What he awoke to was the strange feeling of liquid trailing slowly down his forehead, warm and catching in the fine hairs there in a way that was almost soothing, before hitting the side of his head and coming to rest within the cup his ear provided. There, it bothered him, like a persistent fly circling on a sticky day, but before it had felt almost good enough for him to tolerate it.
His dull puzzlement of it's presence was answered a second later when he heard some sound and tensed, then felt the press of material in the spot the liquid had been. It was damp but not wet, and it ran over his skin calmingly. That didn't stop him from bringing a hand up with lightning speed and catching the wrist that held it in a vice-like grip though.
The gasp that followed suit was a familiar one, one he heard sometimes when he was caught off guard and reacted before he could sort through things, but it went unheeded as he opened his eyes then fastened them shut again with a growl of aggravation as the florescent light directly overhead caused pain that hadn't been connected to himself before to erupt into flying sparks within his head.
His throat ached from miles away, but it was his brain that made Heero wish temporarily that he hadn't bothered to wake up. It was a tender thing where now even the light through his closed lids, that red veiny glowing, made him feel on fire. The scrape of someone moving closer over the floor beside him was like dynamite being set off. He'd felt worse, many times before… But he knew why then, he knew and had prepared himself for it and thus was more than accepting to live through the consequences that should follow. As of now, he couldn't explain this agony.
"Heero?" Despite the warning grind of the bones in his wrist under the other boy's restrictive grasp, he'd drawn closer to the brunette as he awoke, his tone colored with concern.
Like the grating voice of god, he heard his name spoken and though he recognized the speaker, he would have done anything to shut him up then.
"Are you okay?" Quatre winced. No, of course he's not okay, you dolt! You choked your boyfriend into a faint, he dropped onto the floor and probably hurt himself in the process, and you think he's just going to open his eyes, smile and say 'Fine, Quatre, old chap. How about you?'
It was clear he wasn't going to get the blessed silence to sort this all out for himself unless he responded, so he braced himself, then growled- "No. Will you please shut up?"
Oh… He's sounds mad. His shoulders wilted, but he complied without even a timidly whispered response of acceptance. Staring down at the tense face of the brunette, Quatre didn't care about the wrist that was already turning red around the edges of Heero's clenched fingers, or about the fact that he'd knocked over the water bowl with one foot when he'd been startled by him waking up and the dampness was now staining one leg of his pants darker. He just cared about the pain he saw on that face, and about the fact that he had put it there.
They sat together, mute and in thought, for nearly ten minutes.
During that time, Quatre was inwardly berating himself, accepting total blame for this evening (from the dinner being torched to the fight that followed to Heero's bad time coming awake) and wishing that he could go back in time. He wasn't foolish enough to put any real stock in the desire, but if given a second chance, he knew he would have done a lot different. Like saying yes to his boyfriend being playful in the first place. Like moving faster when Duo and he started squabbling. Like maybe trying to move Heero onto the more comfortable surface of the couch before he could have woken on the cold floor.
Heero's thoughts were also on the evening, as he slowly came to remember it. It had started to return because even in his injured state, he had noticed the empty condition of his stomach. He wondered at why he felt hungry, then remembered that it was Quatre making dinner tonight. Things clicked into place nicely from that thought onward. Looking back on it now, the dry irony that this had started because he'd been foolish enough to want the boy he now held captive (or at least to want part of him) made him feel queasy. Not that he shouldn't be allowed those moments of physical desire, they were perfectly normal after all, but that it had escalated into this. It would have been a nice interruption before eating, and it would have left him with that faint feeling of weightless comfort he found himself to enjoy after such activities, but something had prevented that from happening. Someone. Duo.
Mild irritation rapidly became full-fledged rage.
That know-it-all loud mouthed baka had decided to step in and put his nose where it wasn't wanted. He'd even gone so far as to attack him.
Not that all blame could be put onto him, no matter how tempting. Quatre had said no, and he supposed in some distant, uncaring way he could see how that could be misinterpreted. But since when was it Duo's place to protect Quatre? To protect him from absolutely -nothing-? Even accepting that maybe it was understandable the way he'd initially reacted didn't change the fact that Duo had continued to spur it on, like some dog crazed on the scent of blood. He had every right to be angry with the things the American had blurted out.
It hadn't needed to get that far though, now had it? If a certain little blonde had seen fit to open his mouth and explain the situation to his idiotic friend, he wouldn't be laying here on the floor now with a migraine. He would be in his room, working on his computer. He'd be full, satisfied, and perhaps even entertaining the idea of having Quatre curled up against him that night.
But someone had decided to play mute at that crucial point.
That was why he was here now. That was why Duo had continued that strange ranting. That was why he was still picking up the faint scent of disgustingly cindered foods in the air and why his stomach was complaining.
That conclusion settled things greatly for him, though he had to ignore the tiny voice that suggested he wasn't being entirely fair, and bracing himself for the pain, he sat up a moment later.
It only took a second for Quatre to start in.
"Oh! Heero, you shouldn't sit up so quickly! Here let me help y-"
The delicate little hands that flutter over his arm and shoulder were something he couldn't tolerate right now, like questing birds in a storm searching for places to roost. He didn't want the boy anywhere near him, didn't want to be touched, and didn't want that sweet voice to sound in the air like so many shattering champagne glasses.
Without thinking, he snapped an arm sideways towards the fretting youth, and managed to catch Quatre smartly across his lower throat.
His flood of concerned babble didn't diminish; it died. There was the thud of flesh striking flesh, then the slithering sound of cloth sliding across the linoleum as he went skidding a few feet. The thought 'how fair. A wound for a wound' came unwelcome into Heero's mind, then drifted away in the usual guilty/righteous cloud that often followed these collisions.
For a blissful stretch of some fifty-three seconds, Heero just sat up with his eyes closed and that red flesh-light leaking into his consciousness, and listened to the silence around himself. Then came that first harsh gasping breath from behind him.
It brought the guilt back, that pained attempt at continuing an automatic motion of survival… And with it, another surge of annoyance.
This time, Heero tempered the latter.
As the blonde behind him tried to get his body to accept the oxygen it had had no problems with before, Heero slowly hauled himself up to his feet. A few steps, and he'd be out of the kitchen. Maybe he'd go up to his room. Lie down for a while. Think.
But that was too much to ask, and he knew as soon as that rasping tenor spoke up. "H-heero? Wait. Need to talk…"
Sure they did. They needed to talk; about the blonde's pitiful little dinner, about Duo's stupid grin, and about the aching in his head. It was Quatre's nature to pick and pick at a problem until a simple little thing like spilled milk became the next air strike. Sometimes, he could stand to just sit there and let him work his way through those, because it did pay off. Quatre could think of things none of the others had considered in the ways of missions, potential threats they had missed or new routes to take with less obstacles. He was a brilliant tactician, given enough time; one of the best Heero'd ever known.
However, this wasn't a mission. It wasn't even important. It was Quatre wanting to discuss things that he didn't want to deal with right now. If he wanted to go through the night without shooting something or breaking something, he needed to leave this alone. That wouldn't be happening if he stayed in the kitchen… Or even in the house. Quatre would regain his feet and come searching for him, he was certain of it.
He didn't turn around. "No. We don't. I'm going out."
Quatre couldn't leave it at that though. Almost alarmingly, he heard the sound of the boy making it to his feet (though with several choked breaths of exertion, he noted), and amazingly coming towards him. "We do. We need to talk about what Duo did… And about what you just did. We -need- to talk."
He's really going to push this tonight. He not going to slip away like he usually would, not going to come bounding back later with this behind us. Duo. It's all Duo's fault. Everything is out of alignment now… With growing unease, he was considering the truth of that when one of the Arabian's hands fell lightly on his arm. He looked down slightly to meet the upturned face of the boy that had snuck his way into his schedule, a face that was smeared with tears now, not of sorrow but of lingering pain from his blow, still getting it's color back. The eyes that he admired for always shining with pleasant dreams even in the midst of trials for them were darkened with serious intent now, and it was yet another change he didn't like. It felt like the things he had come to expect and that he had gotten exactly as he'd like it were falling apart.
"Heero," Pale pink lips, with no smile for him now, parted to release his name in a sigh, and though hoarsened, his voice was emerging a bit smoother now. Quatre was going into his speech mode. "He overreacted. A lot. I know you weren't going to do anything… Like that, earlier. He didn't, so I don't really blame him, but he still shouldn't have done what he did."
