Notes: Heero POV. Also, this fic has received over a hundred reviews in just sixteen chapters, so thank you thank you thank you to everyone who's reviewed!
Depressionprob: thanks for your review, I'm happy you like my fic, and if I had to rec just one fic, it'd have to be Scar Tissue by Amanda02, she's thankfully on ffnet under that name, but a warning, her fic is way more intense than mine.
The teacher's voice washed over me in a boring, monotone wave. He was talking about the life of Shakespeare, something I had little interest in. I did, however, have great interest on the person sitting next to me.
Duo was hunched over his textbook, absently drawing little stick figures in the margins. He wouldn't look at me, in fact he pretended I wasn't even there. I didn't know why, and that bothered me. What had I done to anger him so much? Was it my rejection, my refusal to… be with him? I thought he understood, he'd said he did and he never lied, so why was he so angry?
I wasn't the only one to notice Duo's dark mood, the girl in front of us kept twisting around to look at him. She seemed to be genuinely concerned about him, a worried frown creasing her brow, and she didn't seem to have any ulterior motives, but I still glared distrustfully at her.
A note flew over her shoulder and landed on Duo's textbook. He blinked at it owlishly for a moment before unfolding it and reading the rough scrawl: U OK? Wots wrong U look sad.
A mirthless grin twisted Duo's lips, and he quickly scribbled a reply underneath the message: Headache. Shakes boring. After adding a quick sketch of a person vomiting, he tossed the note back to the girl and looked at his textbook again.
I frowned. It wasn't like Duo to act like that, even with a stranger. Sure, the note had been normal, but he hadn't smiled or grinned or whispered some lewd comment. He was usually very careful about showing people anything other than his grinning jester's act. Whatever was bothering him had to be important. Why wouldn't he talk to me?
A crumpled piece of paper appeared on my textbook, and I frowned at it for a moment before slowly unfolding it. I recognised Duo's slanted handwriting immediately, and read the message: blue chat.
A simple coded message, using the phrases we'd worked out months ago. Translated it said that he had a mission tonight and needed to talk to me, but anyone else wouldn't be able to understand it unless they knew our code. I moved my head in the barest of nods and quickly shredded the note, just in case.
The rest of the lesson passed in a boring blur, filled with the monotone drone of the teacher's voice. We didn't go to the cafeteria for lunch, instead heading out to the football field, hiding under the bleachers.
"What's wrong?" I asked bluntly. He could take that question two ways-what's wrong with the mission tonight, or what's wrong in general. I knew which way he would interpret the question.
"The mission tonight is tough, it's difficult and dangerous. And we never decided what we were gonna do. I need to know if I'm risking my life tonight or not."
Oh. Okay, I hadn't expected this. And I'd been so worried about Duo that I hadn't even thought about what we were going to do about the doctors. And if Duo had a mission tonight, I needed to figure something out quickly.
Alright, so let's think about this logically. Dr. J wanted me alive and relatively unhurt so that he could retrain me. He did not want me dead/mortally wounded/maimed. Tranquillisers and sedatives did not work on me, at least not for more than a few minutes. So any attacker would have to use hand-to-hand combat, right? And obviously Dr. J wouldn't want to interrupt/endanger any mission, even if I wasn't the pilot on the actual mission. which meant that Duo's mission was as safe as anything else was. Probably.
I knew Dr. J wasn't as predictable as everyone else, he sometimes did things that I just could not understand. It was possible that he would forsake my health, and Duo's, just to get his hands on me. The only certain way was to hide, but that wasn't an option. So basically we just had to take precautions, be careful, and hope for the best. I hated that.
I sighed and told Duo my plan. He didn't look any happier about it than I did, in fact, he looked worse. There was a sudden pain in his eyes, etched too deep to be recent, and I knew that whatever he was thinking, it didn't involve Dr. J.
"I'm gonna be a mess when I get back," he said quietly, looking at his shoes. "I'm gonna want to cut, so I'm gonna need you there."
"I'll be there," I promised, my voice soft but fierce.
He blew out his breath in a huff, raking a hand through his bangs. "I hate this," he growled. "I hate that I'm so dependant on you. I hate that I can't love you. I hate that I'm forced to fight in a bloody war that only exists because people are bloody idiots who can't agree on the colour of shit. I hate all this fucking crap!"
I hesitated for a second, not sure what I should do, but then I stepped forward and put my arms around him. I had discovered, over the past few days, that touch was very important to Duo. I suppose I'd always known, he was forever slinging his arm around someone's shoulders, or punching someone on the arm, just brief touches to reassure himself of whatever he was doubting, but recently, I'd realised that it was extremely important for him.
He reacted as I thought he would, sinking into my embrace, moulding himself against my body, letting me support him. We stayed like that for nearly five full minutes, not speaking, not moving, just holding on, but eventually, Duo pulled back and looked at me with a weak smile.
"Thanks, Heero," he said, his voice filled with sincerity. "You always seem to know what to do."
I won't say I blushed, but I felt heat rise on my cheeks, and I looked away from his eyes. I don't know why that simple little comment affected me so strongly, but it sent little waves of pleasure rushing through my body to know that he recognised and appreciated my efforts. And more than that, he didn't think that I was a floundering idiot trying to deal with new and sometimes frightening emotions.
Hn. Frightening emotions. It seemed so long ago that I had been so scared of my love, I'd thought of it as wrong and 'illegal', it went against my training, the laws that had been beaten into me since I was a child.
But I'd accepted it now, my love for Duo was the most important thing, and I would not forsake it for anything. Did he know that? I knew that he knew I loved him, but did he know just how strongly? And if he didn't, should I tell him?
As I was debating whether or not to confess to him, Duo had been doing some thinking of his own, apparently along the same lines. He suddenly let out a rather shaky laugh, and I looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Back when we first met, I thought you were an emotionless block of ice that had been given a Gundam," he confessed, grinning at me. "And now, I look at you, doing all these incredible things for me, and all I can think is that you love me and that I couldn't have been more wrong back then. You have so many emotions, you just don't show them."
I wanted to ask if he was psychic, but didn't want to ruin the moment. God, we were having a moment, I couldn't believe it. So I just smiled and lightly caressed his cheek, trailing my thumb across his lips. His grin faded into a soft, sweet smile, and he stayed completely still as I traced the lines of his face with my fingertips.
The sharp, shrill sound of the bell shattered the moment and I sighed as I let my hand fall down to my side.
"Do you want to skip the rest of the day?" I asked softly. "Spend the time preparing for tonight?"
He wanted to, I could tell, because he didn't answer immediately, and he looked down at his shoes. After a long minute, he sighed and shook his head. "No. I want to stay here. Pretend to be normal."
He could have given me a dozen other reasons for staying, not wanting to attract attention being the main one, but instead, he gave me the honest truth-he wanted to pretend that he was a normal teenager, just for a few short hours. And though others might not agree, I thought it was a perfectly valid reason.