Current Pairing: DeathWing / 1x2x1
They are lying in bed one night, the blood fading from flushed cheeks, chests settling from panting breaths, when Heero rolls over onto his side and props himself up on an elbow. Duo tilts his head, staring into those deep blue eyes, and offers him the fuzzy smile of the utterly satiated. Heero doesn't smile back, clear-eyed and lips tightened with sadness.
"When you leave," Heero murmurs, voice cracking like ice bearing too much weight, "and I know you will, so don't try to lie – when you leave, don't call me. Don't try to stay in my life from hundreds of miles away, from the bed of your newest lover."
Duo doesn't answer for a moment, his face falling like the last leaf of autumn from a decaying branch. Sorrow settles over the length of his bared skin, heavy like a blanket of night. Finally, he nods.
"Okay," he whispers.
He doesn't attempt to say more, doesn't even begin to explain the duffle bag slowly filling in the bottom of their shared closet. He's never bothered to hide his intentions, doesn't think it fair that one day Heero could come home and find him gone. It's just the way it is – he will run, it's merely a matter of time. But the cruelest crime he could commit would be leaving without warning, shattering someone's heart in the effortless space of not writing a note.
Heero knows it is coming, with every piece of clothing packed away in that hulking black bag. It hurts – of course it hurts, preparing to let the love of his life just walk away from him like he doesn't mean anything. Duo was born to leave, though, was never meant to be pinned to a home like a bug on a child's bulletin board. And he would go, if Duo asked, would pack what he could fit in a backpack and leave his life behind… but Duo won't ask. Duo never takes any part of his past with him when he flees it.
"I'll miss you," Heero manages, sobs choking his throat.
Duo doesn't answer, merely gazes at him with lips stitched shut with regret. Running hurts, it always does, but this will ache more than most. Time is slipping away from them, quicker than he can fathom, and he still hasn't found the words to say goodbye.
Heero rolls away from the heat of Duo's body as the tears come, flooding down his face in pre-emptive grief. Duo might still be there, cradled in the warmth of their passion, but his mind is already miles away, planning his new life without Heero. Heero's shoulders shake as his heart begins to break right there in that too-silent room, and Duo stares at his curled spine, wishing he knew what to say. None of his words will amount to, "I'm staying," so he leaves them in his head and watches his lover mourn a loss that hasn't happened yet.
Heero wakes up alone and realizes that Duo has vanished. It's not just that the other side of the bed is empty, sheets crumpled and cool, emptied of the midnight heat of the braided man's body. It's that the house is hollow as a scraped gourd, drained of the exuberance and light that Duo brings with him. The walls settle with a creaking sigh, sorrow in the worn planks beneath his feet as he goes through the motions of beginning his day.
Staggering into the kitchen, scrubbing absently at the stubble on his cheek, he picks up a scrap of paper attached to the refrigerator door. And sinks to the ground, knees turning to water, as the untidy scrawl of Duo's handwriting levels him. No explanation. No words of love. Just I'm leaving. I'm sorry. And, unsteady, written more hastily and messily than the rest, dotted with a single fallen tear, paper still damp, I won't call.
He bows his head to his knees as the breaking completes, as his heart is neatly severed in two. It crumbles to the bottom of his ribcage, landing jarring and tattered among the scraps of his dignity. He lifts his eyes to the sky, lashes spiked with tears, and swallows a tidal wave of sorrow.
"I wish you'd come back," he gasps, swamped by the agony of their shattered home.
Heero barely stirs as a sharp rattle emerges from the door. The knock sounds again, impatient and harsh, and Heero tugs the covers up over his head. The cocoon of warmth surrounds him, blanketing him in the fading remnants of Duo's scent.
"Yuy," a voice drifts through the door. "It's been two weeks. Maybe it's time to get out of bed."
"Not yet Chang," he murmurs, practically inaudible. "The breeze through the window still whispers his name. I just need a little more time."
Footsteps recede down the hallway, the irate click of Wufei's boot heels jabbing into his eardrums like ice picks. His friends are disappointed in him, alarmed that the infamous Heero Yuy could crumble so thoroughly at the loss of a solitary man. He's not the person they thought he was, and he can't quite bring himself to give a fuck.
Living off of protein bars and water is not how anyone expects to find the Savior of the Earth. The hero of the Eve Wars was never intended to be flattened by heartbreak. He is expected to be more than human, to be above the banality of emotions, and yet, here he is. Hollow-cheeked and sunken-eyed, hair plastered to his head by sleep and apathy. Getting out of bed only to drag another box of ration bars up to his bedside.
He tucks his face into the second pillow on the bed, the faint blue pillowcase still marred by the lingering smell of Duo's shampoo. The scab over the wound of his aching heart cracks and splits, blood oozing from the opening. His limbs collect close to his chest, trying to hold the gaping edges of himself together as he irreparably falls apart.
