want to try out the original movie - and/or give the soundtrack a listen!