Title: We Broke into the Sunlight
Author: Ryoko no Shinigami
Warnings: Shounen-ai and sap so thick you could spread it on your flapjacks.
Pairings: 1x2
Dedication: To Hitokiri-san, for being a better friend than anyone in their right mind could ask for, and far more than a crackpot like me deserves.
He had been pestering me for the last week or more to go swimming with him in the large, blue lake behind the house.
"C'mon, Heero, you have to come. It'll be fun. It's so beautiful. It would be such a waste if you didn't."
Such a waste. This was how he persuaded me to do things. Eat the last dumpling, such a waste. Buy the expensive wine, such a waste. Don't go to work today, call in sick. Then we can go for a picnic. It's such a lovely day, why spend it behind a desk? Such a waste.
And so, I relented, without knowing quite why I did.
He ran, half naked, wearing only his black swimming trunks. Racing barefoot down the grassy hill toward the water. His hair flew out long behind him, arms thrown out, embracing the sky.
Then, his arms reached up, high above him. He was like that for one second, straight as a ruler. Then every inch of him was being swallowed by the water, as he dived and disappeared, quick like a fish.
I paused by the waters' edge as he surfaced. Water streamed down his cheeks in rivulets, dripped fast off his bangs dark with wet.
"Hurry, Heero. Get in."
I hesitated. He would have none of it.
In a flash, he was out of the water. His long, slender arms wrapped around me. The force of his rush spun us around, and I was falling, backwards, into the water.
His arms were still around me.
And then it was cool, and blue-green. I gasped, open-mouthed, and got it filled with water. Instinctively, I struggled to the surface. We broke into the sun together, he with one arm still around my waist.
"There, now, aren't you glad you got that over with?"
He's grinning at me, eyes and mouth wide and smiling.
I could be angry with him. But he didn't mean to frighten me. He didn't mean to send images into my mind. Images of men dragged to their deaths by a beautiful siren. My beautiful siren.
And so I nod my head, mutely. I am glad I got that over.
His long braided hair floats beside us in the water. The last two inces swirl in the waters' current. Swirls red like the tails of the fighting fish in tiny glass bowls from the market he dragged me to see in China. But not as red as the tiny, perfectly round Fuji apples he talked me into buying from a peddler in Japan.
And he's gone again, disappeared beneath the water. And I look around, wondering where the trickster will surface again.
And he does, behind me, long arms, slender and strong, wrapping about my shoulders. Exactly the same pose as in the picture he paid a man on the street to take of us. That picture sat in the house, on the small green table he bought in Europe from a furniture vendor. Next to a bouquet of wildflowers he picked that morning, in an old cracked porcelain vase he had seen in the Chinese market, painted with a blue fish the same type as the red ones.
How things run in circles.
And I turn to him, and I know why I let him influence me, with all his talk of 'such a waste'. It's so that I can hear his happy laugh, see the delighted sparkle in his eyes when he finally cajoles me into playing with him.
And that is why the games of tag, the hot chocolate on winter evenings, the movies and popcorn snuggled on the couch, the long walks holding the bunches of flowers that he joyously picked.
And I know why I love him. It was not the fish, or the apples, or the photographs. Not the table, the flowers, the vase, the hot chocolate, the old movies and the walks. It was not because of his laugh, or his sparkle, or his grin. It was all these things that he showed me and gave me, wrapped up in the reckless, joyful, carefree abandon with which he gave them. And because he gave them as parts of himself.
As to why he did these things, who knows? Maybe he was just searching for some semblance of the normalcy that neither of us had ever had before. Or perhaps he was just sharing the things that brought him joy, in hopes that they would bring me joy, too.
And I looked at him, and I kissed him, and murmured softly,
"I love you, Duo."
After all, it would have been such a waste not to.
Owari