Disclaimer: Don't own it, never have and never will
Pairing: 1x2x1
Warnings: m/m sexual relations, canon timeline (between the series and EW) some bad language, some angst and some happy, cute sap!
A/N: This is a gift fic for my bestest ELLE's birthday and a thank you for being an awesome friend and an all-round lovely lady. As such, this is probably more sappy and feelsy than my usual writing but every now and then we need some happy cute, right?
This is based off the beautiful song, Ellie Goulding's The Writer and a massive thank you to thatwhichyields for her beta so that this could remain a surprise to ELLE until today.
Casting Shadows
The first month after the war finished he went back to L1. Back to the L1 colony where Dr. J's lab had been as Heero had no sense of where to go. Practicality dictated that he needed somewhere to store his now defunct Gundam - the machine that he'd relied on for so long stood forlorn, unused, its wings burnt and charred from the final battle and Libra. Dr. J's lab was as it had been apart from layers of dust and the fact that the terminals and labs were empty – those lab techs, those engineers, all those people that had made their rebellion possible had moved on. Heero should do the same, he supposed, as he wandered through the steel, his sneakers squeaking and echoing in the cavernous room.
Though he didn't. He stayed there for some time, the actual length of the period became hazy as he spent time de-encrypting files until one day, he decided that none of J's work should live on. No one else needed to know how to build a Gundam now. And no one needed to know how to genetically alter an eight year olds body.
He'd launched an elaborate virus into the system and then smashed the machines in a fit of uncontrolled rage, the terminals, the panels, the screens destroyed by a combination of fists and whatever else he could find until sparks flew from open wiring and the screens blanked – no longer showing any signs of life. He'd sat on the floor then, the wreckage of what had been his isolated home for so many years in pieces and then simply walked out, his hands bloody, his arms scarred and decided to move on. It was no time to be spent with old ghosts and bad memories.
The post-war environment was one of weary hope. Everywhere Heero went, he would see Relena's face on large screens and she would look so determined and so young and so hopeful. Yet, then he would see the people in the colonies walk passed those speeches as what some girl said on earth had no impact on their lives. And Heero didn't blame them. Although it was all meant to be peaceful, Heero could see things in the colonies that suggested it would not remain for long, so he went to earth.
He had no connection to anywhere on earth – he could visit places where he'd blown shit up or hidden during the war but they were not happy memories. They were not places he needed to visit again so instead he found himself drifting into cities and spending time in small hostels and ratty hotels, drinking more alcohol than he should as for the first time, he could. He found himself on the banks of the Sienne and under the arch of the Champs Elysee, walking through the streets of Paris and visiting the museums, for the first time standing back to appreciate small things. He started to keep what some people would refer to as a journal. It was a small leather bound book that he began to make notes and draw in.
In his training, he'd learnt how to draw technically – he could draw the inside of engines and specifications of mobile suits but he'd never tried to draw anything else. Initially, he'd sat and drawn the Eiffel Tower, feeling like a cliché as it was something that surely everyone would try but it was relatively easily. He could deconstruct the architecture, how it was made, the mechanical process of making it and make a believable representation. Yet when he went to those museums in cities, to those art galleries, he stood and stared at images on canvases and knew that nothing he ever produced would have any feeling. How could it? He'd been retrained so many times, gone through such intensive re-programming and experimentation that he doubted whether he truly felt anything. That's what Duo had teased him for – being the emotionless soldier boy. Maybe he was right.
He left Paris, travelled to Venice, sat in St Mark's Square, drank small cups of espresso and watched a little girl feeding the pigeons, her red coat standing out and he drew her, his eyes seeing the delicacy of her features and his pencil being less rigid in his hands – his lines less straight, his vision less harsh as she reminded him too much of her. And then she turned and looked him in the eye, having become conscious of his stare and her mother dragged her away.
It wasn't the first time that people avoided him; he'd sat at bars in Europe, places that didn't care about ID's or being of age, and people had seemed to always sit away from him. Maybe he still looked like he was a killer – maybe people saw the bloodstains on his hands or maybe he was still too damn intense but he had become used to walking through cities, shadow-like, and no one interacting with him.
