Chapter Four

This is the First Thing

~ This is the first thing I thought

This is the last thing that I want

You were the first one I loved

You were the first love I lost

This is the First Thing – You me at Six ~

"Do I feel dead, baby?"

The words were breathed out like Duo had done in what was his bedroom voice - deeper, huskier - and Heero had teased him for it a few times . But Duo had said he did it because he knew Heero liked it and Heero didn't deny that. He did. He had. But right now, it was heart stopping, his tongue was lodged in his mouth and his throat was dry as his fingers touched Duo's cold skin. It didn't feel dead but nor was it warm with the feeling of blood actually circulating through veins. It was wrong. Something different.

But there was longing and isolation and confusion. Heero's heart was beating too damn fast as he felt Duo like he'd dreamed, imagined, wanted for so long that when he leaned down, when Duo's fingers were touching his chest and running up to the cross he wore every day, Heero's body tingled against the cold of his fingertips.

"You're dead," Heero said again, his voice uneven as Duo's eyes turned to slits, that blue so dark in the limited lighting and he saw Duo lick his lips unconsciously as he touched the cross, lifted it up.

"Am I? Guess ol' Shinigami can't be killed properly, right?"

Heero shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts but he felt the weight of Duo's body – solid, reassuring, and despite the cold, obviously there and it was all he could do to remember his agony. Duo wasn't Shinigami. The old jokes about not being able to kill death had all been bravado and bullshit. All things he said to Heero before he left on missions, little jokes they'd share between kisses against the wall before Duo would hunt out where he'd left his keys and his cell and leave Heero there. As they could never go together – Une had said that in the very beginning – too much emotion, too personal, too much shit. And always that same thing.

"Can't kill death, babe."

But Duo had died. And Heero remembered that. Told himself about it every day. Repeated it during his stupid little video diary – his therapy that was not working.

Emotions spilled out, all that damn time of holding them in and he felt like lashing out physically but instead he used another tactic. Words. Duo's own weapons.

"You died. I saw your body… you were cold and they'd cut you open –" Heero said in a rush, the words falling from his lips like words hadn't done in so damn long. Or ever. As he remembered that – remembered the heart break of seeing him lying on a slab, his chest carved in two deep v's, his hands cold, those stab wounds and yet Duo's response was a finger over his lips.

"Shhh, babe," Duo soothed, a gentle cold touch to his face from the other hand, dropping the cross back to around Heero's neck, "I'm here… I ain't dead."

The desire to push away was lingering but then Duo's face was close, too close, and cold lips pressed against Heero's and he felt the breath rush from his lungs at the touch - at the feel –and his hands instinctively reached out to touch Duo like he had done a million times before. He felt the softness of that braided hair, his fingers feeling his shoulders, the muscles there and he was losing all grip of the awful reality as his mouth opened and Duo's tongue slid in, teasing.

It was a playful kiss, one that left Heero wanting as he let his hands trace circles over Duo's back. He felt cold through the material but reasoned that Duo had always run cold, always wanted physical comfort, always damn slid over to his side of the bed when they'd lived together, wrapped himself around him and Heero could let himself drift, fantasise, let himself submit to the mouth, to the hands that touched and for those moments Duo wasn't dead.

He'd not died in Boston. Heero hadn't chosen a life of isolation aboard the Solar and Heero's eyes were closed, his hips bucking up into the body above him, the spark of arousal shooting up his spine, his deprived senses taking in Duo like the drug he'd always been. He'd always been Heero weakness, addiction, drug and he'd always been something that intoxicated Heero – made him human, want, need, desire and even in the cold harsh bunk of the Solar, even though Duo wasn't, couldn't be here, Heero kissed back fiercely, kissed back and threaded his fingers through Duo's hair, moaned into his mouth when Duo pinched his nipples, when Duo touched him like no one else ever had.

Duo backed off, sat up, leaning back on his heels straddling him and Heero reached up, running his palms down his sides, feeling the softness of the t-shirt.

"Touch me like you want to…" Duo said, "I'm here… I'm not broken."