He dragged his eyes up from that mouth, scowling as he observed the lack-luster color in Quatre's eyes. "You didn't say anything to change his opinion of that."
The blonde winced, and he felt a trendle of savage victory for it. He wasn't supposed to feel like a scolded child. He was in charge.
"No… I didn't. I was surprised, and I should have, but I didn't. I apologize for that." The hand on his arm wandered up a few inches, trying comfortingly to form some bound of more intimate communication between them. "I think he knows now though. I can talk to him more about that later… Right now, I want to discuss something else. I know you don't always mean to do it, but Heero, you can't keep striking out at me like this. I care about you, but if this doesn't stop, I won't, can't, keep trying to be there for you… You have to learn to control that, or find a way to warn people. I'm not an enemy. It's not a healthy thing for us to-"
'I won't'. He heard nothing but low murmurs after that. How many times had he considered just walking away from the blonde's smiles and hugs, away from his bright exclamations? How often had he wanted to pick up the little pieces of Quatre that he continually found in his room, notebooks with that tiny script covering each page, a small casual suit shirt hanging in his closet between the doldrums of his own garb and bits of sweet hard candy waiting on the edge of his desk, and throw them into the hall before they could begin to fit in there? He couldn't remember all the moments when it had sounded like a good idea in spite of the perks. Never, though, had he expected to hear anything similar from the blonde.
There wasn't supposed to be any doubt about waking up, and feeling the heat on the bed beside him because Quatre had snuck in sometime during the night, wanting and needing to be near. And whether he always wanted it there or not, his cheerful form was an expected distraction now. A day when Quatre was out and not hovering nearby felt like existing in one of Duo's sci-fi flicks. During movies, Quatre's hand had to seek his out and cling. It was part of… Well, of The Plan now. That affection was supposed to be there. It belonged to him.
Didn't it?
He came back to listening in time to catch the bothersome tail end of the blonde's unhappy speech- "and if you can't, then maybe we should just stop pretending. Can you?"
It didn't matter what Quatre was asking, not really.
It could have been anything, and Heero's answer would have been the same. No. He couldn't. Whatever it was, it was something the Arabian wanted changed, something about him, and it wasn't going to happen.
He told people what was to change and stay the same.
That earnest, hopeful face was still lifted to him, cerulean eyes still moving over his expression like tiny fingers trying to pry out secrets. 'Feel with me', Quatre's expression seemed to silently ask, and Heero felt sickened by it. 'Feel with me, and we can go on. It won't be your Plan any more, but sometimes maybe it'll look like it, at least enough that you can be numb, be happy. You'll slowly loose yourself, your will and resistance, in Us. We aren't Quatre any more, or Heero, we are just Us.'
Quatre was still looking at him, now in confusion as he recognized the dawning horror in his boyfriend's dark blue eyes. He reached up to sooth back Heero's chaotic mess of bangs, wanting to read more deeply into those strange dark pools. That gesture was greeted harshly with one of the brunette's hands coming up and slapping his away.
The pained surprise that lit in Quatre's eyes was enough to restart his stunned reasoning. He shoved those little fingers away before they could touch him, then decided that he didn't want to completely let go after all. The hand continued on in it's path to come to rest on the rising and falling contours of the blonde's chest, then pushed.
His eyes narrowed as he watched the boy jerk backwards a few feet and thud into the wall, head rocking bang to thud against the white washed walls of their kitchen then come forward again until Quatre's chin struck his chest bone hollowly. Petite hands clung to the wall on either side of him and searched for purchase there, and it still wasn't enough.
Heero stalked over as his teammate struggled back into control of himself. The loose fist that slammed into the wall less than an inch from the blonde's flushed face was only identifiable as his through skin color. Nothing felt real. When that head pulled sharply up and those incredible eyes locked on his, finally seeing him, and he watched with tragic clarity as fear slipped in them for the first time, Heero's stomach clenched sickeningly.
Still, he resisted that reaction, leaning in and pushing his mouth harshly against the quivering lips of his… His hostage.
Before, they might have played rough during some of their encounters, and play was exactly all that it was. Now there was something about that rough kiss that spoke of burning brands and perhaps of signed documents. It was like slamming a flag into the peak of a mountain. It was placing a collar on a pet. Or a child with a black pen scrawling his name on his things.
Quatre felt his lips ram back on his teeth, felt the warm tang of blood come flooding over them and onto his tongue, salty and his own.
He tried to scoot back, away from that stranger's kiss, and was met with the unyielding press of the wall, purposeful and aching against the back of his head. By then, the pain was already leaving though. Heero's lips were still almost cruel against his, seeking the warm recesses of his mouth with the same intensity he took all of his missions on with, but that dull wave of hateful emotion he'd sensed was drifting away.
So he held still. He hung suspended as the brunette relentlessly took what he wanted. He felt that Heero was searching for something. Eventually, the hardness truly started to leave that normally special gesture, and when he felt that, Quatre at last shifted into action. He brought his hands up and laid them over Heero's shoulders, pushing indecisively there before curling in the fabric, accepting him in spite of how it had begun.
Maybe Duo was right, and relationships weren't supposed to work this way, but since when had any of them followed the 'norm'?
But Heero was torn. That fear that had been present had chilled his blood and at the same time, had made it all look like it could be fixed. Quatre hadn't pushed him away and said 'no more'. It could all just… Go on. Had it ever really been his plan though? Or was even the way those fingers now pulled him closer, demanded with cute determination that he be there against that slight body, all part of him vanishing as a self identifiable organism?
Jerking away with a disgusted grunt, he watched Quatre's eyes open in bewilderment as he sank down the wall several inches. His lips were swollen, hurt, and yet the boy looked like he only wanted to reach out and make sure that he was fine.
Sometimes, Heero thought, they don't get you with orders and with violence. Sometimes they get you with a gentle hand and with eyes that look understanding. They control you with kindness. Did I ever really think I manipulated this?
Quatre was reaching for him, and this time he wouldn't allow himself the mistake of touching that creamy flesh and being pulled in by worried expressions. He snarled at the wandering digits and Quatre pulled them back against his chest quickly, looking frightened but so infinitely patient.
"Heero, we-"
"NO. We don't." He took in a breath, then bore into those wounded orbs of blue and green and ground out- "We -nothing-."
As their tactician's expression crumpled, eyes stung but dry he was relieved to see, Heero turned from him and stalked through the kitchen opening and into the living room, then directly towards the front door. The path only took five seconds to complete, around twenty individual steps, but somehow it felt like an hour. Behind him he could hear the first shaky breath being pulled into Quatre's deceivingly delicate frame, and unbelievably part of him wanted to go back and hold him. He kept walking. The carpet trudged underfoot with the speed of tar, but at last his fingers was around the blessedly cool handle of the door. Quatre never spoke up, never called him back or begged. A simple twist of metal, and he was slipping into the darkness that waited outside.
-----
Heero wasn't one to drive around feeling furious and indecisive. He wasn't one to go out to a bar and drink himself stupid either. Both of those choices were a waste to him, one a waste of gasoline and unnecessary wear on the unassuming but well maintained car he drove, and the other a waste of himself and of his time. When he was upset and he knew it, he would find some more or less isolated place to bunker down as he worked out every last detail of whatever the problem was. Sometimes, it would be just the end of a deserted road, where he'd get out of the car and pace, or more often, find himself sitting on the hood of his car (bad for dents, he knew) holding his head. Other times it was the parking lot of a store that had been closed for hours. That got him in trouble sometimes though. The last thing he needed when he was already pissed was some rookie cop stopping to check things out and shining a bright light in his eyes while snapping out questions. More often than not, it was one of the many public parks around town.
That was where he headed tonight, to his favorite out of the lot of those. The distant thought of a cool bench on the edge of a moonlit duck pond drew him with it's calming fingers even as he continued to sulk behind the wheel of his car and glare at the signs that flashed in his head lights. He wanted to sit, and to work out the events of tonight for better or worse. He was still so angry at Duo's presumptuous behavior, furious at Quatre's tranquility during it and even at him simply accepting that violent kiss after, and now, he was also mad at himself.
In particular, at the way he'd left. A tiny voice within was asking him what he was going to do if he went home and the blonde just ignored him from that moment onward… Another part was praying for that, and saying thank goodness.
