Feels Like Home

By Shikata ga nai

~*~

Unfortunately, despite Heero's best intentions to be businesslike and methodical about where his relationship with Sylvia was going, he found that every time he looked at her, all thoughts of analyzing and evaluating his situation froze in their tracks and then gave up, retreating from his mind with a defeated shrug. A mix of contentment, fear of loneliness, and guilt about what he was trying to do made him ignore his dilemma and put his energy towards lying comfortably on the couch with his head in her lap, letting her play absently with his untamable hair while they watched TV.

He successfully carried on with his denial through three weeks of TV, quiet dinners, movie dates, nights out with Sylvia's friends, snuggling, sex, and all of the other comfortable habits they'd developed in their blissfully uneventful, postwar life together.

However, when you push an important problem from the front of your mind, sometimes the back of your mind will take up the torch instead, whether you like it or not. This is exactly what happened to Heero, and he discovered after three weeks of avoiding the issue that it had been solved for him, and the answer shoved in his face.

He woke up that morning, groaned, shifted to his other side, groaned again, and flopped onto his back with the sheets tangled around his stomach, wide awake and staring at the ceiling. There was a familiar tug at the back of his brain that kept trying to draw his gaze to the bedroom door, but he knew that he was really drawn to what lay beyond it: the front door and the sunlit streets. It was a feeling that he'd gotten many times during his travels, and he knew it well: the desire to leave. The road was calling him again, for the first time since last fall. Stifling a panic attack, he tried to ignore it.

He turned to look at Sylvia. She was sleeping on her stomach with her arms under the pillow, her face turned towards him, radiating a peaceful glow. She looked beautiful.

I can have this, he thought as he studied her face, for the rest of my life. I'm a lucky man.

Do I want to marry her? he asked himself. But instead of hearing a 'yes' or 'no', which was what he wanted, a little voice came from the back of his brain and whispered something that was much closer to the truth: If you move quietly, you can leave right now, and she'll never hear you.

Heero was shocked to get an answer like that, and remained shocked so that he wouldn't have to admit that he'd woken up knowing the answer to his question, and that really the voice had answered the question that he didn't have the courage to form. The little voice drifted down and settled as a melancholy weight in his stomach.

Shocked or not, Heero was secretly considering the little voice's advice, but he never got the chance to act, because just then Sylvia woke up, and sat up and stretched her arms. "Good morning," she yawned.

Too late, the voice whispered. "Morning," Heero smiled.

She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. "I'll go start the coffee," she said, getting out of bed and reaching for a fuzzy green robe. "Get in the shower, or you'll be late for work," she called over her shoulder as she strolled down the hallway, tying the belt of the robe around her waist.

When she was out of sight, Heero propped his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands, trying to block out the world. Finally, he got up and took a hot shower, trying to steam and scrub away both the guilt and the lump in his stomach.

***

He left it alone for four days, going to work, going out on Friday night to a friend's for drinks, renting movies on Saturday night. The routines that he usually found comfortable gnawed at his guts, and he found himself increasingly staring at the door when she wasn't looking.

He tossed and turned restlessly for most of Saturday night, until at 4:00 AM he finally fell asleep and didn't wake until almost noon on Sunday. When he woke, he got up straightaway and was showered, dressed, and shaved in a little over ten minutes, moving with a crazy kind of urgency.

He walked into the kitchen and Sylvia looked up from a glass of water and a magazine at the table. "Well, good afternoon, sleepyhead!" she exclaimed. "I was going to wake you up, but you were sleeping so peacefully." She pointed at the counter across from her. "There's still some hot coffee on the--what's wrong?"

Heero sat at the table beside her, put his hand on top of hers, and said, "Sylvia, there's something I have to tell you."

She looked between his stony face and his hand that was grasping hers, winced, and said, "Heero, you're hurting my hand."

"Sorry," he said, and loosened his grip. "I've...I've been thinking about things lately, and..." He cleared his throat nervously, looking for words. "Thinking about us, and where this is going, I mean, and..." Oh god, why was this so hard? He took a deep breath, staring at their hands resting on top of the glossy magazine pages, and willed his courage to come out. "This isn't what I'm looking for," he blurted. There, he'd said it. He looked up at her face.

She was staring at him with her mouth open in shock and confusion. "What are you telling me, Heero?" she said finally.

He removed his hand from hers. "I don't want to marry you," he said quietly.

She blinked, and her eyelashes were suddenly damp. She bit her lip and nodded slowly, as if she understood something now, staring at him. Suddenly she sprang out of her chair and left the room as quickly as she could manage without running, keeping her back to him as much as possible.

He sat at the table alone and stared at his hands for an eternity, trying not to listen to the uncontrollable sobbing that he could hear from the living room. Eventually, he got up and went back to the bedroom, digging out his canvas backpack and throwing in some clothes, a hotel-sized bottle of shampoo, a bar of soap, and his personal accessories. Last, he reached under his side of the bed and pulled out a can that had once held peanuts, but now contained a little over $275 in cash, and stuffed that under his clothes.

When he emerged from the bedroom, Sylvia was back at the kitchen table, sitting with her back to him, nursing a cup of the coffee she'd been saving for him.

Her voice rang through the apartment and into the front hallway, loud, clear, and unexpectedly calm. "You're going back to that girl--what's her name--Relena. Aren't you?" Her tone wasn't accusing, but she meant it more as a simple fact than a question.

Heero stopped in the middle of putting on his shoes, surprised at the suggestion. He hadn't been thinking about where he would go, but now that she'd said it, he knew it was true. "Yes." He paused. "How did you know?"

She turned around in her seat and met his eyes. Hers were red and blotchy. "That first time we made love"--she got a pained look on her face when she said the word 'love'--"at Christmas...you said her name."

She faced her coffee again and took a sip. The quality of the silence that fell made him wonder if that was the only time he'd done it. Just great, Heero, he thought. Way to be an ass. He looked at Sylvia's back, studying her as though for the first time. Blonde hair, blue eyes, same height...I'm such an idiot.

He stuffed his other shoe onto his foot, threw on his jacket, and flung his backpack on over his shoulder. With one hand on the doorknob, he turned around and looked at her for a full minute. She was staring steadily at the wall in front of her, occasionally sipping her coffee and sniffling loudly as she wiped at her eyes.

He loved her. But not enough to stay with her, he thought sadly. He suddenly wanted to drop his pack, run into the kitchen, sweep her into his arms, and apologize to her until the sun fell out of the sky, but he knew that words wouldn't do anything for her, and he had nothing else to offer.

There was nothing he could say to make things better, and in the end he didn't even say goodbye. They both knew that they'd never see each other again.

Heero walked three blocks and then hailed a taxi to take him to the airport.

**********