Barcelona was when he started to think about Duo more clearly. He was looking at the great Cathedral designed by Gaudi and he thought that maybe, maybe Duo would appreciate some of these things that he was seeing. It was a vague thought at first, as he stood where there were so many other tourists, and he walked through the streets to see the buildings that looked like they were decorated with bones. And he wondered why he thought of Duo at those times and he drew more sketches, slept on cheap sheets, and drank too much cheap vodka in bars in side streets.
It was then, after months of wandering, that he went to L2 in some fit of strange hopefulness, stepping back onto a colony to feel the stale air and the claustrophobia of a fake sky for the first time in months, adjusting a bag on his shoulder and finding his way through the spaceport to cabs and to find the one person who'd always tried his damn hardest to make him more like a person. Who'd tried everything he fucking could to make him smile, to make him laugh, to make him see things in a different way and he didn't know if he would be wanted or needed. Their only brief moment was a stupid mistake, Duo all wide eyed and vulnerable after his OZ capture, and the brush of lips tingled and made him uncomfortable enough to leave Duo – still healing, still injured, scared more of what had happened between them than of the need to continue their futile fight.
Yet he went to a scrapyard and Duo was there – exactly as he expected him to be, or not quite as Heero did not know what to expect when he arrived. He didn't expect the girl – remembered her aboard Peacemillion, Hilde, the one who had risked her life for the information about Libra.
He then doubted why he'd come to L2 as he saw that Duo had achieved some post-war normality. And he spent a day watching, observing the scrapyard and the business that was taking place and the relationship between the girl and Duo. He was unsure what it meant, not well versed in normal relationships and whether they were, what would be called "dating" and he then wondered what impetus had brought him to L2 as he clearly did not belong there just as any of the places he'd travelled through.
Maybe it was time to return to L1. To the destroyed lab. To where Wing ZERO was stored, large and imposing, a shadowy reminder of his past and who he was. He could do the repairs, sure that one day it would be needed once again. Instead, on the second night on L2 he made his approach.
The scrapyard had been in entire darkness and the only lighting came from the pre-fabricated building that Heero had ascertained was the offices and had some living quarters to the rear. It was never truly dark on a colony, the artificial light and systems creating a false brightness at night so he could see enough to think of a way of entering the scrapyard covertly, unsure for a moment why he just didn't go to the door or something logical. It was her, perhaps, and him not knowing Duo's relationship to her. And maybe he wouldn't make his presence known, maybe he would just get close enough to observe, to watch closer, to determine what was going on between his war time comrade and the girl with the pixie haircut.
The security was particularly lax and Heero frowned at it as he walked around the perimeter to find a location where the barbed wire that stood atop the fence had fallen. It meant he could climb and jump without any risk of injury. Not that blood bothered him but he knew he had to maintain his physical condition as much as he could. Maintain the physique he'd been trained to have – genetically altered to have.
In hindsight, though Heero assumed that Duo's security was lax, he should've remembered the boy from the war who was all about subterfuge, about stealth, about distraction. It had been stupid and naïve to think that there was no security as this was L2. The notorious cluster, the crime cluster, the one that politicians talked about and tried to be sympathetic about, but it still hadn't improved months after the war and maybe it never would.
His attempt to stealthily enter, to observe, was shattered as an alarm system sounded, security lights turned on and there Duo stood, a gun raised at him as though mocking their first meeting, though this time, no priests outfit or baseball cap – only boxer shorts and t-shirt and a messy braid. It was the middle of the night. And he saw Hilde there on the doorstop, holding a gun as well, and Heero understood they'd probably done this plenty of times.
"Heero?"
Duo's voice sounded odd when he heard it after so long. Deeper, more melodic maybe, something that he didn't or couldn't identify. Hilde looked confused but then raised her hand and went back inside, leaving them alone.
"The fuck you doing here, 'Ro?" he asked, lowering his weapon.
What was he doing there? He wondered it himself but then where else did he have to go? Back to the cities he'd drifted through, back to J's lab and the ruin he had made of it – the shadow of his lonely childhood lingering.
"I need somewhere to stay."
