Disclaimer: We still don't own *sigh*

Title: Anniversary

Author: Miss Murdered & ELLE

Pairings/Warnings: 1x2x1, language, angst, sap, sexually explicit situations,

Notes: Well, it was a year ago today that the first PM was sent between us and a friendship that neither of us expected started. So to celebrate our first "anniversary" we had to write something so here is Heero and Duo celebrating theirs in an appropriate fashion . ;-P

Heero

Unsurprisingly, we had never been that couple – the ones with overt public displays of affection, gratuitous gifts exchanged, reminders set counting down the day until our anniversary. Sure, if he wanted to kiss me, he'd just fucking kiss me – though generally that would be somewhere a little more private than the office break room. And if I wanted to give him something, I'd just damn do it – no reason to wait until any special day. So I'm sure he thought I'd done all I intended to do today when I managed to convince Une to allow him to take the sleek, shiny, new and experimental guns on his next assignment despite her assertion that a more "orthodox" agent might perform a better field test and went out of my way at lunch to bring him back his favorite Chinese dumplings from a shop over fifteen minutes away.

But not this year. This year marked five years since he first kissed me. That night had been weighing on my mind a lot recently and the sentimental part of me couldn't let it go. Maybe part of it was that he was working late, trying to prep for his next assignment two days from now where I'd be left without him, I don't know. But after I clocked out I picked up a bottle of cheap-ass whiskey – one that didn't even come in glass, just shitty plastic – and some cheap pre-packaged sandwiches and headed back to the office to pick up Duo.

I watched him for a moment from the door to his office, his face focused, dedicated, looking so adult now. Five years. It had changed us – both of us. He was still handsome and vivacious and everything I wanted – but he was different too. More serious. More grown-up, I guess.

"You want to get out of here?" I asked as I leaned in the doorway, wondering if he remembered how he'd asked me the same question five years ago when I was buried in paperwork. But it was different because I was explaining the loss of two teammates due to my inability to act. He looked up at me after glancing at the clock a bit petulantly but when his eyes met mine he smiled.

"Guess you'll be wanting your anniversary present sometime today, eh?" he asked with a suggestive raise of one eyebrow.

I just shrugged as sex hadn't really been on my mind. I'd been so wrapped up in the past. It caused him to narrow his brows a bit in concern but he finished up what he was doing and joined me at the door, grabbing my hand and pressing a light kiss to my lips. He had a look on his face that was asking me if everything was okay and I nodded, dropping his hand and leading him out to the car.

He'd had to drag me away from that desk five years ago, reluctant and depressed, riddled with guilt. I felt useless and ineffectual. I had thought it would be okay. I had recovered physically, learned that Mariemaia was alive, eventually got frustrated with traveling and trying to find "myself" – a person I wasn't even sure existed – and I thought I could join Preventer and be useful to someone again. But then, when I actually got in the field...

"We going somewhere?" Duo asked as he noted the sandwiches stashed in the back and I gave a noncommittal grunt before turning away from home. I guess he got that something was going on in my head and he didn't ask any questions, just reached over the back and grabbed one of the sandwiches, unwrapping it and taking a generous bite.

It was an hour and a half drive out of the city. I remembered sitting in the beat up piece of junk Duo called a car five years ago, glaring out the window, not even questioning where we were going because fuck if it mattered. At some point I had come to the realization that I would never be able to function in a post-war society, that I was useless and ineffectual because I had let those men on my team die, watched them bleed out because I couldn't fire my gun. I should've been the one who'd died. I was no good to anyone.

My thoughts had turned dark and I didn't want to be there. I felt Duo was always dragging me around, forcing me to do shit I didn't want to do, socialize when I'd rather sulk, unable to understand at the time that he was just trying to help me the way he wanted someone to help him. But all I had felt was irritation.

Duo hit the radio and sang along with it the way he had then. And he grinned at me, the way he had then, but there was mischief in his eyes and I guessed he probably knew where we were going. His hand found my thigh and slid up to my hip, fingers jabbing to tickle me a little and my lips twitched upward despite my best efforts to stop them and I shifted in the seat, trying to dislodge them.

"You shouldn't look so serious all the time, babe, or your face will freeze like that," he joked with a smile he reserved only for me. That smile still made my heart feel too constricted in my chest and I couldn't help smiling back.

