======================================================================
"Autumn" - A Gundam Wing Fanfic by Morgan Steelgrave
======================================================================
I was just reminiscing about silly dorm stories the other day, and it
made me want to write about my favorite couple in one of the dorms
they stayed in. I dunno, call me a sentimental nutcase. Not *too*
sappy, but just enough to make you go, "Awwww..." ^_^
Warnings...shounen ai, sap, somewhat OOC. I made them more like
the kids they should/could have been. I mean, come on. If he had
the time or room to cart it around, Duo would have a lava lamp! ^_~
Please R&R!
/blah/ Thoughts
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys. Please don't sue me and take
away my stuffed alligator.
======================================================================
--Woke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off, I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain't it funny how the night moves
We just don't seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in--
-"Night Moves" by Bob Seger
Heero walked into the room and found himself enveloped in a
strangely-tinted dark. After allowing his eyes time to adjust, he
discovered the reason for the room's strange cobalt hue was that Duo
had turned off all the harsh flourescent lights. The only source of
light, other than the open window, was Duo's lava lamp. The shimmering,
pale primordial ooze cast a blue glow over everything in their small
dorm room.
Duo was sitting on the windowsill, somehow squeezed into the
brick square along with a potted plant left by the student council as
a welcoming gift when they first moved in at the beginning of the year.
Their room was on the back of the brick dormitory, thus allowing them
to remove the window screens without drawing too much attention to their
ignoring of that particular rule. The windows had been adjusted to
prevent their opening all the way, too, but a quick session with a
screwdriver and Heero had corrected that.
"Aren't we the social butterfly tonight." At Heero's mildly
sarcastic greeting, Duo turned his head and smiled, the light from the
lamp casting electric lines along his even teeth.
"I just didn't feel like it tonight. I can't be the class clown
*and* the life of the dorm twenty-four/seven. I needed some 'me' time,"
he replied, watching Heero shed his immaculately-pressed uniform shirt
in favor of something more comfortable. Strange, how sometimes the two
of them seemed to take over each other's role. One of them always had
to be pushing the other, unwilling one.
Heero paused before shrugging his sweater over his head. "Want
me to leave?"
"No. No, you're fine." Duo turned back to the window. Heero
stood still for a moment, regarding his friend and room mate in the
half-dark.
"You've been in here since classes let out," he said, tossing
his dress shirt into a hamper. "You really should at least poke your
head outside. It's nice out."
"I left the room long enough to go to the bathroom once," Duo
made a half-hearted attempt to defend himself, but trailed off upon
seeing the disapproving smirk on his friend's face. Heero strode
purposefully over to the window and seized Duo by the arm.
"Come on."
"Where are we going?" Duo asked as he fought to remain upright
on his own two feet. Heero was practically dragging him out of the room.
"You'll see," the dark-haired young man said with an enigmatic
smile.
"Don't we need to sign out or something?" Duo didn't like the
look on his friend's face one bit.
"Nope. We're not leaving campus."
"Then where are we--"
"Shut up, Duo."
The early autumn night was chilly but not uncomfortable, the
coolest it had been that year. Heero finally released his hold on Duo
and the two walked side-by-side along the single asphalt lane of the
campus road, winding behind the dorm and out to the main thoroughfare.
There were hardly any cars at that time of night, and the boys crossed
the street at their leisure, taking their time in the clingy transparent
mist that always accompanied that time of year.
Heero led his friend around the side of the stadium, between
the chain-link fence and the driveway of the next door faculty house,
careful to avoid the cement that was within range of the motion light
on the house's deck. It wasn't illegal to be there, but the faculty
members tended to be somewhat overprotective of their boarding students.
"Heero, why are we at the stadium?" Duo asked, an incredulous
note dotting the question.
"You'll see," came the reply. With a deft movement, the lock
on the gate no longer proved to be an obstacle and they walked out onto
the finely-grained grass of the school football field.
"I don't get why we're--" Duo began again, but found his hand
reposessed as Heero dragged him out to the fifty-yard line. The boy
released his hand and flopped down on the grass, flat on his back, without
a word. After throwing his strange friend a comically dubious look, Duo
followed suit.
The chestnut-haired boy took one look up into the sky and all his
previous questions were answered. The stands of the enclosed stadium
were high enough to block the harsh lights of the surrounding town. The
streetlights along the road were hidden, as were the lights dotting the
rest of the campus. The manmade valley of steel, brick, and grass created
a little window of uninterrupted night sky above them, where for once the
stars were not veiled by the overabundance of orange and blue-white lights.
"Oh..." Duo smiled up at the view. He rolled his head backward in
order to see Heero. "I never knew it was like this here."
"You don't realize how peaceful this place can be until you come
here after the games," Heero replied after a moment. He lay with his hands
laced behind his head, the breeze rustling the manicured grass and his
obstinate dark hair.
"So this is where you disappear to when there are too many people
in our room?" Duo asked casually. Heero shut his eyes, smirking softly as
he replied.
"No, this is where I disappear to when you drag out that 'Best
of the Doors' CD." Duo rolled over and bonked Heero soundly on the head.