Duo frowned at that, unsure, blue eyes flickering but then a half smile, that slight curl of lips that he'd seen dozens of times appeared and he found himself with a strong hand on the small of his back and being led into the pre-fabricated building, food provided, a couch to sleep on without any question. Heero couldn't understand why Duo opened his home – Hilde more begrudgingly – why he was made to feel welcome, why he was made to feel like he could belong somewhere. The rooms were small, junk-filled and there was little space, but Duo didn't seem to mind, their bodies brushing in the kitchen area, his fingers finding Duo's skin at times and creating small electric currents across his flesh.
The first few nights he slept on the couch. Or tried to. The couch springs made noises as he moved, as he tried to find a position to sleep in, and despite all the training he had undergone in his life, all the methods he'd developed to sleep in uncomfortable and confined places, he found it difficult to sleep on Duo's couch... and it wasn't because of the broken springs and the fact the cushions were lumpy and the blankets rough against his skin.
It was because of the way Duo looked at him, underneath his lashes, how his eyes were big and blue, about the way his expression was so open – how he smiled, how he easily laughed and he was everything Heero wasn't. He tried a smile, a few times, trying to reciprocate those expressions like he should but felt they failed, his awkwardness and incompetency at these feelings clouding his features.
It was because they kissed, in the kitchen on the second night that he couldn't sleep, as they were too close and it was something instinctive happened between them. Continuing the events had happened during the war that should never have occurred, the brief press of lips then, innocent and chaste but now it was considerably more heated. He pressed Duo against the refrigerator and its contents rattled as two bodies impacted it but it was ignored. Something fell to the floor, pans balanced on top of it but they were too involved in each other, Heero pushing back the hair that framed Duo's face and gripping his cheeks with his hands, his hips automatically grinding into Duo's and feeling… and feeling something like sunlight on skin, smelling the way he smelt of soap and engine grease and shampoo.
The cough had stalled everything, the accusing tone, and Hilde stood in a baggy t-shirt and a scowl. It had halted that kiss and maybe it was a good thing as Heero didn't know how much self-control they had. They were teenagers after all.
A few nights after that, Duo realised he'd not been sleeping on the couch, always so damn perceptive and just knowing that Heero hadn't actually slept. Heero could function with little sleep. That was one of his training and experimentations advantages but Duo had then wanted to take the couch himself yet Heero wouldn't let him and so Duo offered a compromise.
"You can sleep with me. Ya know, old war buddies and all."
Heero couldn't decide whether it was a good or bad idea, sharing a bed, but they had been war time comrades. He could recall shared dorm rooms at schools, close across the small gulf of two beds and it was no different to that, he thought. Nothing different despite the kiss.
Yet when he woke up next to Duo for the first time, he found himself hard and tried to will his erection away out of embarrassment. He was not sexually naïve, not the unfeeling soldier boy that Duo had accused him of being so many times during the war, and he'd had fantasies. Most of them involved the other boy in the bed who stirred next to him and they were too close for it to be hidden. Too damn close, too hot, too near and moving just so would mean it would become obvious.
Duo had been turned in the opposite direction to sleep but now had moved onto his back and Heero was sure he must've felt it. He wanted to say sorry, that he'd appeared out of nowhere and Duo had offered him a bed for the night or for as long as he wanted and he didn't intend to complicate things more. But the kiss had prompted feelings that he'd been supressing since Duo's vulnerability and neediness after his capture.
Heero gasped, unable to stop the sound when Duo's fingers wrapped around him through boxers shorts and then there were lips on his and this time there was no Hilde to interrupt, to walk into a moment that she had no right disturbing. He returned the kiss as best as he could, all his experience with kissing revolving around Duo and he opened his mouth and let Duo's tongue slide across his own, felt it across his palate, run across his teeth, tease his lips as Duo withdrew though the fingers were slowly pumping his dick through the boxer shorts, the stimulation and the sudden roughness of the material too much.
"Duo," he murmured – his words sounding like he was pleading.
"You want me to stop?"
