Notes: A major serious breakthrough happens, people! Everyone give a big yay for Duo! Also, this doesn't really qualify as lime, but there is some definite... heavy kissing going on, so if you can't handle the idea of two guys getting it on together (why are you reading this story, if that's the case?) then I'm telling you to leave now, and it's only gonna get worse (or better, in my opinion). Enjoy and review!
The next few days were fairly boring. We woke up, showered and dressed, had breakfast, went about our chores for the day, and then relaxed. Marianne had a nice collection of movies from the twenty-first century, and Duo became addicted to them. His favourites were the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the Scream Trilogy, and Scooby-Doo. We would curl up on the couch and watch them, making appropriate (sometimes crude) comments at scenes we liked, and Duo always shouted obscene things at whatever bad guys we were watching. He seemed to take a definite dislike to Wormtongue, a minor bad guy from the second movie, The Two Towers.
Sometimes one of the others would join us to watch a movie, but mostly we were on our own. I suspected Quatre might have had a bit to do with that, and I will have to thank him someday. Sitting there with Duo, we were able to pretend that we were normal boys, without a care in the world. Those times were very precious to me. We didn't do anything, not even kissing, but that didn't matter. It's hard to put into words, but it was like having that shred of normality and sharing it made us closer, strengthened the bond between us. We didn't have to worry about getting killed the next day, or killing others, we were just normal boys, and we could relax and not have to rush things, not have to jump at any moment of intimacy we might get because we might not get another chance.
Duo seemed to be healing, with all the normality around him. He would smile and joke and laugh, he would dance around and try to initiate drinking games that Quatre and Wufei refused. He was like his old self, and whether it was another mask or not, I don't know, but Quatre seemed to believe it was genuine, and I have never seen Quatre wrong about things like that, so... I was happy. Most of the time.
Sometimes I would find Duo sitting on the window seat in our room, staring at the lake and obviously not seeing it. He looked sad and thoughtful and... beautiful. Duo is always beautiful, but when he isn't concentrating on what persona to present to the world, when he doesn't care what people see... he is breathtaking.
I asked a couple of times what he thought about when he was so lost in his thoughts, and he would just look at his shoes and mumble 'things'. I decided that if he wanted to tell me, he would, and that I shouldn't pry. Besides, it seemed to help him. I don't know what he thought about, but he was obviously thinking very hard. I suspect he was thinking about the past few days, trying to come to grip with what he had done. I wanted to help him with that, wanted to... ease his suffering, maybe, but I didn't know how, and it was fairly obvious that he wanted, maybe needed, to do that little bit of healing by himself.
We'd been at Marianne's for nine days when the next major breakthrough happened. Duo had asked for a little time to himself, so I had spent a couple of hours reading in the living room. Quatre and Trowa were in the kitchen, and Wufei was outside doing his katas. Marianne was in her room.
I finished reading War and Peace and decided to go and check on Duo. He'd been extra quiet this morning and I was kinda worried. I knocked quietly on the door and waited for an invitation before walking in. What I saw made me stop dead in my tracks.
Duo was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and his guns were spread out before him, three of them completely dismantled. He had one in his hands and was carefully inspecting each and every part of it. He glanced up at me and there was something... hard in his eyes.
"My weapons need some cleaning," he said quietly, his voice completely devoid of emotion. "You wanna help?"
All I could do was nod and sit down opposite him. I picked up the nearest gun, a Browning Hi-Power, and dismantled it without really focusing on what I was doing. He was touching his weapons. He was touching and cleaning his weapons. Was he ready for combat again? Was he closing the wounds of that fateful mission? Was he healed? I had so many questions and no way to ask them. I could only find the answers if Duo volunteered them. He did.
"I don't think I'll ever be okay with what I did," he said softly, staring hard at the weapon in his hands. "I don't like killing and I hated killing that many innocents. I don't like being Shinigami, don't like being a Gundam pilot. But... I am. I'm the pilot of a Gundam and that makes killing a part of who I am. My first reflex is to fight, to neutralise the threat. And... if I don't... people get hurt. You get hurt.