"They're a classic," he said with mock anger. "I don't see how
you can't like them. That's like hating the Mona Lisa."
"They use the same five chords on the same synthesizer organ in
every song," Heero pointed out methodically, "and he just groans. And
the Mona Lisa is missing her eyebrows. Nothing's perfect." Duo rolled
back over to face the sky and threw up his hands.
"Never mind..." he chuckled. "I should know better than to
argue with you. It's like arguing with a computer, and I'd rather not
get into that right now."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Heero demanded, but Duo just
shook his head and sighed.
"Nope, not arguing now. You brought me out here to show me this
view, and I'm going to take advantage of it," he said in a singsong voice,
staring up at the star-spattered vault above them.
"Hn," Heero replied, then fell silent. The ever-present fall
breeze spoke again, carrying with it the crisp sound of murmuring leaves
and the sparkling scent of the damp grass in which they lay. Heero shut
his eyes, feeling the chill brought by the wind, but not minding its
slight discomfort. In a way, he liked the cold, relishing the quiet and
peace it brought along with it.
Duo, on the other hand, hated it. He had already dragged out his
heavy sweaters and coats even though the temperatures were still relatively
mild. Heero could hear his teeth chattering from where he lay a few feet
away.
"Cold?" he inquired innocently, smirking to himself. Duo cast a
withering glance in his direction.
"Of course not. I enjoy sitting outside in just a dress shirt
when it's damned freezing," he retorted. Heero chuckled, not bothering
to hide his amusement at Duo's predicament any longer. "Stop laughing!
It's not funny! You could have at least warned me we'd be outside. But
no, you had to drag me out here without letting me put on a coat or
anything..."
"Shut up," Heero smiled, sitting up. With a sigh, he tugged
off the denim jacket he had thrown on and tossed it in the general
direction of the pouting Duo. "Here. Put that on."
Duo picked up the jacket slowly. "Won't you get cold?"
"I'll be okay. I don't mind the cold as much as you do,"
Heero replied matter-of-factly. He lay back down, threading his hands
behind his head. Duo stared at him for a moment, then pulled the jacket
on and yanked his braid free of the collar.
"Thanks," he said quietly, lying back down to gaze at the sky.
After a silent minute, he began murmuring to himself, "...so if that's
the big dipper, then that should point to...ah, I see. There's the
little dipper..."
Heero opened one eye. "What are you mumbling about?"
"Oh. Sorry, I was just talking to myself," Duo chuckled
dismissively. Heero rolled over and propped up on one elbow.
"About what?" he persisted. Duo's gaze swooped from the
nighttime sky down to Heero. He smiled.
"I was just looking at the constellations," he explained.
"Sometimes I have to talk my way through finding some of them."
"Which one were you looking at?" Heero asked as he turned over
onto his back again.
"The big dipper." Heero squinted at the sky.
"I don't see it," he muttered after a moment. Duo cast a
bemused glance in his direction.
"How can you not see the big dipper? It's the easiest one
to find," he said. Heero growled something unintelligible, which
Duo ignored. "Okay, look almost straight up. There's four stars that
form a kind of lopsided box there to the left..." Duo pointed to the
sky, trying to guide Heero's eyes to the shape.
Heero tilted his head, and still staring into the darkness
replied, "Megrez."
"Say what?"
"That's the name of the star you just pointed at. Megrez,
magnitude 3.30." Heero rattled off the facts and figures while still
trying to make out the picture in the sky.
"How the hell did you know something like that?" Duo demanded.
"Jeez. And you can't even see the damn thing."
"It's easy to remember numbers."
"No, it's easy to look up at the sky and see a freakin' square.
Remembering the textbook definition of it is *not* easy." Wondering
just how much useless information Heero had stored in that thick skull
of his, Duo reached up and pointed a finger to another star. "Okay,
smartass, what about the one just below it and to the right?"
"Phecda. Magnitude 2.24."
Duo quirked an eyebrow. "You're making that up," he chuckled.
"No, I'm not. And the one just to the left of it is Alioth,
magnitude 1.78." Heero shrugged. "My brain just sees numbers easier
than it sees pictures, I guess. I never have been able to see constellations
like people always talk about. Just random patterns."
"That's sad," Duo said. Heero thought he was being sarcastic,
but when he rolled over to deliver a scathing reply, the look on Duo's
face told him otherwise. After a moment's thought, Duo's brow lowered
into a determined scowl and he pushed Heero back over. "Alright, we're
going to fix that. Right now."
"Duo..." Heero tried to get a word in edgewise, but the other
boy had scooted over so he now lay right beside him on the grass.
"Shut up and listen. You are *going* to see this thing before
we go back to the dorm tonight. Even if we're late. I don't care."
The irony of the situation made the corner of Heero's mouth slip
upward in a smile. Who would have ever imagined *Duo* telling *him* to
shut up? But he knew better than to argue with his room mate when he
was in this kind of mood, so he simply nodded.