That wasn't it – he didn't want him to stop but he didn't understand how this had gone from fleeting kisses to a hand slowly stroking him and the potential moving forward that could happen and he wasn't sure but the way Duo's eyes were looking at him made him feel something that he didn't understand.
"No."
He really didn't want to as his hand sought out a matching hardness tenting the front of black sleep shorts and he saw Duo's eyes flicker at the moment of touch and he knew Duo was deriving pleasure from his touch, a small gasp as Heero wrapped his fingers around him creating another strange feeling in the bottom of his stomach. Duo's hand moved from outside his boxer shorts and then his hand was directly against his cock, the feeling better than through the rough fabric and Heero found his lips on Duo's again, and he tried to reciprocate everything he was feeling, to make Duo feel like he did, to feel his dick spasm and twitch in his fingers as he came, to kiss back with that same level of paradoxical gentleness and intensity. He felt himself come inside his boxer shorts, Duo stealing away whatever noise he made as he did in his kiss and he redoubled his own efforts to give that pleasure to Duo. To make Duo feel like he did. To use the techniques he used to bring himself off and he felt himself moving, pushing Duo on his back towards the bed and instinctively straddling him, continuing to bring him to climax and moving his mouth from his lips and to his bared throat.
The first time Duo came underneath him, Heero felt a sense of power that was only comparable to the way he felt at the controls of a mobile suit. Something about the way Duo shuddered, the way he made little gasps, the way his eyes scrunched closed and his head went back all brought a level of satisfaction he'd only felt in battle – a weird adrenaline rush and then a slow decline into peace that came from knowing that he'd done something successfully, the evidence of that on his fingers. He didn't know what compelled him, but he lifted one to his mouth, swiping the digit to taste and he saw Duo's eyes widen at that and pull him down for a hard, deep, passionate kiss, unaware of what made him so intense in that moment and not understanding the response to such a small action.
Things progressed from there, Heero supposed, Duo took him to places on L2 – he went to scrap auctions, he went to barter with men in badly lit and poorly pawn shops and he began to feel like he could stay with Duo in that scrapyard, at least for some time. Hilde would complain at them both – look at them and roll her eyes as she saw something that Heero was not sure of. And Duo would tell her to back off, his eyes fierce and stance defensive and he began to realise that he was the cause of these moments of disagreement between the two friends.
He drew more. He drew scrap that had been twisted in the yard, sitting on a bench that Duo had fashioned out of a car seat and some undefinable pieces of metal. Duo wouldn't let him work, smiling and telling him that he was on vacation but then he saw there were some difficulties with the whole operation – not just in the relationship between Duo and Hilde.
One day he realised he was drawing unconsciously, sat on the bench, his feet up on the surface and he realised he was trying to draw a person. He'd not tried to draw someone since the little girl in St Mark's Square and he'd had to look at her so intensely that he'd scared her. It was only after sitting for some time did he realise that Duo had begun to form on the page, his body from behind, his braid trailing downwards as for some reason, he was afraid of drawing his eyes, his smile or smirk, his jaw line, the lips that he plundered on a regular basis.
The first time they fucked was two weeks after he came to the colony. They'd spent most nights wrapped around each other, Heero soon finding it impossible to imagine not sleeping next to Duo, not to be in contact with his skin, not to feel the flutter of his chest as he breathed. They'd moved from the mutual masturbation to Duo going down on him, his mouth warm, wet, intense around his dick and he'd found it difficult to maintain the silence that they had to do as Hilde slept on the other side of the thin wall. He tried to do the same for Duo, make him come into his mouth, but he did not have the skills that Duo seemed to have – didn't have that talented tongue that could take him to the edge and leave him there hanging for what seemed like so long. That he'd try not to hold Duo's head down as he liked the feeling of relinquishing control, of letting Duo do what he wanted and to then lose himself in a moment of white heat and sparks. Even though Duo encouraged him, hand gently on his head as he slid his lips over his cock, he knew that he was learning the skill and Duo's pleasure would not be as profound as his own.
Hilde and Duo had been fighting the night that they fucked for the first time. Heero knew it was about him –comments about having another mouth to feed and how the business was suffering as Duo's focus was elsewhere and Heero heard, he heard all this, and he saw Duo's utter defiance and defence of him through the open door of Duo's bedroom.