"There are only five of us, and we don't exactly have understudies. If I die, or can't pilot my Gundam, then we stand even less of a chance of winning this stupid war. You'll have to take more risks, put yourself in more danger, because I won't be there to help. I know that there's a good chance we'll die in this war, either by a fight, by torture, or by execution, but... if I don't fight, and you get killed, it'd destroy me, because I might've been able to save you.
"I'm not ready yet. If I go into combat now, I'll freeze up, I know I will. But... someday, someday soon, I will be able to fight. I don't know how long it'll take, days, weeks, months, but I will get better. I will always have the memory of what I did, and the wound will never really close, but... it is getting better. I'm not thinking about it constantly, and the nightmares are getting better."
He put the gun in his hands back together with amazing speed and checked the clip before looking at it. "This is a Beretta nine millimetre. It is loaded with Glazer Safety Rounds. I can kill a lot of people with this weapon. I've had it for three years. It's mine, and if anyone tries to take it from me, I'll kill them."
He reassembled the rest of the guns and leaned forward to kiss me lightly on the lips. Then he got up and left.
Well fuck.
He was healing. He finally saw that there was an end in sight. Until now, he hadn't thought he would ever get better. But he did now. And... he was close. He could touch his weapons, could see them for the destructive things they were. We had been here nine days and already he was so much better. I would have to thank Sally.
It was a few minutes before I was able to get up and find Duo. He was in the kitchen, talking with Quatre and Trowa about Aragorn. He liked Aragorn, said he reminded him of me.
Completely ignoring my two friends, I leaned down and captured Duo's lips in a hot, heated kiss that lasted several minutes. My hand stroked along his jaw and buried itself in his hair. My tongue danced with his, exploring his mouth, as his explored my own. It was a kiss full of love and passion and trust and need and so many things I couldn't explain. It left us breathless and smiling like idiots.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Trowa watching us with a faint smirk, laughter sparkling in his eyes, and Quatre was looking away, blushing furiously and fanning himself with one hand.
I glanced at Duo and gave him another light kiss before sitting down in the spare seat.
"Anyone for a game of cards?" I asked casually, picking up the deck and shuffling them. Duo only stared at me, still lost in the kiss. I had to repress the urge to laugh and kiss him again, just to keep him looking like that, with his violet eyes clouded with desire and his lips red and swollen.
Seeing him like that, and knowing that I had been the one to make him look like that, made hot desire course through my body, and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Now was really not the time for hormones.
I took a deep breath and forced my body to calm down, not looking too hard at Duo because I knew it would just excite me again.
"I take it Duo did something you liked?" Trowa asked quietly after a moment, and the images that sparked to life in my mind from that simple brain threatened my control. "Or was that little show just for our benefit? If it was, thank you, I enjoyed it."
I glared at him half-heartedly, and then looked at Duo, silently telling him that it was his choice. He hesitated, chewing on his kiss-swollen lip, and then nodded to himself.
"I think... I made some progress."
That instantly sparked both their attentions, and they said simultaneously, "Oh?"
"I... cleaned my guns a bit and... admitted that I... would heal. I guess Heero liked that."
Quatre beamed at him, his whole face lighting up. "Duo that's fantastic!"
Trowa was a bit more reserved. "Congratulations."
Duo shrugged one shoulder, looking down at his hands. "S'no big deal," he mumbled. "I just... got ta thinkin'." It was a sign of his discomfort that he let his old 'street accent' into his voice patterns. When he started speaking in his street accent, he was either upset or uncomfortable.
I cleared my throat meaningfully and raised the deck of cards a little. "How about that game of cards?" I asked, and saw Trowa realise just how uncomfortable Duo was. He nudged Quatre and did that silently talking thing. Quatre nodded and I dealt the cards slowly, giving Duo a few moments to get over his discomfort.
We played cards for about an hour, and then it was time for dinner. Marianne seemed oblivious to the tingle in the air, but Wufei picked up on it immediately and glanced at me with a raised eyebrow. I flicked my eyes at Duo and then gave him a look that said 'later'. He nodded and let it drop.
We had a beef stew thing for dinner, with Marianne talking quietly with Quatre about her favourite soap opera, which Quatre had developed a taste for. Wufei and I got assigned the chore of doing the dishes, which was quite convenient, and I told him of Duo's progress while up to my elbows in soapy dishwater.