"Right. Okay, find Megrez again, genius," Duo ordered. Heero
located the star and pointed at it. "Good. Now, I'm going to trace
this thing with my finger, okay? Try to keep up." Duo raised his arm
and and pointed at the star in question. "Okay, that's Megrez. That's
one corner of the dipper part. Go to the right, up slightly, and there's
the other corner." Duo moved his hand slowly along the imaginary line,
occasionally glancing over to make sure Heero was paying attention.
Heero's cobalt eyes were slightly narrowed, following every
movement of Duo's hand intently. It seemed he was concentrating only on
that beacon, ignoring anything and everything else there. Even the rhythmic
rising and falling of his lean chest beneath the earth-toned sweater had
slowed, as if he no longer cared about breathing. It was Heero's favorite
sweater, Duo noted absently. Almost every piece of clothing he owned was
either brown or green. Duo had lived with Heero long enough to know more
about Heero than the boy knew about himself. He kept his watch on even in
bed or the shower, he took his coffee black. He rolled out of bed after
hitting snooze twice. Duo swallowed deliberately and turned back to his
lecture. "Okay, directly below that is the third corner. Then over to the
left of that is the final corner, which is directly below Megrez, where we
started. See?"
"Yeah," Heero murmured, unwilling to tear his gaze away from
the stars in case he lost what little grasp he had on the celestial
outline. "I think."
Duo sighed and decided to continue. "Alright, here we go with
the handle." He set about describing and tracing the lines between the
next few stars.
Heero glanced over at Duo as his words slowly melted into a
comforting white noise. His violet eyes, trained on the black vault
above, seemed to glow in the delicate shadows cast by his long eyelashes
in the pale light. The humid air had caused the loose chestnut tendrils
at his temples and his neck to curl softly around the collar of his denim
jacket, which was new and the indigo was still stark and unfaded. Heero
almost smiled to himself when the thought occured to him that the jacket
would smell like grass and the simple, clean scent of Duo's shampoo. It
was almost the same color as the shadowed parts of the boy's eyes, the
parts that held some kind of ancient, arcane tie with these very stars.
That mystic part was what Duo kept to himself. The rest of him he would
gladly share with the rest of the world, but it was when he was alone that
the true age of his soul was apparent. Heero found himself fascinated by
the boy's honest, ageless beauty, which was only magnified by the dim light.
This time of evening seemed to make Duo quietly come alive, as if he just
awakened when the moon was high.
"...and another thing, if you take those two stars in the bowl
there, and follow the direction of that line, you can find the little dipper.
So, can you see it?" Duo turned his head to look at Heero, and was
startled to find his silent friend staring right back. "Heero?"
Heero blinked as if he had just broken out of a trance. "What?"
Duo sighed, exasperated. "You weren't paying attention, were
you? You zoned out completely. Here I am, going through this explanation
for the *second time*, and what do you do? You aren't even trying to see
this thing, are you? Do you even care? Does that supercomputer brain of
yours care about stupid pictures?" He paused in his barrage of irritated
questions. "And why are you staring at me?"
There was a moment when their breathing and their heartbeats
seemed perfectly in time with the slight autumn wind as it caressed
them. Heero reached over hesitantly, hand halting a mere centimeter
from Duo's face, as if he were asking permission to touch him. When
Duo neither moved forward nor shied away from his hand, Heero almost
reverently smoothed a curl at his temple.
"Your hair was sticking up," he explained in a shallow voice.
Duo tilted his head slightly and reached over to Heero. He calmed an
obstinate piece of hair above his ear with one long finger.
"Yours too," he said, gifting Heero with a beatific smile.
Instead of removing his hand, he moved his fingers further back through
his unruly dark hair after an uncertain moment. Heero felt his heart
trying its best to leap out of his chest as Duo leaned forward, resting
his forehead against his own. The action was not intentionally
intimate; being that close to Heero was something Duo naturally did
without even thinking.
"Duo, can I ask you something?"
"Sure," Duo raised an eyebrow slightly in question, something
equally apprehensive creeping into his expression.
"We're friends, right?" If it hadn't been for Heero's intensely
serious expression, Duo would have thought he was joking, or out of his
mind. Heero Yuy was not one to examine personal relations.
"Of course, Heero. What in the world would make you think
otherwise?" he responded almost too lightly. He broke his gaze and
found himself glancing at everything but his room mate's face.
"Duo." The tone in Heero's voice was urgent, demanding his
attention. Duo reluctantly forced his eyes to meet their fate.
"There's something else there, too, isn't there?"
Duo was as close to being speechless as he had ever been.
Not because he was shocked, he realized grimly, but because Heero's
comment had struck too close to home. "Heero, I..."
"Isn't there?" the other boy persisted. He brought his hands
up to grasp Duo's shoulders and he gave them a light shake. A faint
scowl darkened the braided boy's face. He looked away.
"I don't know."
"No, you feel it too, or else you wouldn't be making that face,"
Heero said with a smirk.
"What face?" Duo demanded.
"That one. I know you too well, Duo. You can't ever lie."
Abruptly Duo jerked free of his friend's grasp and sat up, hugging
his knees to his chest.