When Duo came into the room, Heero looked up at him and frowned.
"I didn't mean to cause you trouble," he said, sitting on the bed, still in his clothes even though it had become their routine to slip into bed naked and see what would happen between them.
"You're no trouble, 'Ro…" he answered, closing the door and straddling him, undressing him slowly and kissing each patch of skin as he exposed it.
Heero let Duo take control, let him push him back to the bed that they'd spent so much time in together, let him roll his hips into his, let him bite down on his lower lip and nip and suck.
"Have you…?" Duo asked, the question vague and hanging in the air between them as Duo looked down at him, his hands poised at either side of his head.
"No." He answered quickly, bluntly, afraid if he didn't do that then he'd falter. "Have you?"
Something flittered across Duo's face, a brief moment of a bad memory, Heero guessed but it was gone. "I'm gonna make you feel good," he said – avoiding the question entirely.
He made him feel safe, had the necessary precautions, embarrassed for a moment that he did but Heero didn't mind that maybe Duo expected that this would happen – that he had the necessary lube and condoms, that he prepared him with his fingers carefully while sucking his dick, using his other hand to palm his balls and then he was sliding into him and maybe it didn't feel right at first – his body automatically tensing but soon it did feel good. He found himself grabbing hold of Duo's braid, pulling him down for needy kisses, lifting his hips to provide more friction, depth, something, his body naturally knowing what it wanted, striving for something he'd never attained before.
When Duo panted words against his ear, bent him near double, and told him how he'd wanted to do this for so long, wanted him for so long, it became too much emotion for him to deal with and he was happier when he moved back and concentrated on stroking his cock, making him come between their bodies.
It was after that he decided to leave. That his feelings for Duo had become more intense and he struggled with what he had to say. He wanted Duo to say things for him, to tell him what he was supposed to be doing, supposed to be feeling but he couldn't and each night there was more tension in the small home and Heero couldn't stay.
Even though he had taken Duo silently, sucking at his throat and mouthing over his hot skin, and they had continued a pattern of mutual masturbation and sucking each other off, Heero knew the world was changing again and he couldn't continue to live in the haze of post-coital passion. There were rumours from L3, resistance building, and it was too complicated to be with Duo as he found himself sketching his face as he worked in the scrapyard, as there would be a time they'd be called back to action, to a new conflict brewing and his mind had already lost some of its sharpness. His body was now more used to pleasure than the pain of pushing himself past endurance and his Gundam needed repairs. Duo's own was stored, dormant, in an old warehouse in the scrapyard and they'd stood there a few times.
"You think they'll be needed again? Quat keeps talkin' about destroying 'em, ya know. Blast 'em into the sun."
Heero scowled, looking up at the counterpoint to his own Gundam. The shadowy figure of Deathscythe Hell had always seemed more imposing standing next to Wing ZERO and its predominant white.
"They'll be needed again," he said, softly and walked from the warehouse, leaving Duo scratching the back of his neck and looking puzzled.
Duo'd always had more optimism for peace than Heero.
The night he finally decided to leave, he left the bed, noting for a second how Duo gravitated towards his residual heat, how his breathing was soft, how young he really looked when he was asleep. Sometimes they both forgot they were fifteen. Fifteen and still playing at being grown-ups, already weary and tired by one war, yet ready to fight again if necessary. He had a distinct urge to kiss him before he left, to move his bangs from his forehead and lean down and leave an imprint there but he didn't. His bag was already packed, he'd done that in advance, knowing that he couldn't leave when Duo was awake as he'd be all fiery passion and a damn argument. And maybe he wouldn't leave then.
Heero thought he'd get off L2 before Duo knew anything. He waited at the shuttle port, sat in the grey coloured uncomfortable plastic seats as this was L2 – there was no comfort. He bought a coffee and a stale bagel and he brought out the leather bound book he'd been carrying for so long. He observed a family opposite him, a little girl with her eyes open, pretending to be asleep against her father, and their eyes met briefly. He wondered for a moment why a family would choose the middle of the night to leave a colony but then it was a cheaper fare. It made sense. L2 was failing – no jobs or prospects and even in the short period Heero had stayed there, he'd seen it disintegrating further - Duo doing less deals, less money being made, scrap being bartered for less than it was worth.