Deep in his turbulent storm of thoughts, Heero's training faltered for one of those rare moments, and this time in a way that he would later come to pay for heavily.
As he watched the white lines in the center of the road vanish beneath his hood and respectively under his tires, as he brooded, he failed to notice the presence of a pair of lights within his rearview mirror. No, that wasn't exactly right. He did notice them, but failed to place any thought into them. It was another car out, not so unusual considering that it wasn't late, and they hadn't moved into an extremely small town but rather a budding city. When he turned, he didn't connect the reappearing lights in that reflective surface as the same vehicle, which had in fact been following him since the first street he turned onto. It was an innocent mistake, one that hundreds made daily, and it was one that Heero made now at a great cost. Perhaps, that too, was Quatre's fault.
At last, the park's nearly vacant lot appeared on the left and he pulled into it. As he was already selecting a spot (at least three spots away from any of the other late-night vehicles here), he didn't even look up at the jeep that continued past and down the street.
If he had, he would have seen a familiar face peering out of that familiar mud splattered window, a face that now held no trace of it's typical easy-going grin. It was a pale moon of features that were utterly devoid of any emotion, cold purple fire orbs glaring out of the wane flesh and fixed on him unswayingly.
He didn't though, it was another of those 'little' things that so often made all the difference, and this time it wasn't in his favor.
Heero got out of his car as one of the back lights of the jeep flared red and signaled it was turning left, and as he locked the door with a press of the button that hung from his key chain (sad that one couldn't leave it unlocked even in a park like this now), it vanished down that other street.
Like in the house, his legs didn't walk here; they stalked. He crossed the paved surface with it's scattering of cars rapidly, his lips a tight frown. He slipped into the shadows beneath the man planted trees here the same way.
By the time he'd reached the pond's banks though, his scissoring legs had slowed into something that was almost a casual stroll. The intense and oh-so-specific process of sorting through his problems had already begun. His bulky yellow sneakers remained on the curving concrete path only by luck, his head down and eyes on the ground before him but really fixed on something that existed only within his mind. He neither saw nor heard the couple that was sitting on the first bench he passed, their own faces huddled close together and not one of their hands in public view (soft panting gave clear indication where they were though), and they never looked up. It was that unspoken courtesy and perhaps survival technique that anyone who frequently night cloaked parks knew of.
The second bench he arrived at was more welcoming, it's graffiti drenched boards bare of any late-night squatters. His feet turned towards it without a signal from his mind, and soon he was settling back against the chill material and staring his empty stare out at the glistening black waters.
'I won't', he said… But Heero thought that maybe Quatre would. The blonde was stronger than he was often given credit for. He had fought beside them all through the exact same wars, and he had emerged just as unexplainably unscathed as they. Despite his lovely colorless skin, baby face, and bird-boned frame, he survived, even -thrived- in that setting. It was an injustice to dismiss him now just because the need to fight day in and day out was no longer present.
Quatre had stuck around after that first blow, because he could take it… Because he might have even wanted it, and so was it his fault that he sometimes didn't bother to control those wayward fists?
No. If he was out here by himself to work this out, he couldn't lie that way. The Arabian was not still lingering with him because he wanted pain or because he could handle it, he was there for a reason that honestly bothered Heero a lot more. He cares. About me. He stays, even when I hit him, and it's because he thinks he loves me… And maybe he does. He stays and some part of his mind tells him that I need him. Or maybe, something he sees in my eyes, something I can't hide, tells him that. It doesn't matter. What does, is that he is there through it all, not because of the pain but in spite of it. For those little moments in-between.
Heero sighed and closed his eyes, tipping his head back and resting it against the sharp edge of the back of his bench. All those times when I considered just pushing him away for the last time, and it was the moronically sentimental things that convinced me not to, and somehow, I didn't see it was those same things that kept him coming back with a smile. He was hurt when I hit him, and more when I locked my door at night to keep him out… But the glow that lit his eyes when I'd kiss his cheek during a movie, or that real grin that he gave that time I brought him that stupid card, those more than made up for all the hits… Like his smile more than made up for him crowding me once in a while, and how the heat of his body snuggled -- I can't believe someone snuggled with me, how absurd -- up against my chest occasionally made it all feel fine.
He stays because he has to. I'm getting a normal life out of this, I'm -FEELING- what I never could have before. I know what it's about now, and why people talk and obsess over it so.
I don't know what he can possibly be getting out of it, but he's operating in much the same way. A pair of ducks landed in the water a few feet off shore, and Heero's dark eyes drifted a quarter of the way open to watch them scoot gracefully away in a lazy manner. Whatever it is, until tonight, he was getting it… But he, and I, we fucked up. Because of Duo, at least partially, but it had been brewing.
And there lay his problem.
Was it better to cut out that wound they both shared now, to cauterize it and slowly push the poison out of their systems before it sickened them? Or was it worth the extra effort to just pull out the bad parts, and to turn that illness into something that might, in the end, heal them both of a disease they didn't really know they had?
Cut out now or tough through it?
He weighed all the memories he had that were really 'him and the blonde', everything from the first time Quatre had pressed hot feverish lips to the side of his mouth and made him tingle from his hair to his toes, to the first curve of those same lips that came even as they were swelling from a blow. He fixed on once picking the blonde up in the kitchen and spinning him in his arms until Quatre had laughed himself breathless, and one the way a cold little nose had once nuzzled itself into Heero's shirt to find warmth when snow had unexpectedly begun to tumble out of the merciless sky on one of there walks… And he considered the flares of anger at finding Quatre's sweater folded neatly in-between the clothing in his drawers, on listening to him worried question where he was on the nights he'd stayed out.
Anger from before drove even now through his veins, begging him to remember the satisfying crush of Duo's throat under his fingers, and demanding that he acknowledge the disbelieving rage of feeling Quatre attack him to help that grinning idiot… But it was being slowly but surely overruled by the strange calm that had come when he'd woken up to that delicate, caring touch. Quatre had hurt him this time, but just like when their positions were switched, he had come back. Now, Heero had left, and he knew, without a single doubt, that miles away the Arabian was waiting for him. He'd walk into that door, and Quatre would smile for him again.
A smile wasn't much a thing, just a tiny spasm of the muscle really, but it was what he wanted.
The isolation he'd known for years was over, and there wasn't even a shred of desire for it's return. In the future, there'd be days when he'd doubt his decision, but he would deal with those patiently when they came along, and Quatre would do the same even if they never talked of it. It might not last forever, but Heero wanted it to last another day, and maybe another week or month.
Rising from the bench was like waking from a dream, and for the first time in many days, Heero wore his own gentle smile. It was serene, something his teammate's probably wouldn't have believed, but it was also determined and satisfied. It was beautiful.
On the water the pair of ducks, lovers themselves, watched him turn and start back into the trees with skeptical, stupidly kind black eyes, then they swam over the inky water and towards the kissing bridge that led onto the pond's small island.
The chill of the night was intensified under the shade of the high plant sentinels, and as he passed into their darkness, the brunette crossed his arms over his chest and lightly rubbed at their surface, smooth flesh now disturbed with goosebumps. He followed the path avidly now and was already thinking about the heat of the house, and the comfort of the slender arms that would greet him… And this time they'd be greeted in return.
He could so envision this, that when he turned again on the winding cement safe way, at first the person that stepped out from behind the trunk of a tree (this one, he noted with startling awareness, had initials 'smrs 4eva' it looked like, carved into it's ancient bark) -was- Quatre. He started to open his mouth in greeting, confused but pleased, and then the brown and auburn-shot hair came into view, and so didn't the outfit.
It wasn't Quatre, he was likely at home and waiting just as he'd thought; it was Duo. Alarm didn't come then, even as he observed one lanky arm rise up and saw the flash of cold light reflect off the silencer that covered the barrel of the gun in his hand, it was more a surge of annoyed puzzlement. What does he want now?
Duo was grinning again. His 'I'm smooth and I know it, kiss my ass' grin. His eyes were sparkling, and maybe Heero thought briefly that like the think that had been worked out with Quatre, that this too was an attempt at finding a neutral ground.