"You think you know me so well? You don't. You don't, and
don't tell me what I feel," he snapped. His sudden change in mood
made Heero pause. He, too, sat up, leaning an arm on one knee and
looking out at the empty stands and the ghostly vacant track circling
them.
"I've lived with you long enough to tell if you're lying or
not, Duo. I didn't say I knew everything about you. I don't know your
blood type and social security number. Though I could probably hack
those if I wanted to." Heero glanced over at his room mate, who hadn't
moved. The wry smirk on his face turned into a grimace. "Listen, Duo,
I'm sorry. I'll just drop it and we'll pretend I never said it,
alright?"
"No." Duo turned his head slightly so he could just see Heero
around his long bangs. "We can't just pretend like you never said it."
"What do you want to do, then?" Heero demanded, frustration
lending an edge to his voice that he didn't intend to display. Duo
responded in kind.
"You're right, okay? Are you happy now? I think there's
something else there, too, but I..." he trailed off with an irritated
growl, running a thin-fingered hand through his hair.
"What, Duo?" Heero asked, more calmly this time.
"I don't know. I just don't know, alright? I can't...I think
it's there. I *think*. But I just can't deal with it yet, okay?" He
brought his face around to look at Heero fully, the confusion plain to
see in his frank violet eyes. "I just have to know for sure that it's
there, that it's not me imagining it or convincing myself of it,
before...before I can do anything else. Okay, Heero?"
"I'm not asking for an oath of eternal loyalty, Duo," the boy
replied with a solemn smile, "I just wanted to make sure I wasn't the
only one who felt it...whatever it is." There was another long, silent
moment. Heero stared up at the indifferently twinkling stars once
again, trying to concentrate on the flickering lights and not on the
uneasiness that had silenced the two of them. He forced himself to focus
on those pinpoints, until he had to shut his eyes against the chilly
glare.
When next he opened them, he found himself gazing into two
bright violet eyes mere inches away from his face. Startled, his breath
caught in his dry throat. Those eyes held such life; its uncertainty
and innocence, its past pains and its hope for future comfort.
"You swear?" Duo asked with an unreadable expression on his
heart-shaped face. Heero quirked a confused eyebrow. "You swear you
felt it, too?"
"Yeah," he managed after a moment's shock. "I did."
Duo stared at him, hovering over him like an anxious wraith,
but never touching him. Heero didn't dare move.
"Okay," he murmured at last, as much to himself as to Heero.
He leaned forward against him until he rested his chin against Heero's
chest. Heero could feel him physically loosen the reins he held on
himself. Tentatively he laid an arm over Duo's back. Duo smiled up
at him, "What now?"
Heero glanced upward and took a slow breath of the crisp
night air, laced vaguely with Duo's pale, incense-like scent. "Nothing.
Not until we figure things out. Not until we're ready." He brought his
gaze back down to earth, to that pair of intense purple eyes hovering
over him. "Fair enough?"
Duo made no reply, but looked downward for a moment, thinking
something over. "I think..." he murmured.
Heero, thinking Duo was voicing his agreement, nodded. "Okay.
So we'll just..."
"I think," Duo broke in, continuing his train of thought, "that
I've just made the biggest gamble I've made in my entire life." He
brought his blue-violet eyes, soft with reflected starlight, up to meet
Heero's tense gaze from beneath those incredibly long eyelashes. "And it
better damn well pay off." He leaned in ever so slowly until his warm
breath tickled the other boy's lips.
Heero smiled, a wicked gleam in his deep cobalt eyes. "Awfully
serious words, coming from the class clown."
"Shut up, you," Duo smirked softly.
Heero chuckled, sliding in to close the gap between them,
posessing Duo's mouth with a fierce gentleness that was both surprising
and expected.
After a long moment, they moved apart and lay on their backs,
faces flushed and turned once more toward the blue-black vault overhead.
Heero blinked away the glaze that was making his eyes so
pleasantly unfocused. "Duo?"
"Hmm?"
"I see it." Duo glanced over suspiciously, but leaned his head
to see the sky from Heero's point of view. Heero raised an arm and traced
the shape in the sky.
"Maybe all you needed was a little distraction," Duo chided.
Heero smiled.
"Maybe," he said. A soft sigh escaped his lips. "I've never
seen it before. This is amazing," he smiled and glanced over at the
other boy. "Thank you."
Duo smiled enigmatically in the cool darkness. "We should do
this more often," he said.
"What are you doing this time next weekend?" Heero laughed.
"Teaching you how to find Hydra," came the reply.
Heero winced. "Hydra? Sounds hard."
"Mmm," Duo purred contentedly, rolling over to face him,
"something like twenty stars."
"Twenty?" Heero raised one eyebrow. "I'm not sure I can handle
that one." Duo reached forward and brushed aside a stubborn piece of
Heero's dark bangs.
"Then maybe you'll need a lot of distraction," he smiled darkly,
leaning in to place a light, teasing kiss on Heero's lips.
"Oh," he said. Then, after a long while, "Hey, maybe you could
distract me a little more right now?"
"I think that could be arranged."