When we got to our destination – a secluded hill overlooking the lake, the stars magnificent so far away from the light pollution of the city – we sat on the hood of the car, just like we had then, and I brought out the cheap whiskey. I broke the seal and took a swallow, the sharp taste infiltrating my senses, the burn unpleasant as it slid down my throat and I tried not to cough as I handed it to him.

I stared up at the nearly full moon, noting the dim specks of the L1 colony cluster, less reflective than the moon itself, and I thought of L2 on the other side and it seemed poetic in some way. That we had both fallen from space and landed here together. But realistically it was just pure coincidence that we were both picked for Operation Meteor and given any set of circumstances other than the specific ones we'd undergone we would not be together at all.

That didn't make what we had any less special to me though – in fact, it seemed more so. More unlikely, more impossible. More special.

My hand found his then, fingers locking together and he leaned his head on my shoulder. The breeze was gentle and cool but his warmth was comforting to me, the way it always had been. He had been so cautious to touch me five years ago – and I didn't know how badly I needed that. Touch. Human contact. Someone's reassurance.

"You know, I brought you out here because the moon always makes me think of you." He chuckled a little and thumbed the mouth of the bottle with his free hand. "Kinda stupid. Guess I thought... it would help."

"You helped," I reassured him, squeezing his hand a little, remembering what an asshole I had been at the time, only concerned about getting too drunk to get back. But then I didn't really care if the car crashed or whatever. At least that would be it – I wouldn't have to figure out how to go on like this.

I didn't even really remember what it was he'd said to me back then. Something about the earth, the war, shit I didn't really want to think about – shit that only made me feel worse – so I ignored him. Watched him chug back the cheap ass bottle of liquor he'd had stashed in the back seat like it was water.

Duo laughed again and I lay my head on his, my nose buried in his hair so I could breathe in the combination of sandalwood and C4 that was uniquely Duo.

"You know how much of this shit I had ta drink to get the guts to kiss you?" he asked with a sly grin and I sat up a little to get a better look at him. Duo sat up as well and winked as he took a swallow, immediately grimacing on the burn and coughing a little. "God this is shit."

I touched his cheek then, fingers brushing away wisps of hair caught in the wind and sliding into the base of his braid, cradling his neck. Moonlight caught in his eyes so that they gleamed and it wasn't much different than it was then – my heart still pounded in my chest, my blood still felt like it was on fire, and I still thought he was breath-taking in the starlight – except this time I wasn't confused.

I leaned forward and kissed him then, softly, closing my eyes and opening my mouth to his warm tongue. And I knew him now. Last time it was klutzy, a nervous, hesitant kind of kiss, pushed on me by a very drunk Duo and I didn't understand very much. But within our intermingled breathing he'd whispered that he'd missed me while I was gone and I at least managed to get the fundamental message there, the only thing that mattered – that there was someone who cared.

I didn't really understand love or desire or any of that, but I did understand one thing as he kissed me again, and again – if I ever wanted to understand, if I ever wanted to be able to reciprocate this kind of emotion, if I ever wanted to be able to be a productive member of society I wasn't going to be able to do it alone. I'd tried that – and clearly it wasn't working. I needed help and silently I promised him I would get it.

And as I kissed him now I made a similar promise. I couldn't keep going on like this – jealous, possessive, so fucking terrified of losing him. We might've had our shit together enough not have had sex that night, falling asleep on top of each other innocently enough in the back seat of the car, and it might've been nearly six months of therapy before he kissed me again, but I had still come to rely on him now in a way that wasn't healthy. For him, or for me. And the more I tried to fix it, the deeper a hole I dug myself, until the very thought of him leaving on this assignment Friday without me to watch his back had terror clawing its way up my throat, threatening full-fledged panic.

"'Ro?" he whispered as our lips parted, eyes studying mine closely, intensely. "You okay?"

"Yeah – I just..." I cleared my throat a little, choking down my fears to force myself back into this moment – what was supposed to be a good moment. But I felt exposed and vulnerable and I dropped my hand from his neck and my eyes to my knees.

"Hey." Duo set down the bottle and grasped my hands in his, holding them tight. "This was real sweet, you know?"

I nodded, but I couldn't trust my voice.

"It's amazing to think how far we've come," he continued but I didn't feel like I'd come that far at all – still requiring his validation to give me meaning.

Duo leaned in a little closer, his nose bumping mine so that I'd look up at him and meet his eyes once more. Which I did, reluctantly, afraid he'd see too much. He'd always seemed to see right through me.

"I can't wait to see the next five years," he murmured and he kissed me then. And when our lips fell apart he kissed me again.