His face did some very odd things. I couldn't quite capture all the emotions, gone too quickly to read, but that he was showing so much was very telling in itself. I had always suspected that he cared for Duo a lot more than he did, but watching him then, I had to wonder if he didn't care for Duo in the romantic sense. I didn't quite know how to react to that thought. Was I jealous? Angry? Outraged? What? I decided to simply ignore it unless he did something overt.
"He really is an amazing person," he murmured after a while, and I grunted.
"You have no idea."
"No... I don't suppose I do."
After finishing the dishes, we went into the living room to find Quatre and Trowa setting out a game of Monopoly. I raised an eyebrow and looked at Duo, who blushed and grinned.
"Remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned that I'd always wanted to play Monopoly? Well, Quat remembered."
"Ah." I sat down next to him, running my hand along his arm because I just couldn't help myself. He shifted a little closer to me, smiling, and I debated whether or not to put an arm around his waist. I decided against it.
So that's what we did for the next two and a half hours. It was... fun. Duo put on a great show of moaning whenever he lost money and gloating whenever someone landed on one of his properties and had to pay. Quatre was a little more reserved, but not by much. Half way through the game, Duo accused Trowa of handing Quatre money out of the bank, because Quatre had way too much money. After the minor argument that ensued, Trowa agreed to let Wufei be the banker. No one commented when Wufei started giving Duo almost double as much as he deserved. Wufei ended up winning, but just by a few hundred dollars.
"So, curiosity satisfied?" I asked when everyone else had left the room, and he smiled at me shyly.
"Yeah. I know it's stupid, but..."
"It's not stupid," I told him firmly. "You have every right to be curious about all these normal little things that we don't know about. Though, I will say that you could've picked a better game to explore. I lost miserably, and you wouldn't even think about giving me a loan!"
He laughed with me and said in a mock-serious tone, "It's every man for himself in this game, Heero. It's not my fault you suck at real estate."
Then he surprised the hell out of me. He sort of... tackled me, I guess, or pounced. Whatever, he did something, and I ended up lying on my back, with Duo on top of me and kissing the hell out of me.
I was aroused in a matter of moments, and I met his kisses desperately, running my hands up his arms and over his back, finding all the scars from his hard life and caressing them. He moaned into my mouth, little shivers running through his body.
I drew away, breathless and dazed. He was... breathtaking. His eyes were clouded with passion, his lips kiss-swollen, his cheeks flushed....
"Oh, God, Duo, you are amazing," I whispered, and he blushed.
"You're not too bad yourself."
"Was there a, uh, reason for that? Not that I'm complaining."
He shrugged and levered himself off me. I remained lying on the floor, trying to control my breathing and my hormones.
"I just felt like it," he mumbled. "I guess... that kiss before dinner kinda stuck in my memory." He got uncomfortable and uncertain then, sneaking glances at me out of the corner of his eye. "Was that... too much? Too much... teasing? I didn't..."
I smiled, despite myself. "Duo, how can someone as gorgeous as you are be so damned insecure? That was... fantastic. Unbelievable. If you ever want to do anything like that again, I am certainly not going to stop you."
"I'm sorry. It's just... well, you're so handsome and sexy and I just wanted to kiss you and then I got a little bit carried away and..."
I shut him up with a kiss, nothing as passionate as what we'd just done, more tender and loving.
"I love you, Duo Maxwell," I whispered against his lips.
"Love you too, Heero Yuy."
I stood up and helped him to his feet, catching him when he wobbled a bit. "Sorry," he humbled. "I'm just a bit tired. Today was..."
"Emotionally exhausting?"
"Yeah."
"Let's go to bed then."
As he always did, Duo curled up beside me in my bed, nestling his head on my shoulder, and I wrapped an arm around him. He was asleep almost immediately, leaving me to my thoughts.
Today had been... very important. He'd acknowledged that he would heal and that someday, he would be able to fight and kill again. The thing was, did I want him to?
I know, it's a stupid question. He's a Gundam pilot and he doesn't have a choice, any more than I do, but... I love him and I don't want to lose him. Could I really watch him go into battle and not know if I would see him again? Would I be able to leave him behind on a mission, surrendering him to capture and torture and possible death? Could I kill him myself, to keep him from talking?