- FIN -
"Autumn" - A Gundam Wing Fanfic by Morgan Steelgrave
======================================================================
I was just reminiscing about silly dorm stories the other day, and it
made me want to write about my favorite couple in one of the dorms
they stayed in. I dunno, call me a sentimental nutcase. Not *too*
sappy, but just enough to make you go, "Awwww..." ^_^
Warnings...shounen ai, sap, somewhat OOC. I made them more like
the kids they should/could have been. I mean, come on. If he had
the time or room to cart it around, Duo would have a lava lamp! ^_~
Please R&R!
/blah/ Thoughts
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys. Please don't sue me and take
away my stuffed alligator.
======================================================================
--Woke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off, I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain't it funny how the night moves
We just don't seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in--
-"Night Moves" by Bob Seger
Heero walked into the room and found himself enveloped in a
strangely-tinted dark. After allowing his eyes time to adjust, he
discovered the reason for the room's strange cobalt hue was that Duo
had turned off all the harsh flourescent lights. The only source of
light, other than the open window, was Duo's lava lamp. The shimmering,
pale primordial ooze cast a blue glow over everything in their small
dorm room.
Duo was sitting on the windowsill, somehow squeezed into the
brick square along with a potted plant left by the student council as
a welcoming gift when they first moved in at the beginning of the year.
Their room was on the back of the brick dormitory, thus allowing them
to remove the window screens without drawing too much attention to their
ignoring of that particular rule. The windows had been adjusted to
prevent their opening all the way, too, but a quick session with a
screwdriver and Heero had corrected that.
"Aren't we the social butterfly tonight." At Heero's mildly
sarcastic greeting, Duo turned his head and smiled, the light from the
lamp casting electric lines along his even teeth.
"I just didn't feel like it tonight. I can't be the class clown
*and* the life of the dorm twenty-four/seven. I needed some 'me' time,"
he replied, watching Heero shed his immaculately-pressed uniform shirt
in favor of something more comfortable. Strange, how sometimes the two
of them seemed to take over each other's role. One of them always had
to be pushing the other, unwilling one.
Heero paused before shrugging his sweater over his head. "Want
me to leave?"
"No. No, you're fine." Duo turned back to the window. Heero
stood still for a moment, regarding his friend and room mate in the
half-dark.
"You've been in here since classes let out," he said, tossing
his dress shirt into a hamper. "You really should at least poke your
head outside. It's nice out."
"I left the room long enough to go to the bathroom once," Duo
made a half-hearted attempt to defend himself, but trailed off upon
seeing the disapproving smirk on his friend's face. Heero strode
purposefully over to the window and seized Duo by the arm.
"Come on."
"Where are we going?" Duo asked as he fought to remain upright
on his own two feet. Heero was practically dragging him out of the room.
"You'll see," the dark-haired young man said with an enigmatic
smile.
"Don't we need to sign out or something?" Duo didn't like the
look on his friend's face one bit.
"Nope. We're not leaving campus."
"Then where are we--"
"Shut up, Duo."
The early autumn night was chilly but not uncomfortable, the
coolest it had been that year. Heero finally released his hold on Duo
and the two walked side-by-side along the single asphalt lane of the
campus road, winding behind the dorm and out to the main thoroughfare.
There were hardly any cars at that time of night, and the boys crossed
the street at their leisure, taking their time in the clingy transparent
mist that always accompanied that time of year.
Heero led his friend around the side of the stadium, between
the chain-link fence and the driveway of the next door faculty house,
careful to avoid the cement that was within range of the motion light
on the house's deck. It wasn't illegal to be there, but the faculty
members tended to be somewhat overprotective of their boarding students.
"Heero, why are we at the stadium?" Duo asked, an incredulous
note dotting the question.
"You'll see," came the reply. With a deft movement, the lock
on the gate no longer proved to be an obstacle and they walked out onto
the finely-grained grass of the school football field.
"I don't get why we're--" Duo began again, but found his hand
reposessed as Heero dragged him out to the fifty-yard line. The boy
released his hand and flopped down on the grass, flat on his back, without
a word. After throwing his strange friend a comically dubious look, Duo
followed suit.
The chestnut-haired boy took one look up into the sky and all his
previous questions were answered. The stands of the enclosed stadium
were high enough to block the harsh lights of the surrounding town. The
streetlights along the road were hidden, as were the lights dotting the
rest of the campus. The manmade valley of steel, brick, and grass created
a little window of uninterrupted night sky above them, where for once the
stars were not veiled by the overabundance of orange and blue-white lights.
"Oh..." Duo smiled up at the view. He rolled his head backward in
order to see Heero. "I never knew it was like this here."
"You don't realize how peaceful this place can be until you come
here after the games," Heero replied after a moment. He lay with his hands
laced behind his head, the breeze rustling the manicured grass and his
obstinate dark hair.
"So this is where you disappear to when there are too many people
in our room?" Duo asked casually. Heero shut his eyes, smirking softly as
he replied.
"No, this is where I disappear to when you drag out that 'Best
of the Doors' CD." Duo rolled over and bonked Heero soundly on the head.