Just before the end of the gun emitted and soft 'thuumph' sound and spewed forth it's final word, obliterating all real traces of the mind that had, in essence, been Heero Yuy, the boy with the cobalt blue eyes understood. He had time for one last ironic thought before it struck. I should have turned around and gone back into the kitchen to hold him after all…
The bullet struck him to the left of the center of the his forehead, it burrowed into his flesh and bone like some hell-bent mole fleeing the sunlight, and then Heero knew no more.
That circle in the smooth skin looked like an eye to him, empty and black. Then blood filled it, bubbled and ran down and into one staring eye. It lingered there, clinging in the corner, then moved on like a tear. It was one of the most unusually beautiful things Duo had ever seen. He's finally crying, and it's blood.
As the body sank bonelessly but with amazing grace to the ground just off the path, crushing a small gathering of deep purple violets in it's wake, Duo watched and his grin slowly faded. Heero landed on his side, legs uselessly sprawled and one arm caught under him, and that tear now made it's path sideways towards the parted gap of his mouth. That wasn't pretty any more, and so the braided male turned away in disinterest.
A minute later, he had turned back and knelt beside that crumpled form. His eyes moved blankly over the relaxed and suddenly young face of the boy who had once saved the Queen of the world and prevented war. He dug through the tight pockets of Heero's jeans, and at last emerged with his wallet.
He turned and calmly began his walk out of the park, not to the parking lot which Heero had been heading to, but towards the fence that ran along three sides of the lovely square of green in the middle of a growing city. By the time he had reached it, that blank look had returned, and he had managed to disassemble his gun into a handful of pieces. These were shoved into his pocket along with the leather folds of the dead brunette's wallet.
After a look down both directions of the empty street, Duo scaled the fence with natural grace and flipped himself over and onto the road that lay beyond. It took him only three minutes of walking to reach his jeep which had been parked on a residential side street. Opening the door and boosting himself onto the seat, Duo fell deeper into that perfect sea of completion. He started the car and drove.
Twenty minutes, and the black and mud colored automobile was pulling onto the road that led down by the manmade lake that Quatre and he would sometimes fish at. He parked and walked down to the abandoned shores of it, then out onto the shifting, creaking planks of the dock. Here he remembered the blonde's laughter as Duo had managed to reel in a trout (all stocked, of course, nothing natural har de har) too quickly and ended up slapping himself in the face with it. As he drew his arm back and chucked the barrel of the gun as far as he could into it's unmeasured depths, he was smiling again. Duo returned to his car, and drove on.
The next stop in his mindless trips that night was actually a field on the outskirts of their expanding town. Here, though he doubted Quatre remembered, he had once sat on a blanket with him after a wonderful meal of sandwiches, warm sodas, and fruit, and they had talked about their dreams until the sun had set and it got too cold. He parked beside the wire fence that lined that long grassed terrain, got out, and ducked under it's barrier. It wasn't hard for him to find the exact spot they had once sat, and he sank down there himself now. As Duo looked up at the star overhead, stars that he had once flown through with a mission, he considering the way that his friend's hair had seemed to glow brighter than the sun that day. His fingers absently pulled the ground open and shoved dirt aside as he smiled at the memory of wiping whipped cream off the end of a button nose. The rest of the gun was buried there, an offering to a summer sun and perfect afternoon, than the American was on the move again.
The final delivery of the evening was to a darkened church in what was clearly the 'down' side of town. The jeep slowed to a crawl before this building, then stopped. It's headlights died, but the inside one came on, bathing the young man with the no-expression inside in a sickly yellow life.
He pulled out Heero's wallet and opened it. Thin fingers pulled out the cards (library, grocery market, credit, driver's license) and placed them absently along one black covered thigh. Those would be cut up and pieces scattered through out several trash bins as he made his way finally to the club. The money he pulled out, twenty-three dollars and forty-one cents, would be pushed through the mail slot of the church. Heero carried no pictures, nor had Duo expected any. If he had found one, he might have felt the first real pang of regret.
What he did find only brought a dim spark of anger, and then a sense of gladness that was powerful enough to make his lips pull back in a feral smile. Tucked behind the far-too neatly folded bills of cash was a tightly pressed sheet of lined paper. Duo lifted this out without thought, and dropped the leather remains of the wallet (three days from now, a boy would find this on the side of the road two miles from here, clean it, and present it to his father as a present) onto his lap before carefully pulling it open.
Heero,
Will you open your lap top tonight and see this resting on it's precious keys and be angry I opened it, or will you read this before that and know I only did it to let you know I was thinking of you? I always am, you know? Sometimes, I find myself frustrated with the way you dwell in my head and come dancing into thoughts at the strangest moments, but mostly that happens and I'm grateful. You'll be back in two days, and I'll be here, but in the time between then, those forty some odd hours, in my dreams you won't have left at all.
Ha, by now you must be scowling down at the paper, one paragraph in, or maybe stopped reading altogether. Too gooey, I bet. It's true though. I'll take you out to dinner when you do come back if you'd like, my treat, and maybe you can tell me about the meeting. Or, if you are too tired for such thing, maybe I can just rub your shoulders and feel you there again… I'm lonely without you already, and as I write this, you are only in the shower preparing to leave. Come back soon, and be careful.
Your Quatre.
The note was dated more than a month ago, he could read that in the top corner as it shook within his grasp. It was that old, and Heero had kept it for whatever god forsaken reason. The part of Duo that was already beyond gone thought it was because somehow, the brunette had known he would see it now and had put it there as some last revenge, even from beyond the grave. The more rational part, which was fairly completely ignored, knew that it was one of those rare signs that the bastard youth had, at least on some deep subconscious level, cared for the effort Quatre put forth.
Whatever the reason, it stung him now. At first, his pale fingers had moved to the top of the page as though to shred it, but he couldn't do that.
If he had stayed home that night months ago, Quatre would have come to him, like he usually did. If he had spoken up when he'd first walked in and seen Heero's hand stroking his blonde's pretty locks, this wouldn't have gotten so far. If he'd just -told- him for once instead of joking, this would have been his sweet note, and it would have been in his wallet only to be pulled out and looked at daily.
The next one that came from those beautiful, childlike fingers would be his.
This one, he would keep as a reminder until he got his own. He carefully refolded the long-ago written letter, then slipped it into the back pocket of his own pants.
In the yellow light within the jeep, so like the unforgiving sun that bore down on a dying man in the desert, Duo got to work.
-----
The tall grandfather clock that rested opposite the large TV in their living room (an addition that Wufei had oddly enough insisted on) was chiming out it's melodic song for three o'clock when at last the front door of the team's home opened. Eventually, they would divide up again, go their own ways and build their own futures, but for now the past still lurked around each corner and threatened to overtake them, and it was easier to survive with someone to lean on.
Duo crept in, turning to silently close and lock the door behind him, then moving towards the hall and the nightlight that illuminated it's long corridor. He was tired, and he'd never felt better.
He turned down the hall with a silent whish of hair slapping against his backside, and behind him, the figure he'd disturbed on the couch closed his sleepy emerald eyes and lay back down, his book again forgotten over the tanned planes of his bare chest. Trowa wasn't bothered enough by Duo's late night return from what he presumed was clubbing to get up and trudge to his own room… He would in an hour though, when he dreamed of something with sharp teeth and a manic grin, skeletal hands reaching for him, and thus rolled off onto the floor with a yelp.
The American didn't see him. His destination was the second door from the end, the one with the lamp glow seeping from under it like water.
He approached it with the reverence of someone entering holy ground, his touch on it's imitation gold painted knob like one handling a relic. It was turned without a sound and the door was pushed open a mere inch, Duo shifting until one rich purple eye was plastered to the crack.
With the warm room, there was a dresser decorated with an army of pictures, most featuring beautiful smiling girls with heads of familiar blonde hair. The bedside table was likewise decorated, those the ones here held the same females clustered together, and there was on of an adorably young Quatre clinging worshipfully to the legs of an older brunette. Duo had held Quatre multiple times when the boy would dry over the man in that picture, and he had reassured him and run his fingers over his hair when that earnest face had lifted to his, begging to be told that he had been right, and that maybe that dead father was at last proud. Duo didn't know his father, couldn't care less about ever doing so, but he cared for Quatre's simply because the boy did, and he always nodded and said he thought that Mr. Winner was in fact very proud wherever he was.