And he opened his book and saw all the things he'd drawn during his time on L2, all those little things and moments, flicking to see that he'd tried to draw Duo's smile and that while he didn't quite capture it… it was more than he could've during the war. He looked up at the little girl and instead of her flinching from his stern glance, he smiled, and she waved her small hands and pudgy fingers in motion.
He thought about waving back but stopped the gesture as he heard a familiar voice.
"You really need to stop using my name if ya wanted to do this more covertly, 'Ro. I have it flagged, ya know."
He turned to see Duo and blinked. He was in the departure lounge which meant Duo had to have purchased a ticket to get to him, to go through security, to be here where he was. And the whole damn situation with Hilde was the failing scrapyard and the money, the poverty on L2 and Duo's welcoming him into their home without any thought about her. It made no sense.
"My name sticks out here too much," Heero said, a slight smile tugging at his lips, remembering.
"Yeah… but 'Ro, it meant I had to buy a ticket on my fake ID and through an illegal credit card as shit, there can't be two Duo Maxwell's as that would be just too much awesomeness for one shuttle flight to handle."
Heero frowned as he sat down beside him and he realised Duo had a bag with him and he blamed his slow uptake on the distracting stare of the little girl who was smiling at him for some reason, maybe as he was no longer alone. He didn't know as she turned towards her father, shyly, ignoring them for a moment.
"You seriously didn't think you'd sneak out without me noticing nothin'?"
"You were asleep."
Duo snorted under his breath. "Yeah because I didn't notice that you'd gone," he said, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. "You seriously underestimate me, buddy."
It was then that Heero realised that his leather bound book was open on his knee, those pages of small sketches and Duo had to look – he was always going to look. The book was open on small images of Duo's face, the smile, the attempt at the smirk, asleep and Heero felt compelled to close the thing – uncomfortable at the detail, at what they said about him – that those first images on the cream pages were all technical images of buildings and now, they'd changed, Duo had changed him.
"I didn't realise… shit," Duo murmured, looking at the pencil drawings. "They're good."
He closed it self-consciously. "What are you doing here?"
"I thought the whole bag and ticket thing would've clued ya in, 'Ro. I'm coming with you."
He thought for a second then about the scrapyard, about the Gundam hidden in the old warehouse, about Hilde who had spent most of the period he'd been on L2 looking at them both with disapproving glances.
"I don't know where I'm going," he said, softly, his eyes averting Duo's.
Heero didn't – he planned to do the necessary repairs to his Gundam, planned to visit J's lab but then, he did not know. He wondered about finding out whether the rumours of future conflict were true yet he also thought of Rome, of Prague, of Mumbai, of Tokyo.
It was then he felt the startling touch of fingers lacing with his and a head on his shoulder, the gentleness of the feeling more intimate than the nights they spent together naked in Duo's bed.
"Don't matter," Duo said and Heero turned his attention to him, he couldn't see his eyes, only the top of his head and he felt the loose wisps of hair against his chin and the hotness of his breath against his skin through his clothing. "I'm coming with ya."
A part of him wanted to say no, that he wanted to go back to the life he had before – that he was the shadow walking through places, leaving no mark or memory of his presence but as the little girl smiled at him, so innocent, he only smiled back awkwardly and squeezed Duo's fingers tighter.
He never asked for Duo's help, never demanded that he drop everything for him, never asked him to kiss him, never said he wanted the moments together in thin sheets, silently moving together to not be heard through the thin walls but Duo had given them all without reservation – with an openness and recklessness that typified his personality. And maybe he didn't know, didn't need to know what it meant to him, that he'd taken some of the hardness away from his eyes, from his heart but as he clasped their fingers together, maybe Duo did.
"Okay," Heero answered, quietly, his voice barely above a whisper.
Heero didn't know where they were going after L1 – the earth sphere was uncertain again but it didn't matter as he wouldn't be alone anymore casting shadows in strange cities as Duo would be with him.