Gods, I just didn't know.
The next few days were fairly boring. We woke up, showered and dressed, had breakfast, went about our chores for the day, and then relaxed. Marianne had a nice collection of movies from the twenty-first century, and Duo became addicted to them. His favourites were the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the Scream Trilogy, and Scooby-Doo. We would curl up on the couch and watch them, making appropriate (sometimes crude) comments at scenes we liked, and Duo always shouted obscene things at whatever bad guys we were watching. He seemed to take a definite dislike to Wormtongue, a minor bad guy from the second movie, The Two Towers.
Sometimes one of the others would join us to watch a movie, but mostly we were on our own. I suspected Quatre might have had a bit to do with that, and I will have to thank him someday. Sitting there with Duo, we were able to pretend that we were normal boys, without a care in the world. Those times were very precious to me. We didn't do anything, not even kissing, but that didn't matter. It's hard to put into words, but it was like having that shred of normality and sharing it made us closer, strengthened the bond between us. We didn't have to worry about getting killed the next day, or killing others, we were just normal boys, and we could relax and not have to rush things, not have to jump at any moment of intimacy we might get because we might not get another chance.
Duo seemed to be healing, with all the normality around him. He would smile and joke and laugh, he would dance around and try to initiate drinking games that Quatre and Wufei refused. He was like his old self, and whether it was another mask or not, I don't know, but Quatre seemed to believe it was genuine, and I have never seen Quatre wrong about things like that, so... I was happy. Most of the time.
Sometimes I would find Duo sitting on the window seat in our room, staring at the lake and obviously not seeing it. He looked sad and thoughtful and... beautiful. Duo is always beautiful, but when he isn't concentrating on what persona to present to the world, when he doesn't care what people see... he is breathtaking.
I asked a couple of times what he thought about when he was so lost in his thoughts, and he would just look at his shoes and mumble 'things'. I decided that if he wanted to tell me, he would, and that I shouldn't pry. Besides, it seemed to help him. I don't know what he thought about, but he was obviously thinking very hard. I suspect he was thinking about the past few days, trying to come to grip with what he had done. I wanted to help him with that, wanted to... ease his suffering, maybe, but I didn't know how, and it was fairly obvious that he wanted, maybe needed, to do that little bit of healing by himself.
We'd been at Marianne's for nine days when the next major breakthrough happened. Duo had asked for a little time to himself, so I had spent a couple of hours reading in the living room. Quatre and Trowa were in the kitchen, and Wufei was outside doing his katas. Marianne was in her room.
I finished reading War and Peace and decided to go and check on Duo. He'd been extra quiet this morning and I was kinda worried. I knocked quietly on the door and waited for an invitation before walking in. What I saw made me stop dead in my tracks.
Duo was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and his guns were spread out before him, three of them completely dismantled. He had one in his hands and was carefully inspecting each and every part of it. He glanced up at me and there was something... hard in his eyes.
"My weapons need some cleaning," he said quietly, his voice completely devoid of emotion. "You wanna help?"
All I could do was nod and sit down opposite him. I picked up the nearest gun, a Browning Hi-Power, and dismantled it without really focusing on what I was doing. He was touching his weapons. He was touching and cleaning his weapons. Was he ready for combat again? Was he closing the wounds of that fateful mission? Was he healed? I had so many questions and no way to ask them. I could only find the answers if Duo volunteered them. He did.
"I don't think I'll ever be okay with what I did," he said softly, staring hard at the weapon in his hands. "I don't like killing and I hated killing that many innocents. I don't like being Shinigami, don't like being a Gundam pilot. But... I am. I'm the pilot of a Gundam and that makes killing a part of who I am. My first reflex is to fight, to neutralise the threat. And... if I don't... people get hurt. You get hurt.
"There are only five of us, and we don't exactly have understudies. If I die, or can't pilot my Gundam, then we stand even less of a chance of winning this stupid war. You'll have to take more risks, put yourself in more danger, because I won't be there to help. I know that there's a good chance we'll die in this war, either by a fight, by torture, or by execution, but... if I don't fight, and you get killed, it'd destroy me, because I might've been able to save you.