The walls were decorated with posters, somewhat plain ones that featured instruments with flowers usually beside them, but still undeniably lovely. Duo's favorite was the one just over Quatre's bed, the violin . A single rose laid over it's strings, and for some reason, that struck the braided male as romantic and sexy. One day, he'd wanted to surprise Quatre by placing one on the instrument that rested respectfully in it's case in one corner right now. There was also a chair against one wall, and beside it a small table that was overburdened with books. Duo liked to read a good story once in a while, but more so, he liked to sit on the end of the bed and watch the Arabian as he sat tucked in that chair, with a tome in his lap, and immersed himself in whatever world was written on it's pages. Sometimes, he wanted to be that world, but more often than not he was content just to know he was occasionally in Quatre's.
The bed was really the only thing he was looking at now. Resting against the backboard, propped up on a stack of pillows and with his head tilting to the side in his slumbering state, the boy Duo lived and killed for, rested. In his lap was a book of poems, marked with a piece of ribbon that Duo knew he sometimes would nibble absently on when the reading got particularly good. On the table nearby sat a mostly full mug of cinnamon tea. He couldn't disillusion himself and think that Quatre had fallen asleep waiting for him, he knew better, but Duo wasn't upset.
Like the note, the next time it would be for him.
Of course, his Quatre would rarely be forced to wait up for him at all. He would do his very best to get home each night and surround himself with the arms and kisses of the other male. He wasn't stupid enough to make Heero's mistakes.
Part of him yearned to go in and to pull the thick covers up over that slim form, to brush back those flaxen bangs and kiss the half-moon of Quatre's forehead… But he might wake up. That wasn't good, not yet. There would be time for that in the future. Not tomorrow, because there would be much crying and mourning for all of them (he would be sorry for Quatre being unhappy so he knew he'd manage without drawing suspicion), but some day soon.
He settled for blowing a kiss to the sleeping male, then closing the door, crossing the hall to his own room.
Not bothering to flick the switch to the right of the door, Duo trudged through the known mess of his room and towards the bed, shedding his cloths as he went. They fell on the floor and were alone there, since he predicted right and the pile that had been developing a life of it's own in the corner had been pulled out, washed, and placed somewhere to wait for his attention.
His trip to the empty mattress -- not for long, though -- was interrupted only when he pulled the note free of his back pocket. The pants were dropped, the folded paper was not. Duo knelt and felt along blindly under his bed, fingers seeking out the narrow tear in the bedding there, delving inside, and at last emerging with a small black book trapped between them. It's pages, most covered from top to bottom and side to side with messy, nearly unintelligible script went ignored. The hatred that populated one that parchment wasn't for today either, and maybe never would be needed again. The problem that had tainted those narrow pages was gone. Dead.
Killing someone shouldn't affect your relationship. Or at least any of theirs, since none of them could claim to have clean hands (even the boy that was sometimes jokingly called an angel) but in this case, it did. It granted him a key into a life that before had been locked against him. He had a way now, to live again, and he thought the price of one life was more than a fair trade. Besides, like he's told Quatre, Heero wasn't any good for him…
He pushed Heero's letter between the pages around the middle, closed it, then put it back.
Then the boy with the long hair crawled between the cool sheets of his bed, closed his eyes, and drifted away into the all consuming embrace of sleep.
Trowa may have had nightmares that he couldn't remember and wouldn't speak of if he could, not even to his best friend, and Wufei may have awaken once with the words 'Oh gods, what has he done?' stuck within his throat like clots of dead flesh only to tumble back then into a feverish, uneasy sleep, not to remember such a thing the next morning when the policemen's knock of their door awoke them, but Duo slept that wonderful, well deserved sleep that people got after a long day of very satisfying goal completion. His dreams were light, and most were centered around a smile that was like the sun, and eyes that were like the sea after a storm, welcoming, warm, and only for him.
Sometime, in the impenetrable darkness that owned the land just before dawn, Duo rolled over, and he smiled in that sleep. It was an enchanting expression, filled with hopes and dreams, treasures buried deep within the mind that could only come to the surface of that dank, polluted inner well in moments such as unconsciousness.
Tomorrow was going to be a beautiful day.
His dull puzzlement of it's presence was answered a second later when he heard some sound and tensed, then felt the press of material in the spot the liquid had been. It was damp but not wet, and it ran over his skin calmingly. That didn't stop him from bringing a hand up with lightning speed and catching the wrist that held it in a vice-like grip though.
The gasp that followed suit was a familiar one, one he heard sometimes when he was caught off guard and reacted before he could sort through things, but it went unheeded as he opened his eyes then fastened them shut again with a growl of aggravation as the florescent light directly overhead caused pain that hadn't been connected to himself before to erupt into flying sparks within his head.
His throat ached from miles away, but it was his brain that made Heero wish temporarily that he hadn't bothered to wake up. It was a tender thing where now even the light through his closed lids, that red veiny glowing, made him feel on fire. The scrape of someone moving closer over the floor beside him was like dynamite being set off. He'd felt worse, many times before… But he knew why then, he knew and had prepared himself for it and thus was more than accepting to live through the consequences that should follow. As of now, he couldn't explain this agony.
"Heero?" Despite the warning grind of the bones in his wrist under the other boy's restrictive grasp, he'd drawn closer to the brunette as he awoke, his tone colored with concern.
Like the grating voice of god, he heard his name spoken and though he recognized the speaker, he would have done anything to shut him up then.
"Are you okay?" Quatre winced. No, of course he's not okay, you dolt! You choked your boyfriend into a faint, he dropped onto the floor and probably hurt himself in the process, and you think he's just going to open his eyes, smile and say 'Fine, Quatre, old chap. How about you?'
It was clear he wasn't going to get the blessed silence to sort this all out for himself unless he responded, so he braced himself, then growled- "No. Will you please shut up?"
Oh… He's sounds mad. His shoulders wilted, but he complied without even a timidly whispered response of acceptance. Staring down at the tense face of the brunette, Quatre didn't care about the wrist that was already turning red around the edges of Heero's clenched fingers, or about the fact that he'd knocked over the water bowl with one foot when he'd been startled by him waking up and the dampness was now staining one leg of his pants darker. He just cared about the pain he saw on that face, and about the fact that he had put it there.
They sat together, mute and in thought, for nearly ten minutes.
During that time, Quatre was inwardly berating himself, accepting total blame for this evening (from the dinner being torched to the fight that followed to Heero's bad time coming awake) and wishing that he could go back in time. He wasn't foolish enough to put any real stock in the desire, but if given a second chance, he knew he would have done a lot different. Like saying yes to his boyfriend being playful in the first place. Like moving faster when Duo and he started squabbling. Like maybe trying to move Heero onto the more comfortable surface of the couch before he could have woken on the cold floor.
Heero's thoughts were also on the evening, as he slowly came to remember it. It had started to return because even in his injured state, he had noticed the empty condition of his stomach. He wondered at why he felt hungry, then remembered that it was Quatre making dinner tonight. Things clicked into place nicely from that thought onward. Looking back on it now, the dry irony that this had started because he'd been foolish enough to want the boy he now held captive (or at least to want part of him) made him feel queasy. Not that he shouldn't be allowed those moments of physical desire, they were perfectly normal after all, but that it had escalated into this. It would have been a nice interruption before eating, and it would have left him with that faint feeling of weightless comfort he found himself to enjoy after such activities, but something had prevented that from happening. Someone. Duo.
Mild irritation rapidly became full-fledged rage.
That know-it-all loud mouthed baka had decided to step in and put his nose where it wasn't wanted. He'd even gone so far as to attack him.
Not that all blame could be put onto him, no matter how tempting. Quatre had said no, and he supposed in some distant, uncaring way he could see how that could be misinterpreted. But since when was it Duo's place to protect Quatre? To protect him from absolutely -nothing-? Even accepting that maybe it was understandable the way he'd initially reacted didn't change the fact that Duo had continued to spur it on, like some dog crazed on the scent of blood. He had every right to be angry with the things the American had blurted out.
It hadn't needed to get that far though, now had it? If a certain little blonde had seen fit to open his mouth and explain the situation to his idiotic friend, he wouldn't be laying here on the floor now with a migraine. He would be in his room, working on his computer. He'd be full, satisfied, and perhaps even entertaining the idea of having Quatre curled up against him that night.
But someone had decided to play mute at that crucial point.
That was why he was here now. That was why Duo had continued that strange ranting. That was why he was still picking up the faint scent of disgustingly cindered foods in the air and why his stomach was complaining.