"They're a classic," he said with mock anger. "I don't see how
you can't like them. That's like hating the Mona Lisa."
"They use the same five chords on the same synthesizer organ in
every song," Heero pointed out methodically, "and he just groans. And
the Mona Lisa is missing her eyebrows. Nothing's perfect." Duo rolled
back over to face the sky and threw up his hands.
"Never mind..." he chuckled. "I should know better than to
argue with you. It's like arguing with a computer, and I'd rather not
get into that right now."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Heero demanded, but Duo just
shook his head and sighed.
"Nope, not arguing now. You brought me out here to show me this
view, and I'm going to take advantage of it," he said in a singsong voice,
staring up at the star-spattered vault above them.
"Hn," Heero replied, then fell silent. The ever-present fall
breeze spoke again, carrying with it the crisp sound of murmuring leaves
and the sparkling scent of the damp grass in which they lay. Heero shut
his eyes, feeling the chill brought by the wind, but not minding its
slight discomfort. In a way, he liked the cold, relishing the quiet and
peace it brought along with it.
Duo, on the other hand, hated it. He had already dragged out his
heavy sweaters and coats even though the temperatures were still relatively
mild. Heero could hear his teeth chattering from where he lay a few feet
away.
"Cold?" he inquired innocently, smirking to himself. Duo cast a
withering glance in his direction.
"Of course not. I enjoy sitting outside in just a dress shirt
when it's damned freezing," he retorted. Heero chuckled, not bothering
to hide his amusement at Duo's predicament any longer. "Stop laughing!
It's not funny! You could have at least warned me we'd be outside. But
no, you had to drag me out here without letting me put on a coat or
anything..."
"Shut up," Heero smiled, sitting up. With a sigh, he tugged
off the denim jacket he had thrown on and tossed it in the general
direction of the pouting Duo. "Here. Put that on."
Duo picked up the jacket slowly. "Won't you get cold?"
"I'll be okay. I don't mind the cold as much as you do,"
Heero replied matter-of-factly. He lay back down, threading his hands
behind his head. Duo stared at him for a moment, then pulled the jacket
on and yanked his braid free of the collar.
"Thanks," he said quietly, lying back down to gaze at the sky.
After a silent minute, he began murmuring to himself, "...so if that's
the big dipper, then that should point to...ah, I see. There's the
little dipper..."
Heero opened one eye. "What are you mumbling about?"
"Oh. Sorry, I was just talking to myself," Duo chuckled
dismissively. Heero rolled over and propped up on one elbow.
"About what?" he persisted. Duo's gaze swooped from the
nighttime sky down to Heero. He smiled.
"I was just looking at the constellations," he explained.
"Sometimes I have to talk my way through finding some of them."
"Which one were you looking at?" Heero asked as he turned over
onto his back again.
"The big dipper." Heero squinted at the sky.
"I don't see it," he muttered after a moment. Duo cast a
bemused glance in his direction.
"How can you not see the big dipper? It's the easiest one
to find," he said. Heero growled something unintelligible, which
Duo ignored. "Okay, look almost straight up. There's four stars that
form a kind of lopsided box there to the left..." Duo pointed to the
sky, trying to guide Heero's eyes to the shape.
Heero tilted his head, and still staring into the darkness
replied, "Megrez."
"Say what?"
"That's the name of the star you just pointed at. Megrez,
magnitude 3.30." Heero rattled off the facts and figures while still
trying to make out the picture in the sky.
"How the hell did you know something like that?" Duo demanded.
"Jeez. And you can't even see the damn thing."
"It's easy to remember numbers."
"No, it's easy to look up at the sky and see a freakin' square.
Remembering the textbook definition of it is *not* easy." Wondering
just how much useless information Heero had stored in that thick skull
of his, Duo reached up and pointed a finger to another star. "Okay,
smartass, what about the one just below it and to the right?"
"Phecda. Magnitude 2.24."
Duo quirked an eyebrow. "You're making that up," he chuckled.
"No, I'm not. And the one just to the left of it is Alioth,
magnitude 1.78." Heero shrugged. "My brain just sees numbers easier
than it sees pictures, I guess. I never have been able to see constellations
like people always talk about. Just random patterns."
"That's sad," Duo said. Heero thought he was being sarcastic,
but when he rolled over to deliver a scathing reply, the look on Duo's
face told him otherwise. After a moment's thought, Duo's brow lowered
into a determined scowl and he pushed Heero back over. "Alright, we're
going to fix that. Right now."
"Duo..." Heero tried to get a word in edgewise, but the other
boy had scooted over so he now lay right beside him on the grass.
"Shut up and listen. You are *going* to see this thing before
we go back to the dorm tonight. Even if we're late. I don't care."
The irony of the situation made the corner of Heero's mouth slip
upward in a smile. Who would have ever imagined *Duo* telling *him* to
shut up? But he knew better than to argue with his room mate when he
was in this kind of mood, so he simply nodded.