Heero wanted to touch him, wanted so bad for everything to be real and for Duo to be more than just an illusion, space sickness or something getting to him through the months of grief and isolation, and he let logic slide, let everything practical he knew and lived for a moment in the stupid belief that Duo was here. That Duo was here as the suns activity was particularly violent and he could check that later… after… after he touched Duo like he dreamed, like he wanted.

He found the bottom of the t-shirt, lifted it up, feeling the muscles there, the deep "v" of his pelvic bones, Duo making a low moan in response and that encouraged him, Heero leaning up as he planted a kiss on his stomach, feeling the abs, licking a little at the skin. It tasted like Duo – his Duo, even if he felt cold and the smell of his skin was that mix of spice and sweat and engine oil that he'd always associate with the man he loved. And he let his hands lift up the t-shirt, Duo letting him, moving his arms up to facilitate it and Heero nuzzled at the flesh of his stomach, feeling Duo's fingers tighten in his hair.

The Solar hummed, the light was from the shitty green clock but Heero was forgetting all that, feeling Duo as he'd dreamed of him, running his hands over his skin, forgetting the cold, forgetting the stab wounds and the pain and the funeral. Forgetting all the hours alone, the wearing of his clothes and the cross and all those video messages. Right now, Heero closed his eyes as Duo's fingers reached for his tank, dragging it off his body, the undressing so unlike so many times before. There was a feeling of re-discovery, of re-familiarising and Heero wanted the slow touches, the feel of Duo's body, and when Duo slowly brought their chests together, grinding his hips a little, a shot of electricity drifted through his senses and he dragged him down for a kiss that would plague him in every dream after.

Duo had jeans still on and Heero itched for them to be removed, his hands reaching to the waistband as the kiss, slick, tongue and nipping and open mouthed, drove him to thrust his hips against Duo's, his cock hardening, his body wanting like he'd dreamt all those times and when Duo's lips moved from his mouth, kissed and lapped and mouthed at his jaw and throat and collarbone, Heero moaned, pathetically, more pathetically than he ever had.

"Duo…"

Duo. It always had been Duo. The one who'd made him feel – the one he'd damn loved, his first, the boy with a gun and a priest outfit and a smirk. And Heero panted out that name like a curse. A prayer as his tongue swirled around his nipples, bit down and pulled in tease, his hair falling onto Heero's chest, the movement of the braid sweeping over his skin and tickling and tingling.

For the first time in so long, Heero felt alive, felt each breath from his lungs, felt the stirring of his heartbeat, felt the sweat beads on his upper lip and at the back of his neck, all the things that Duo elicited in his body. His senses were alive and Heero reached out, touching Duo'sskin and then running his fingers to those washboard abs, up to his pectoral muscles and he started, eyes flying open as he felt the cuts, the sutures and he pushed Duo away, hard, hard as he'd done during their electrifying fights – the fights that ended with rough sex and split lips.

He fumbled out of the bed, falling onto the cold metallic floor of the Solar with none of his Perfect Soldier elegance or efficiency. Instead, he'd dragged the covers with him and Duo was looking down at him in the half light, reaching out towards him and Heero backed off, his body hitting the metal wall.

"You're dead. You died. You left me."

The words were spat out. Angrier than he ever had. As Duo had promised him, promised him after all the fighting and fucking and pain between them that he would love him and never leave him. And Heero remembered their apartment, the moment Duo wrapped his arms around him when they'd had enough therapy and enough time had passed and he'd told Heero things against his skin, his cheek.

"You got me forever, babe," Duo had said and Heero had tighten his arms around him, pulled their bodies flush as Heero's lips had kissed at Duo's forehead. "Never leaving you."

And he had. He'd left him and Heero felt Duo move, the swiftness he'd had in life and he felt a hand grabbed at his arm and Heero snatched it away.

"I couldn't help it, you know? You think I wanted to?" Duo said, his voice raspy, bitter and he could see the glint of those blue eyes even in the dim light of the glowing clock. "You think I wanted to be sent to Boston? You think I wanted to die coughing on my own blood?"

Heero blinked, looked up. "Huh?"

"I'm dead – I died. I left you because of shitty intel and shitty circumstances but somehow… somehow I'm here."

Duo touched him again, this time Heero didn't flinch away completely, feeling the cold grasp of his fingertips.