"I'm not ready yet. If I go into combat now, I'll freeze up, I know I will. But... someday, someday soon, I will be able to fight. I don't know how long it'll take, days, weeks, months, but I will get better. I will always have the memory of what I did, and the wound will never really close, but... it is getting better. I'm not thinking about it constantly, and the nightmares are getting better."
He put the gun in his hands back together with amazing speed and checked the clip before looking at it. "This is a Beretta nine millimetre. It is loaded with Glazer Safety Rounds. I can kill a lot of people with this weapon. I've had it for three years. It's mine, and if anyone tries to take it from me, I'll kill them."
He reassembled the rest of the guns and leaned forward to kiss me lightly on the lips. Then he got up and left.
Well fuck.
He was healing. He finally saw that there was an end in sight. Until now, he hadn't thought he would ever get better. But he did now. And... he was close. He could touch his weapons, could see them for the destructive things they were. We had been here nine days and already he was so much better. I would have to thank Sally.
It was a few minutes before I was able to get up and find Duo. He was in the kitchen, talking with Quatre and Trowa about Aragorn. He liked Aragorn, said he reminded him of me.
Completely ignoring my two friends, I leaned down and captured Duo's lips in a hot, heated kiss that lasted several minutes. My hand stroked along his jaw and buried itself in his hair. My tongue danced with his, exploring his mouth, as his explored my own. It was a kiss full of love and passion and trust and need and so many things I couldn't explain. It left us breathless and smiling like idiots.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Trowa watching us with a faint smirk, laughter sparkling in his eyes, and Quatre was looking away, blushing furiously and fanning himself with one hand.
I glanced at Duo and gave him another light kiss before sitting down in the spare seat.
"Anyone for a game of cards?" I asked casually, picking up the deck and shuffling them. Duo only stared at me, still lost in the kiss. I had to repress the urge to laugh and kiss him again, just to keep him looking like that, with his violet eyes clouded with desire and his lips red and swollen.
Seeing him like that, and knowing that I had been the one to make him look like that, made hot desire course through my body, and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Now was really not the time for hormones.
I took a deep breath and forced my body to calm down, not looking too hard at Duo because I knew it would just excite me again.
"I take it Duo did something you liked?" Trowa asked quietly after a moment, and the images that sparked to life in my mind from that simple brain threatened my control. "Or was that little show just for our benefit? If it was, thank you, I enjoyed it."
I glared at him half-heartedly, and then looked at Duo, silently telling him that it was his choice. He hesitated, chewing on his kiss-swollen lip, and then nodded to himself.
"I think... I made some progress."
That instantly sparked both their attentions, and they said simultaneously, "Oh?"
"I... cleaned my guns a bit and... admitted that I... would heal. I guess Heero liked that."
Quatre beamed at him, his whole face lighting up. "Duo that's fantastic!"
Trowa was a bit more reserved. "Congratulations."
Duo shrugged one shoulder, looking down at his hands. "S'no big deal," he mumbled. "I just... got ta thinkin'." It was a sign of his discomfort that he let his old 'street accent' into his voice patterns. When he started speaking in his street accent, he was either upset or uncomfortable.
I cleared my throat meaningfully and raised the deck of cards a little. "How about that game of cards?" I asked, and saw Trowa realise just how uncomfortable Duo was. He nudged Quatre and did that silently talking thing. Quatre nodded and I dealt the cards slowly, giving Duo a few moments to get over his discomfort.
We played cards for about an hour, and then it was time for dinner. Marianne seemed oblivious to the tingle in the air, but Wufei picked up on it immediately and glanced at me with a raised eyebrow. I flicked my eyes at Duo and then gave him a look that said 'later'. He nodded and let it drop.
We had a beef stew thing for dinner, with Marianne talking quietly with Quatre about her favourite soap opera, which Quatre had developed a taste for. Wufei and I got assigned the chore of doing the dishes, which was quite convenient, and I told him of Duo's progress while up to my elbows in soapy dishwater.