"Right. Okay, find Megrez again, genius," Duo ordered. Heero
located the star and pointed at it. "Good. Now, I'm going to trace
this thing with my finger, okay? Try to keep up." Duo raised his arm
and and pointed at the star in question. "Okay, that's Megrez. That's
one corner of the dipper part. Go to the right, up slightly, and there's
the other corner." Duo moved his hand slowly along the imaginary line,
occasionally glancing over to make sure Heero was paying attention.
Heero's cobalt eyes were slightly narrowed, following every
movement of Duo's hand intently. It seemed he was concentrating only on
that beacon, ignoring anything and everything else there. Even the rhythmic
rising and falling of his lean chest beneath the earth-toned sweater had
slowed, as if he no longer cared about breathing. It was Heero's favorite
sweater, Duo noted absently. Almost every piece of clothing he owned was
either brown or green. Duo had lived with Heero long enough to know more
about Heero than the boy knew about himself. He kept his watch on even in
bed or the shower, he took his coffee black. He rolled out of bed after
hitting snooze twice. Duo swallowed deliberately and turned back to his
lecture. "Okay, directly below that is the third corner. Then over to the
left of that is the final corner, which is directly below Megrez, where we
started. See?"
"Yeah," Heero murmured, unwilling to tear his gaze away from
the stars in case he lost what little grasp he had on the celestial
outline. "I think."
Duo sighed and decided to continue. "Alright, here we go with
the handle." He set about describing and tracing the lines between the
next few stars.
Heero glanced over at Duo as his words slowly melted into a
comforting white noise. His violet eyes, trained on the black vault
above, seemed to glow in the delicate shadows cast by his long eyelashes
in the pale light. The humid air had caused the loose chestnut tendrils
at his temples and his neck to curl softly around the collar of his denim
jacket, which was new and the indigo was still stark and unfaded. Heero
almost smiled to himself when the thought occured to him that the jacket
would smell like grass and the simple, clean scent of Duo's shampoo. It
was almost the same color as the shadowed parts of the boy's eyes, the
parts that held some kind of ancient, arcane tie with these very stars.
That mystic part was what Duo kept to himself. The rest of him he would
gladly share with the rest of the world, but it was when he was alone that
the true age of his soul was apparent. Heero found himself fascinated by
the boy's honest, ageless beauty, which was only magnified by the dim light.
This time of evening seemed to make Duo quietly come alive, as if he just
awakened when the moon was high.
"...and another thing, if you take those two stars in the bowl
there, and follow the direction of that line, you can find the little dipper.
So, can you see it?" Duo turned his head to look at Heero, and was
startled to find his silent friend staring right back. "Heero?"
Heero blinked as if he had just broken out of a trance. "What?"
Duo sighed, exasperated. "You weren't paying attention, were
you? You zoned out completely. Here I am, going through this explanation
for the *second time*, and what do you do? You aren't even trying to see
this thing, are you? Do you even care? Does that supercomputer brain of
yours care about stupid pictures?" He paused in his barrage of irritated
questions. "And why are you staring at me?"
There was a moment when their breathing and their heartbeats
seemed perfectly in time with the slight autumn wind as it caressed
them. Heero reached over hesitantly, hand halting a mere centimeter
from Duo's face, as if he were asking permission to touch him. When
Duo neither moved forward nor shied away from his hand, Heero almost
reverently smoothed a curl at his temple.
"Your hair was sticking up," he explained in a shallow voice.
Duo tilted his head slightly and reached over to Heero. He calmed an
obstinate piece of hair above his ear with one long finger.
"Yours too," he said, gifting Heero with a beatific smile.
Instead of removing his hand, he moved his fingers further back through
his unruly dark hair after an uncertain moment. Heero felt his heart
trying its best to leap out of his chest as Duo leaned forward, resting
his forehead against his own. The action was not intentionally
intimate; being that close to Heero was something Duo naturally did
without even thinking.
"Duo, can I ask you something?"
"Sure," Duo raised an eyebrow slightly in question, something
equally apprehensive creeping into his expression.
"We're friends, right?" If it hadn't been for Heero's intensely
serious expression, Duo would have thought he was joking, or out of his
mind. Heero Yuy was not one to examine personal relations.
"Of course, Heero. What in the world would make you think
otherwise?" he responded almost too lightly. He broke his gaze and
found himself glancing at everything but his room mate's face.
"Duo." The tone in Heero's voice was urgent, demanding his
attention. Duo reluctantly forced his eyes to meet their fate.
"There's something else there, too, isn't there?"
Duo was as close to being speechless as he had ever been.
Not because he was shocked, he realized grimly, but because Heero's
comment had struck too close to home. "Heero, I..."
"Isn't there?" the other boy persisted. He brought his hands
up to grasp Duo's shoulders and he gave them a light shake. A faint
scowl darkened the braided boy's face. He looked away.
"I don't know."
"No, you feel it too, or else you wouldn't be making that face,"
Heero said with a smirk.
"What face?" Duo demanded.
"That one. I know you too well, Duo. You can't ever lie."
Abruptly Duo jerked free of his friend's grasp and sat up, hugging
his knees to his chest.