"I woulda done anything to stay with you," Duo continued, his fingers running up to Heero's face and he felt his hair being moved from his eyes, and Duo pressing into his body, straddling him, the reassuring presence of his solidity despite the cold. "I woulda done anything for us to grow old together, for us to have peace but shit… I was outnumbered and out-gunned."

The words and the touch of Duo's skin was too much but Heero leaned in, wanting… wanting what he was unsure but there was nothing he could do, his instincts drawing him closer, his head leaning into Duo's hand.

"I should've been there," Heero said, the bitterness of his own voice obvious.

As he'd said that, repeated that in the days after. In the aftermath where everyone walked around him like he'd been a ticking time-bomb, while everyone feared he would commit suicide or do something worse. He'd said it to Quatre in the dead of night over whiskey, seeing the blond try to comfort him, a hand on his shoulder, a friendly touch.

A touch that had been warm. Not like Duo's now.

"You couldn't, 'Ro," Duo soothed, "it wasn't your mission. Not your fight."

"I killed them… for you."

He felt Duo nod and pull him closer and Heero let himself be dragged into his chest, feeling Duo's chin resting on his hair and fingers caress his neck and shoulders.

"I know."

"It didn't help."

As it hadn't. It hadn't. Heero thought, naively, stupidly, that travelling to Boston, that walking those streets that Duo had and finding that criminal gang would make it better. That if he found the men that were free, no evidence to attest to their crimes, he would feel better. That he wouldn't feel the gnawing feeling in his stomach and the loneliness and the isolation.

In mission mode, in the unthinking, unblinking, inhuman state he got himself into, Heero could make it all better. That's what he'd thought. That if the men who had killed Duo died, then it would make it better. It did nothing, only made the other's find in him in an old hotel room in Boston covered in blood, sat in the shower stall with cold water spraying over his body.

"I know," Duo repeated softly.

The words, even his face pressed against Duo's cold skin and his confession, his own feelings of failure made him tremble in Duo's arms, feeling himself lose what little control he'd established by pushing Duo away when he'd felt those sutures. He felt the tears he'd never truly let himself shed, just the lightest moisture in his eyes and he buried his head further into Duo's skin, his fingers reaching for his braid, feeling the softness as he breathed in Duo's skin.

"I've gone insane," Heero whispered and he felt Duo reach for his hair, gripping the shorter hairs at the back of his head and pulling his face so that they were level. Duo's eyes were big, wide and dark in the limited light.

"We were never sane, babe."

Heero felt the tears on his eyelashes as Duo gently kissed him, so damn gently that Heero barely felt the press, the ghosted breath and he surrendered fully this time, letting Duo control everything like he had in his dreams – all those dreams of Duo with his hair down, of Duo riding him, kissing him, loving him as he touched him so damn gently. For a boy who'd been raised to kill, who's hands were calloused and had killed so many people, Duo's touch was skittering across Heero's skin and he closed his eyes as the kiss continued, re-familiarising, tongue entwining.

When they split apart, Heero didn't feel the spark of arousal, he wasn't hard, he was something else and Duo helped him to him feet, their fingers wrapping around one another and Heero thought of all those times they'd clasped their hands together during sex, holding onto each other tight as they moved together and despite those thoughts and Duo's proximity, he didn't want to pin Duo against a wall and fuck him. It was something more than that.

And Duo knew. Always damn knew.

"Sleep, 'Ro," he said gently, "I'll be around."

Heero frowned as he got into the bed, worried that Duo would leave, disappear to wherever he damn well went but Duo joined him, his cold body pressed up against Heero's side and his head lying on Heero's chest. His cheek felt cold against Heero's skin but he didn't mind as his hand drifted to touch Duo's back, his fingers tracing his spine and feeling each bump and ridge. Always been too damn skinny. Always never quite recovered from all those years of malnutrition on L2 and always been short, always fitted under Heero's chin when they stood together, when he slept on his chest, in the dip of his collarbone.

"I can't lose you again," Heero said softly.

"You never did."

Duo's fingers had reached for the cross, the one he'd worn every damn day since his death and Heero figured as he'd lived aboard the Solar wearing Duo's clothes, his cross he had held onto him tight – afraid to lose him again. Keeping him alive in his actions. And now that he had Duo pressed up against his side, Heero wasn't letting him go again.