At the month mark, with dozens of empty boxes scattered around the bed, sheets stained with tears, skin drawn tight over quaking bones, the door bursts from its hinges like a rotten melon exploding. Bleary sapphire eyes examine the figure in the doorway, tall and imposing, arms crossed over his chest.
"Trowa," he rasps wearily. His rusted voicebox creaks with the words – he hasn't spoken in a week. Has no one to speak to.
Every time the phone rings, his broken-boned heart leaps in its steel cage, launching itself eagerly against the molten bars. The phone never holds Duo's name, though, never reveals the secret to hearing his bedroom voice greet the morning again. Heero finds he doesn't care to talk to anyone who hasn't spoken to the darkest corners of his soul. His phone isn't even charged anymore – Duo won't call. He promised. And if nothing else, Duo always kept his promises.
"Heero, it's time. We're all worried about you. You can't just sleep your life away."
"Everything hurts," he says, words dropping into the silence of the room like atom bombs.
He lifts empty eyes to Trowa, eyes that were once so full of life that they were black with the depths of their intensity. Now they glow, a faint blue, the color leached out just as the meaning faded from his life. Trowa struggles not to stagger backwards, stunned by the stranger in front of him. He saw Heero in the wake of a Gundam's detonation, bleeding and barely alive. He was miles more vibrant than he is right now.
"It hurts," Heero continues quietly, uncaring of his audience. "I told him not to call, when he left. He promised. You know what that means, Trowa? I will never hear his voice again. Never hear him say my name in that way that words can't describe. He even left his keys, so he could never come back here. I can't stand the idea of never touching him again. I miss him so much…. I… I leave the doors unlocked." He bows his head into his hands, a sob hitching out of his chest. "I leave the windows open."
Trowa leans against the doorway, trying to contain the shock rippling through him. Heero Yuy, the one who kept two deadbolts and a combination lock on every door, the one with a pressure sensor on every window… leaving himself vulnerable. Leaving himself wide open, despite the wartime neuroses that they all share, in case Duo ever changes his mind. He drops down to one knee beside the bed, placing a hand on Heero's shoulder, squeezing his fingers against the barely covered bone. Heero rolls away from him, tucking his body into a protective ball, shaking with his scarcely contained grief.
"For what it's worth," Trowa comments gently, "if I knew where he was, I would drag his sorry ass back here and put him in this bed, where he belongs."
Quatre drops his spoon when Heero pushes open the door to the restaurant, looking like a refugee from a plane wreck. His skin is slung tight across his bones, stretched thin and translucent over the webwork of veins. The former pilots track his movements across the room, slow and careful, each foot placed as if his framework is fragile and apt to collapse. Which, given the skeletal state of his body, is entirely possible. He lowers himself slowly into a chair, clean-shaven at last, once-tangled hair stripped down to stubble. Trowa offers him a welcoming smile but doesn't pressure him, passing him a menu as he takes a sip of his orange juice.
"Heero," Quatre breathes. "It's so good to see you."
Heero glances up from the menu, his eyes huge and luminous in his unnaturally thin face. He holds a smile as he would an infant – tentative, afraid to drop it lest it break. "Yes, well… it hurt just as much to stay in bed with his ghost. I might as well start living again."
Conversation resumes, slowly. Relena casts a concerned expression across the table when he orders tea and toast, nothing more. He shrugs his shoulders apologetically, the clearly visible bones flexing like bird's wings. She reaches across the table to press her hand atop his prominent knuckles.
He ducks his head for a moment, shooting a swift peek sideways at Trowa. "I locked the doors today."
He shakes his head at Trowa's encouraging smile, pressing a key into his best friend's hand. Just in case, he mouths.
Three months have passed, slow as leaves drifting past the peeling paint of the siding. The windows of the house are closed, dropped shut one by one with each dying moment of hope. Heero slides home the two deadbolts, spins the numbers to conceal the combination. Sometimes the stars will whisper Duo's name and he'll neglect the measures of safety, cracking open the glass beside his headboard to let the night breeze rustle the emerging tatters of his hair.
He told Duo not to call. And Duo always kept his promises.
It doesn't stop his breath from hitching in his chest when the phone rings, doesn't stop his steps from hastening to the beckoning object. Doesn't stop the stab of agony when Duo's name is missing from the screen, or the resulting blackness of his mood.
Even though he knows in the marrow of his brittle bones that Duo would rather eat his priest's collar than break a promise, that damn ring sends his heart plummeting to the ground, rising on an elevator of hope before Quatre or Trowa's name sends it crashing to the basement of reality once more.
He is aware that he has to stop expecting Duo to call, has to crush the optimism that is slowly leeching what little happiness remains in his life. Sometimes he'll hear a phone at the crux of midnight, wake shaking from dreams of amethyst eyes and long, long hair to a silent house. He doesn't sleep much anymore. At least in his waking hours he can keep busy, driving his body to the brink of collapse, occupy his mind until pain throbs at his temples like a jackhammer. He can run himself into ragged tatters, but Duo's name is always waiting behind his eyelids, calling to him in a voice that sounds like home.