That conclusion settled things greatly for him, though he had to ignore the tiny voice that suggested he wasn't being entirely fair, and bracing himself for the pain, he sat up a moment later.
It only took a second for Quatre to start in.
"Oh! Heero, you shouldn't sit up so quickly! Here let me help y-"
The delicate little hands that flutter over his arm and shoulder were something he couldn't tolerate right now, like questing birds in a storm searching for places to roost. He didn't want the boy anywhere near him, didn't want to be touched, and didn't want that sweet voice to sound in the air like so many shattering champagne glasses.
Without thinking, he snapped an arm sideways towards the fretting youth, and managed to catch Quatre smartly across his lower throat.
His flood of concerned babble didn't diminish; it died. There was the thud of flesh striking flesh, then the slithering sound of cloth sliding across the linoleum as he went skidding a few feet. The thought 'how fair. A wound for a wound' came unwelcome into Heero's mind, then drifted away in the usual guilty/righteous cloud that often followed these collisions.
For a blissful stretch of some fifty-three seconds, Heero just sat up with his eyes closed and that red flesh-light leaking into his consciousness, and listened to the silence around himself. Then came that first harsh gasping breath from behind him.
It brought the guilt back, that pained attempt at continuing an automatic motion of survival… And with it, another surge of annoyance.
This time, Heero tempered the latter.
As the blonde behind him tried to get his body to accept the oxygen it had had no problems with before, Heero slowly hauled himself up to his feet. A few steps, and he'd be out of the kitchen. Maybe he'd go up to his room. Lie down for a while. Think.
But that was too much to ask, and he knew as soon as that rasping tenor spoke up. "H-heero? Wait. Need to talk…"
Sure they did. They needed to talk; about the blonde's pitiful little dinner, about Duo's stupid grin, and about the aching in his head. It was Quatre's nature to pick and pick at a problem until a simple little thing like spilled milk became the next air strike. Sometimes, he could stand to just sit there and let him work his way through those, because it did pay off. Quatre could think of things none of the others had considered in the ways of missions, potential threats they had missed or new routes to take with less obstacles. He was a brilliant tactician, given enough time; one of the best Heero'd ever known.
However, this wasn't a mission. It wasn't even important. It was Quatre wanting to discuss things that he didn't want to deal with right now. If he wanted to go through the night without shooting something or breaking something, he needed to leave this alone. That wouldn't be happening if he stayed in the kitchen… Or even in the house. Quatre would regain his feet and come searching for him, he was certain of it.
He didn't turn around. "No. We don't. I'm going out."
Quatre couldn't leave it at that though. Almost alarmingly, he heard the sound of the boy making it to his feet (though with several choked breaths of exertion, he noted), and amazingly coming towards him. "We do. We need to talk about what Duo did… And about what you just did. We -need- to talk."
He's really going to push this tonight. He not going to slip away like he usually would, not going to come bounding back later with this behind us. Duo. It's all Duo's fault. Everything is out of alignment now… With growing unease, he was considering the truth of that when one of the Arabian's hands fell lightly on his arm. He looked down slightly to meet the upturned face of the boy that had snuck his way into his schedule, a face that was smeared with tears now, not of sorrow but of lingering pain from his blow, still getting it's color back. The eyes that he admired for always shining with pleasant dreams even in the midst of trials for them were darkened with serious intent now, and it was yet another change he didn't like. It felt like the things he had come to expect and that he had gotten exactly as he'd like it were falling apart.
"Heero," Pale pink lips, with no smile for him now, parted to release his name in a sigh, and though hoarsened, his voice was emerging a bit smoother now. Quatre was going into his speech mode. "He overreacted. A lot. I know you weren't going to do anything… Like that, earlier. He didn't, so I don't really blame him, but he still shouldn't have done what he did."
He dragged his eyes up from that mouth, scowling as he observed the lack-luster color in Quatre's eyes. "You didn't say anything to change his opinion of that."
The blonde winced, and he felt a trendle of savage victory for it. He wasn't supposed to feel like a scolded child. He was in charge.
"No… I didn't. I was surprised, and I should have, but I didn't. I apologize for that." The hand on his arm wandered up a few inches, trying comfortingly to form some bound of more intimate communication between them. "I think he knows now though. I can talk to him more about that later… Right now, I want to discuss something else. I know you don't always mean to do it, but Heero, you can't keep striking out at me like this. I care about you, but if this doesn't stop, I won't, can't, keep trying to be there for you… You have to learn to control that, or find a way to warn people. I'm not an enemy. It's not a healthy thing for us to-"
'I won't'. He heard nothing but low murmurs after that. How many times had he considered just walking away from the blonde's smiles and hugs, away from his bright exclamations? How often had he wanted to pick up the little pieces of Quatre that he continually found in his room, notebooks with that tiny script covering each page, a small casual suit shirt hanging in his closet between the doldrums of his own garb and bits of sweet hard candy waiting on the edge of his desk, and throw them into the hall before they could begin to fit in there? He couldn't remember all the moments when it had sounded like a good idea in spite of the perks. Never, though, had he expected to hear anything similar from the blonde.
There wasn't supposed to be any doubt about waking up, and feeling the heat on the bed beside him because Quatre had snuck in sometime during the night, wanting and needing to be near. And whether he always wanted it there or not, his cheerful form was an expected distraction now. A day when Quatre was out and not hovering nearby felt like existing in one of Duo's sci-fi flicks. During movies, Quatre's hand had to seek his out and cling. It was part of… Well, of The Plan now. That affection was supposed to be there. It belonged to him.
Didn't it?
He came back to listening in time to catch the bothersome tail end of the blonde's unhappy speech- "and if you can't, then maybe we should just stop pretending. Can you?"
It didn't matter what Quatre was asking, not really.
It could have been anything, and Heero's answer would have been the same. No. He couldn't. Whatever it was, it was something the Arabian wanted changed, something about him, and it wasn't going to happen.
He told people what was to change and stay the same.
That earnest, hopeful face was still lifted to him, cerulean eyes still moving over his expression like tiny fingers trying to pry out secrets. 'Feel with me', Quatre's expression seemed to silently ask, and Heero felt sickened by it. 'Feel with me, and we can go on. It won't be your Plan any more, but sometimes maybe it'll look like it, at least enough that you can be numb, be happy. You'll slowly loose yourself, your will and resistance, in Us. We aren't Quatre any more, or Heero, we are just Us.'
Quatre was still looking at him, now in confusion as he recognized the dawning horror in his boyfriend's dark blue eyes. He reached up to sooth back Heero's chaotic mess of bangs, wanting to read more deeply into those strange dark pools. That gesture was greeted harshly with one of the brunette's hands coming up and slapping his away.
The pained surprise that lit in Quatre's eyes was enough to restart his stunned reasoning. He shoved those little fingers away before they could touch him, then decided that he didn't want to completely let go after all. The hand continued on in it's path to come to rest on the rising and falling contours of the blonde's chest, then pushed.
His eyes narrowed as he watched the boy jerk backwards a few feet and thud into the wall, head rocking bang to thud against the white washed walls of their kitchen then come forward again until Quatre's chin struck his chest bone hollowly. Petite hands clung to the wall on either side of him and searched for purchase there, and it still wasn't enough.
Heero stalked over as his teammate struggled back into control of himself. The loose fist that slammed into the wall less than an inch from the blonde's flushed face was only identifiable as his through skin color. Nothing felt real. When that head pulled sharply up and those incredible eyes locked on his, finally seeing him, and he watched with tragic clarity as fear slipped in them for the first time, Heero's stomach clenched sickeningly.
Still, he resisted that reaction, leaning in and pushing his mouth harshly against the quivering lips of his… His hostage.
Before, they might have played rough during some of their encounters, and play was exactly all that it was. Now there was something about that rough kiss that spoke of burning brands and perhaps of signed documents. It was like slamming a flag into the peak of a mountain. It was placing a collar on a pet. Or a child with a black pen scrawling his name on his things.
Quatre felt his lips ram back on his teeth, felt the warm tang of blood come flooding over them and onto his tongue, salty and his own.
He tried to scoot back, away from that stranger's kiss, and was met with the unyielding press of the wall, purposeful and aching against the back of his head. By then, the pain was already leaving though. Heero's lips were still almost cruel against his, seeking the warm recesses of his mouth with the same intensity he took all of his missions on with, but that dull wave of hateful emotion he'd sensed was drifting away.
