Title: An Inexplicable Thread
Pairings/Warnings: 1x2, AU in modern day, language, extensive drug use, my poor understanding of the military, CIA, and Yakuza, likely it'll get pretty smutty at times but I'm not certain how long it'll take to get there. I'll put an individual warning on the chapter!
Notes: I'm trying something a little different with the POVs in this. I normally stick to third person POV but only follow one character's thoughts. In this story, some chapters are going to be half Duo's POV and half Heero's POV. Then others, when they're together, are going to be a mixture. We'll see how it works out. I'm a bit nervous about it because I frankly despise mixed POVs as I find them contrived and unrealistic, BUT I can't see any way around it so here goes nothing.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters from Gundam Wing (unfortunately) and they were used without permission, but all the words are my own.
Duo felt like his entire body was shaking but the paint kept plastering on the canvas with perfect, steady strokes. Even as he felt the high winding down he knew he had no control over it. When it hit him like this, he was a man possessed. He had to finish the scene.
It had been like this, off and on, for a few years now. Sometimes he wanted it to stop, when it happened too fast, when every time he slammed he was forced into this frenzy of creativity. But when it did stop, sometimes for a few months, he found himself longing for it back, staring at his past works, begging for it one more time to see that face before the rush overtook him.
When it hit him like this, the way no normal hit would, it was always the same, always the same subject. A handsome man, on the verge of his thirties, with cold, aloof eyes and a muscled figure. Sometimes he was alone. Sometimes he was dressed in a military uniform. Sometimes it seemed like a scene from his life. And sometimes it was just an extreme close-up of that lovely, disappointed face...
Duo didn't know this man. He didn't know where these visions came from. He knew he was helpless to obey them, though, and if paint wasn't available he would resort to sketching. On anything. Including the walls. This man was like a demon inside him who had to get out. And he would dig his claws through Duo's chest to do it, if he had to.
Sometimes Duo thought he was just going crazy. That he had some alter ego locked inside of him that would eventually overpower his increasingly fragile state. But other times, when the visions were few, he thought maybe it was just that hit, maybe it was laced with something, maybe... But then he'd realize he was addicted to the visions as he was to the H. And it would never have been just that hit. He had a voluminous amount of work featuring the man.
Tonight he was sitting in a diner, his back to Duo, those dispassionate eyes trained on a coffee mug. But this painting was different and Duo gasped as he fell backwards onto the floor, landing hard on his ass but barely noticing the pain. His stomach clenched as he started bottoming out and he felt like he was going to be sick.
This time, he knew where the man was. He knew this diner. He'd been there more than once, in fact. It was... it was close to here. To his apartment. And it was shocking because in all his time painting all these paintings, he had never painted a place he knew before.
Why was it different, this time? Was he here? Now? Duo's heart started pounding and he grasped as his chest, suddenly unable to breath.
In a desperate attempt to escape the painting he crawled down the hallway to his room, drug himself into his bed, and threw the covers over his huddled body. The implications were too extreme to deal with right then. Right then, he needed to hide. Hide from him. Hide and wait until tomorrow when he could think.
Heero sat at the dingy diner and tilted his cup back and forth, the cream he didn't ask for in his coffee swirling this way and that, until it meddled into a pathetic brown the color of sand.
Sand...
It had been such a long time since he'd been in the bloody sand but he would never forget it's suffocating presence when it was the only thing for ten thousand miles in every direction.
True, his tour in Afghanistan had been brief, but it still left an imprint on his heart that could never be removed. It became immediately apparent to all of his supervisors that despite his efficiency and dedication to the mission, he would never lead men or win the Medal of Honor because he could care less if his whole platoon died to accomplish it. After that scenario became a reality the CIA had quickly recruited him, likely at his superiors' request.
His career with the CIA was much more successful. But coming off a four year infiltration was going to be hard, he knew it. Not right now, not the first night, and probably not the next one. But eventually he would break down, as all good agents did. At least he hoped he would. Because if he didn't, they were going to make him.
To not break was a sign of weakness. Too much dedication, too much drive. Too in character, stuck. He'd never get another mission if they couldn't properly psychologically evaluate him and he wasn't ready for his career with the CIA to be over.
But he had nothing to break him. Most of his colleagues broke when they went home to fuck their wives. Or kiss their children's cow-licked hair. Or do whatever normal people with normal lives did when they weren't in the field.
He didn't have any of that. He'd never met his father. His mother was a nice enough woman but she was never home and eventually succumbed to lung cancer from the second-hand smoke of diner waitressing mixed with her own personal smoking since 13 and yeah, it hurt, but the writing was on the wall. He knew it was coming and just like everything in his life, he steeled himself against it so that when it happened, he was ready. And he felt nothing.
This diner was the closest way to be near her. Not that she had ever worked here – they lived in a series of tiny Midwest towns, very far away from the "big city" – but he grew up on free diner food brought home in Styrofoam clamshells wrapped in plastic bags a little after 11 each night.
It wasn't that he really wanted to be close to her. But he knew he needed to find a "home." He needed to find something to break him. And this was the only thing he could think of to do. Sadly, he knew... it wasn't going to work.
Heero sighed, resigning himself to the reality that he'd have to call his handler for advice. They told him to "take a breather," they'd "be in touch" in a few weeks, "don't worry" about it, and they set him up with a plane ticket, a furnished apartment, and a hefty bonus. But all Heero wanted right then was to be looking at a new mission file, filling in details on the pegboard and thinking about his next character.
'Maybe they were right,' he thought doubtfully. It was only his first night in the city. Tomorrow he'd get a peek at it, try to get a grasp on its dark underbelly. All cities had 'em. You just had to know where to look...
Nonchalantly he flipped two crisp, clean dollars on the counter next to his untouched coffee and sauntered back to his apartment. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Tomorrow was another day...