"You think you know me so well? You don't. You don't, and
don't tell me what I feel," he snapped. His sudden change in mood
made Heero pause. He, too, sat up, leaning an arm on one knee and
looking out at the empty stands and the ghostly vacant track circling
them.
"I've lived with you long enough to tell if you're lying or
not, Duo. I didn't say I knew everything about you. I don't know your
blood type and social security number. Though I could probably hack
those if I wanted to." Heero glanced over at his room mate, who hadn't
moved. The wry smirk on his face turned into a grimace. "Listen, Duo,
I'm sorry. I'll just drop it and we'll pretend I never said it,
alright?"
"No." Duo turned his head slightly so he could just see Heero
around his long bangs. "We can't just pretend like you never said it."
"What do you want to do, then?" Heero demanded, frustration
lending an edge to his voice that he didn't intend to display. Duo
responded in kind.
"You're right, okay? Are you happy now? I think there's
something else there, too, but I..." he trailed off with an irritated
growl, running a thin-fingered hand through his hair.
"What, Duo?" Heero asked, more calmly this time.
"I don't know. I just don't know, alright? I can't...I think
it's there. I *think*. But I just can't deal with it yet, okay?" He
brought his face around to look at Heero fully, the confusion plain to
see in his frank violet eyes. "I just have to know for sure that it's
there, that it's not me imagining it or convincing myself of it,
before...before I can do anything else. Okay, Heero?"
"I'm not asking for an oath of eternal loyalty, Duo," the boy
replied with a solemn smile, "I just wanted to make sure I wasn't the
only one who felt it...whatever it is." There was another long, silent
moment. Heero stared up at the indifferently twinkling stars once
again, trying to concentrate on the flickering lights and not on the
uneasiness that had silenced the two of them. He forced himself to focus
on those pinpoints, until he had to shut his eyes against the chilly
glare.
When next he opened them, he found himself gazing into two
bright violet eyes mere inches away from his face. Startled, his breath
caught in his dry throat. Those eyes held such life; its uncertainty
and innocence, its past pains and its hope for future comfort.
"You swear?" Duo asked with an unreadable expression on his
heart-shaped face. Heero quirked a confused eyebrow. "You swear you
felt it, too?"
"Yeah," he managed after a moment's shock. "I did."
Duo stared at him, hovering over him like an anxious wraith,
but never touching him. Heero didn't dare move.
"Okay," he murmured at last, as much to himself as to Heero.
He leaned forward against him until he rested his chin against Heero's
chest. Heero could feel him physically loosen the reins he held on
himself. Tentatively he laid an arm over Duo's back. Duo smiled up
at him, "What now?"
Heero glanced upward and took a slow breath of the crisp
night air, laced vaguely with Duo's pale, incense-like scent. "Nothing.
Not until we figure things out. Not until we're ready." He brought his
gaze back down to earth, to that pair of intense purple eyes hovering
over him. "Fair enough?"
Duo made no reply, but looked downward for a moment, thinking
something over. "I think..." he murmured.
Heero, thinking Duo was voicing his agreement, nodded. "Okay.
So we'll just..."
"I think," Duo broke in, continuing his train of thought, "that
I've just made the biggest gamble I've made in my entire life." He
brought his blue-violet eyes, soft with reflected starlight, up to meet
Heero's tense gaze from beneath those incredibly long eyelashes. "And it
better damn well pay off." He leaned in ever so slowly until his warm
breath tickled the other boy's lips.
Heero smiled, a wicked gleam in his deep cobalt eyes. "Awfully
serious words, coming from the class clown."
"Shut up, you," Duo smirked softly.
Heero chuckled, sliding in to close the gap between them,
posessing Duo's mouth with a fierce gentleness that was both surprising
and expected.
After a long moment, they moved apart and lay on their backs,
faces flushed and turned once more toward the blue-black vault overhead.
Heero blinked away the glaze that was making his eyes so
pleasantly unfocused. "Duo?"
"Hmm?"
"I see it." Duo glanced over suspiciously, but leaned his head
to see the sky from Heero's point of view. Heero raised an arm and traced
the shape in the sky.
"Maybe all you needed was a little distraction," Duo chided.
Heero smiled.
"Maybe," he said. A soft sigh escaped his lips. "I've never
seen it before. This is amazing," he smiled and glanced over at the
other boy. "Thank you."
Duo smiled enigmatically in the cool darkness. "We should do
this more often," he said.
"What are you doing this time next weekend?" Heero laughed.
"Teaching you how to find Hydra," came the reply.
Heero winced. "Hydra? Sounds hard."
"Mmm," Duo purred contentedly, rolling over to face him,
"something like twenty stars."
"Twenty?" Heero raised one eyebrow. "I'm not sure I can handle
that one." Duo reached forward and brushed aside a stubborn piece of
Heero's dark bangs.
"Then maybe you'll need a lot of distraction," he smiled darkly,
leaning in to place a light, teasing kiss on Heero's lips.
"Oh," he said. Then, after a long while, "Hey, maybe you could
distract me a little more right now?"
"I think that could be arranged."
- FIN -