So he held still. He hung suspended as the brunette relentlessly took what he wanted. He felt that Heero was searching for something. Eventually, the hardness truly started to leave that normally special gesture, and when he felt that, Quatre at last shifted into action. He brought his hands up and laid them over Heero's shoulders, pushing indecisively there before curling in the fabric, accepting him in spite of how it had begun.
Maybe Duo was right, and relationships weren't supposed to work this way, but since when had any of them followed the 'norm'?
But Heero was torn. That fear that had been present had chilled his blood and at the same time, had made it all look like it could be fixed. Quatre hadn't pushed him away and said 'no more'. It could all just… Go on. Had it ever really been his plan though? Or was even the way those fingers now pulled him closer, demanded with cute determination that he be there against that slight body, all part of him vanishing as a self identifiable organism?
Jerking away with a disgusted grunt, he watched Quatre's eyes open in bewilderment as he sank down the wall several inches. His lips were swollen, hurt, and yet the boy looked like he only wanted to reach out and make sure that he was fine.
Sometimes, Heero thought, they don't get you with orders and with violence. Sometimes they get you with a gentle hand and with eyes that look understanding. They control you with kindness. Did I ever really think I manipulated this?
Quatre was reaching for him, and this time he wouldn't allow himself the mistake of touching that creamy flesh and being pulled in by worried expressions. He snarled at the wandering digits and Quatre pulled them back against his chest quickly, looking frightened but so infinitely patient.
"Heero, we-"
"NO. We don't." He took in a breath, then bore into those wounded orbs of blue and green and ground out- "We -nothing-."
As their tactician's expression crumpled, eyes stung but dry he was relieved to see, Heero turned from him and stalked through the kitchen opening and into the living room, then directly towards the front door. The path only took five seconds to complete, around twenty individual steps, but somehow it felt like an hour. Behind him he could hear the first shaky breath being pulled into Quatre's deceivingly delicate frame, and unbelievably part of him wanted to go back and hold him. He kept walking. The carpet trudged underfoot with the speed of tar, but at last his fingers was around the blessedly cool handle of the door. Quatre never spoke up, never called him back or begged. A simple twist of metal, and he was slipping into the darkness that waited outside.
-----
Heero wasn't one to drive around feeling furious and indecisive. He wasn't one to go out to a bar and drink himself stupid either. Both of those choices were a waste to him, one a waste of gasoline and unnecessary wear on the unassuming but well maintained car he drove, and the other a waste of himself and of his time. When he was upset and he knew it, he would find some more or less isolated place to bunker down as he worked out every last detail of whatever the problem was. Sometimes, it would be just the end of a deserted road, where he'd get out of the car and pace, or more often, find himself sitting on the hood of his car (bad for dents, he knew) holding his head. Other times it was the parking lot of a store that had been closed for hours. That got him in trouble sometimes though. The last thing he needed when he was already pissed was some rookie cop stopping to check things out and shining a bright light in his eyes while snapping out questions. More often than not, it was one of the many public parks around town.
That was where he headed tonight, to his favorite out of the lot of those. The distant thought of a cool bench on the edge of a moonlit duck pond drew him with it's calming fingers even as he continued to sulk behind the wheel of his car and glare at the signs that flashed in his head lights. He wanted to sit, and to work out the events of tonight for better or worse. He was still so angry at Duo's presumptuous behavior, furious at Quatre's tranquility during it and even at him simply accepting that violent kiss after, and now, he was also mad at himself.
In particular, at the way he'd left. A tiny voice within was asking him what he was going to do if he went home and the blonde just ignored him from that moment onward… Another part was praying for that, and saying thank goodness.
Deep in his turbulent storm of thoughts, Heero's training faltered for one of those rare moments, and this time in a way that he would later come to pay for heavily.
As he watched the white lines in the center of the road vanish beneath his hood and respectively under his tires, as he brooded, he failed to notice the presence of a pair of lights within his rearview mirror. No, that wasn't exactly right. He did notice them, but failed to place any thought into them. It was another car out, not so unusual considering that it wasn't late, and they hadn't moved into an extremely small town but rather a budding city. When he turned, he didn't connect the reappearing lights in that reflective surface as the same vehicle, which had in fact been following him since the first street he turned onto. It was an innocent mistake, one that hundreds made daily, and it was one that Heero made now at a great cost. Perhaps, that too, was Quatre's fault.
At last, the park's nearly vacant lot appeared on the left and he pulled into it. As he was already selecting a spot (at least three spots away from any of the other late-night vehicles here), he didn't even look up at the jeep that continued past and down the street.
If he had, he would have seen a familiar face peering out of that familiar mud splattered window, a face that now held no trace of it's typical easy-going grin. It was a pale moon of features that were utterly devoid of any emotion, cold purple fire orbs glaring out of the wane flesh and fixed on him unswayingly.
He didn't though, it was another of those 'little' things that so often made all the difference, and this time it wasn't in his favor.
Heero got out of his car as one of the back lights of the jeep flared red and signaled it was turning left, and as he locked the door with a press of the button that hung from his key chain (sad that one couldn't leave it unlocked even in a park like this now), it vanished down that other street.
Like in the house, his legs didn't walk here; they stalked. He crossed the paved surface with it's scattering of cars rapidly, his lips a tight frown. He slipped into the shadows beneath the man planted trees here the same way.
By the time he'd reached the pond's banks though, his scissoring legs had slowed into something that was almost a casual stroll. The intense and oh-so-specific process of sorting through his problems had already begun. His bulky yellow sneakers remained on the curving concrete path only by luck, his head down and eyes on the ground before him but really fixed on something that existed only within his mind. He neither saw nor heard the couple that was sitting on the first bench he passed, their own faces huddled close together and not one of their hands in public view (soft panting gave clear indication where they were though), and they never looked up. It was that unspoken courtesy and perhaps survival technique that anyone who frequently night cloaked parks knew of.
The second bench he arrived at was more welcoming, it's graffiti drenched boards bare of any late-night squatters. His feet turned towards it without a signal from his mind, and soon he was settling back against the chill material and staring his empty stare out at the glistening black waters.
'I won't', he said… But Heero thought that maybe Quatre would. The blonde was stronger than he was often given credit for. He had fought beside them all through the exact same wars, and he had emerged just as unexplainably unscathed as they. Despite his lovely colorless skin, baby face, and bird-boned frame, he survived, even -thrived- in that setting. It was an injustice to dismiss him now just because the need to fight day in and day out was no longer present.
Quatre had stuck around after that first blow, because he could take it… Because he might have even wanted it, and so was it his fault that he sometimes didn't bother to control those wayward fists?
No. If he was out here by himself to work this out, he couldn't lie that way. The Arabian was not still lingering with him because he wanted pain or because he could handle it, he was there for a reason that honestly bothered Heero a lot more. He cares. About me. He stays, even when I hit him, and it's because he thinks he loves me… And maybe he does. He stays and some part of his mind tells him that I need him. Or maybe, something he sees in my eyes, something I can't hide, tells him that. It doesn't matter. What does, is that he is there through it all, not because of the pain but in spite of it. For those little moments in-between.
Heero sighed and closed his eyes, tipping his head back and resting it against the sharp edge of the back of his bench. All those times when I considered just pushing him away for the last time, and it was the moronically sentimental things that convinced me not to, and somehow, I didn't see it was those same things that kept him coming back with a smile. He was hurt when I hit him, and more when I locked my door at night to keep him out… But the glow that lit his eyes when I'd kiss his cheek during a movie, or that real grin that he gave that time I brought him that stupid card, those more than made up for all the hits… Like his smile more than made up for him crowding me once in a while, and how the heat of his body snuggled -- I can't believe someone snuggled with me, how absurd -- up against my chest occasionally made it all feel fine.
He stays because he has to. I'm getting a normal life out of this, I'm -FEELING- what I never could have before. I know what it's about now, and why people talk and obsess over it so.
I don't know what he can possibly be getting out of it, but he's operating in much the same way. A pair of ducks landed in the water a few feet off shore, and Heero's dark eyes drifted a quarter of the way open to watch them scoot gracefully away in a lazy manner. Whatever it is, until tonight, he was getting it… But he, and I, we fucked up. Because of Duo, at least partially, but it had been brewing.