His face did some very odd things. I couldn't quite capture all the emotions, gone too quickly to read, but that he was showing so much was very telling in itself. I had always suspected that he cared for Duo a lot more than he did, but watching him then, I had to wonder if he didn't care for Duo in the romantic sense. I didn't quite know how to react to that thought. Was I jealous? Angry? Outraged? What? I decided to simply ignore it unless he did something overt.
"He really is an amazing person," he murmured after a while, and I grunted.
"You have no idea."
"No... I don't suppose I do."
After finishing the dishes, we went into the living room to find Quatre and Trowa setting out a game of Monopoly. I raised an eyebrow and looked at Duo, who blushed and grinned.
"Remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned that I'd always wanted to play Monopoly? Well, Quat remembered."
"Ah." I sat down next to him, running my hand along his arm because I just couldn't help myself. He shifted a little closer to me, smiling, and I debated whether or not to put an arm around his waist. I decided against it.
So that's what we did for the next two and a half hours. It was... fun. Duo put on a great show of moaning whenever he lost money and gloating whenever someone landed on one of his properties and had to pay. Quatre was a little more reserved, but not by much. Half way through the game, Duo accused Trowa of handing Quatre money out of the bank, because Quatre had way too much money. After the minor argument that ensued, Trowa agreed to let Wufei be the banker. No one commented when Wufei started giving Duo almost double as much as he deserved. Wufei ended up winning, but just by a few hundred dollars.
"So, curiosity satisfied?" I asked when everyone else had left the room, and he smiled at me shyly.
"Yeah. I know it's stupid, but..."
"It's not stupid," I told him firmly. "You have every right to be curious about all these normal little things that we don't know about. Though, I will say that you could've picked a better game to explore. I lost miserably, and you wouldn't even think about giving me a loan!"
He laughed with me and said in a mock-serious tone, "It's every man for himself in this game, Heero. It's not my fault you suck at real estate."
Then he surprised the hell out of me. He sort of... tackled me, I guess, or pounced. Whatever, he did something, and I ended up lying on my back, with Duo on top of me and kissing the hell out of me.
I was aroused in a matter of moments, and I met his kisses desperately, running my hands up his arms and over his back, finding all the scars from his hard life and caressing them. He moaned into my mouth, little shivers running through his body.
I drew away, breathless and dazed. He was... breathtaking. His eyes were clouded with passion, his lips kiss-swollen, his cheeks flushed....
"Oh, God, Duo, you are amazing," I whispered, and he blushed.
"You're not too bad yourself."
"Was there a, uh, reason for that? Not that I'm complaining."
He shrugged and levered himself off me. I remained lying on the floor, trying to control my breathing and my hormones.
"I just felt like it," he mumbled. "I guess... that kiss before dinner kinda stuck in my memory." He got uncomfortable and uncertain then, sneaking glances at me out of the corner of his eye. "Was that... too much? Too much... teasing? I didn't..."
I smiled, despite myself. "Duo, how can someone as gorgeous as you are be so damned insecure? That was... fantastic. Unbelievable. If you ever want to do anything like that again, I am certainly not going to stop you."
"I'm sorry. It's just... well, you're so handsome and sexy and I just wanted to kiss you and then I got a little bit carried away and..."
I shut him up with a kiss, nothing as passionate as what we'd just done, more tender and loving.
"I love you, Duo Maxwell," I whispered against his lips.
"Love you too, Heero Yuy."
I stood up and helped him to his feet, catching him when he wobbled a bit. "Sorry," he humbled. "I'm just a bit tired. Today was..."
"Emotionally exhausting?"
"Yeah."
"Let's go to bed then."
As he always did, Duo curled up beside me in my bed, nestling his head on my shoulder, and I wrapped an arm around him. He was asleep almost immediately, leaving me to my thoughts.
Today had been... very important. He'd acknowledged that he would heal and that someday, he would be able to fight and kill again. The thing was, did I want him to?
I know, it's a stupid question. He's a Gundam pilot and he doesn't have a choice, any more than I do, but... I love him and I don't want to lose him. Could I really watch him go into battle and not know if I would see him again? Would I be able to leave him behind on a mission, surrendering him to capture and torture and possible death? Could I kill him myself, to keep him from talking?
Gods, I just didn't know.