And there lay his problem.
Was it better to cut out that wound they both shared now, to cauterize it and slowly push the poison out of their systems before it sickened them? Or was it worth the extra effort to just pull out the bad parts, and to turn that illness into something that might, in the end, heal them both of a disease they didn't really know they had?
Cut out now or tough through it?
He weighed all the memories he had that were really 'him and the blonde', everything from the first time Quatre had pressed hot feverish lips to the side of his mouth and made him tingle from his hair to his toes, to the first curve of those same lips that came even as they were swelling from a blow. He fixed on once picking the blonde up in the kitchen and spinning him in his arms until Quatre had laughed himself breathless, and one the way a cold little nose had once nuzzled itself into Heero's shirt to find warmth when snow had unexpectedly begun to tumble out of the merciless sky on one of there walks… And he considered the flares of anger at finding Quatre's sweater folded neatly in-between the clothing in his drawers, on listening to him worried question where he was on the nights he'd stayed out.
Anger from before drove even now through his veins, begging him to remember the satisfying crush of Duo's throat under his fingers, and demanding that he acknowledge the disbelieving rage of feeling Quatre attack him to help that grinning idiot… But it was being slowly but surely overruled by the strange calm that had come when he'd woken up to that delicate, caring touch. Quatre had hurt him this time, but just like when their positions were switched, he had come back. Now, Heero had left, and he knew, without a single doubt, that miles away the Arabian was waiting for him. He'd walk into that door, and Quatre would smile for him again.
A smile wasn't much a thing, just a tiny spasm of the muscle really, but it was what he wanted.
The isolation he'd known for years was over, and there wasn't even a shred of desire for it's return. In the future, there'd be days when he'd doubt his decision, but he would deal with those patiently when they came along, and Quatre would do the same even if they never talked of it. It might not last forever, but Heero wanted it to last another day, and maybe another week or month.
Rising from the bench was like waking from a dream, and for the first time in many days, Heero wore his own gentle smile. It was serene, something his teammate's probably wouldn't have believed, but it was also determined and satisfied. It was beautiful.
On the water the pair of ducks, lovers themselves, watched him turn and start back into the trees with skeptical, stupidly kind black eyes, then they swam over the inky water and towards the kissing bridge that led onto the pond's small island.
The chill of the night was intensified under the shade of the high plant sentinels, and as he passed into their darkness, the brunette crossed his arms over his chest and lightly rubbed at their surface, smooth flesh now disturbed with goosebumps. He followed the path avidly now and was already thinking about the heat of the house, and the comfort of the slender arms that would greet him… And this time they'd be greeted in return.
He could so envision this, that when he turned again on the winding cement safe way, at first the person that stepped out from behind the trunk of a tree (this one, he noted with startling awareness, had initials 'smrs 4eva' it looked like, carved into it's ancient bark) -was- Quatre. He started to open his mouth in greeting, confused but pleased, and then the brown and auburn-shot hair came into view, and so didn't the outfit.
It wasn't Quatre, he was likely at home and waiting just as he'd thought; it was Duo. Alarm didn't come then, even as he observed one lanky arm rise up and saw the flash of cold light reflect off the silencer that covered the barrel of the gun in his hand, it was more a surge of annoyed puzzlement. What does he want now?
Duo was grinning again. His 'I'm smooth and I know it, kiss my ass' grin. His eyes were sparkling, and maybe Heero thought briefly that like the think that had been worked out with Quatre, that this too was an attempt at finding a neutral ground.
Just before the end of the gun emitted and soft 'thuumph' sound and spewed forth it's final word, obliterating all real traces of the mind that had, in essence, been Heero Yuy, the boy with the cobalt blue eyes understood. He had time for one last ironic thought before it struck. I should have turned around and gone back into the kitchen to hold him after all…
The bullet struck him to the left of the center of the his forehead, it burrowed into his flesh and bone like some hell-bent mole fleeing the sunlight, and then Heero knew no more.
That circle in the smooth skin looked like an eye to him, empty and black. Then blood filled it, bubbled and ran down and into one staring eye. It lingered there, clinging in the corner, then moved on like a tear. It was one of the most unusually beautiful things Duo had ever seen. He's finally crying, and it's blood.
As the body sank bonelessly but with amazing grace to the ground just off the path, crushing a small gathering of deep purple violets in it's wake, Duo watched and his grin slowly faded. Heero landed on his side, legs uselessly sprawled and one arm caught under him, and that tear now made it's path sideways towards the parted gap of his mouth. That wasn't pretty any more, and so the braided male turned away in disinterest.
A minute later, he had turned back and knelt beside that crumpled form. His eyes moved blankly over the relaxed and suddenly young face of the boy who had once saved the Queen of the world and prevented war. He dug through the tight pockets of Heero's jeans, and at last emerged with his wallet.
He turned and calmly began his walk out of the park, not to the parking lot which Heero had been heading to, but towards the fence that ran along three sides of the lovely square of green in the middle of a growing city. By the time he had reached it, that blank look had returned, and he had managed to disassemble his gun into a handful of pieces. These were shoved into his pocket along with the leather folds of the dead brunette's wallet.
After a look down both directions of the empty street, Duo scaled the fence with natural grace and flipped himself over and onto the road that lay beyond. It took him only three minutes of walking to reach his jeep which had been parked on a residential side street. Opening the door and boosting himself onto the seat, Duo fell deeper into that perfect sea of completion. He started the car and drove.
Twenty minutes, and the black and mud colored automobile was pulling onto the road that led down by the manmade lake that Quatre and he would sometimes fish at. He parked and walked down to the abandoned shores of it, then out onto the shifting, creaking planks of the dock. Here he remembered the blonde's laughter as Duo had managed to reel in a trout (all stocked, of course, nothing natural har de har) too quickly and ended up slapping himself in the face with it. As he drew his arm back and chucked the barrel of the gun as far as he could into it's unmeasured depths, he was smiling again. Duo returned to his car, and drove on.
The next stop in his mindless trips that night was actually a field on the outskirts of their expanding town. Here, though he doubted Quatre remembered, he had once sat on a blanket with him after a wonderful meal of sandwiches, warm sodas, and fruit, and they had talked about their dreams until the sun had set and it got too cold. He parked beside the wire fence that lined that long grassed terrain, got out, and ducked under it's barrier. It wasn't hard for him to find the exact spot they had once sat, and he sank down there himself now. As Duo looked up at the star overhead, stars that he had once flown through with a mission, he considering the way that his friend's hair had seemed to glow brighter than the sun that day. His fingers absently pulled the ground open and shoved dirt aside as he smiled at the memory of wiping whipped cream off the end of a button nose. The rest of the gun was buried there, an offering to a summer sun and perfect afternoon, than the American was on the move again.
The final delivery of the evening was to a darkened church in what was clearly the 'down' side of town. The jeep slowed to a crawl before this building, then stopped. It's headlights died, but the inside one came on, bathing the young man with the no-expression inside in a sickly yellow life.
He pulled out Heero's wallet and opened it. Thin fingers pulled out the cards (library, grocery market, credit, driver's license) and placed them absently along one black covered thigh. Those would be cut up and pieces scattered through out several trash bins as he made his way finally to the club. The money he pulled out, twenty-three dollars and forty-one cents, would be pushed through the mail slot of the church. Heero carried no pictures, nor had Duo expected any. If he had found one, he might have felt the first real pang of regret.
What he did find only brought a dim spark of anger, and then a sense of gladness that was powerful enough to make his lips pull back in a feral smile. Tucked behind the far-too neatly folded bills of cash was a tightly pressed sheet of lined paper. Duo lifted this out without thought, and dropped the leather remains of the wallet (three days from now, a boy would find this on the side of the road two miles from here, clean it, and present it to his father as a present) onto his lap before carefully pulling it open.
Heero,
Will you open your lap top tonight and see this resting on it's precious keys and be angry I opened it, or will you read this before that and know I only did it to let you know I was thinking of you? I always am, you know? Sometimes, I find myself frustrated with the way you dwell in my head and come dancing into thoughts at the strangest moments, but mostly that happens and I'm grateful. You'll be back in two days, and I'll be here, but in the time between then, those forty some odd hours, in my dreams you won't have left at all.
Ha, by now you must be scowling down at the paper, one paragraph in, or maybe stopped reading altogether. Too gooey, I bet. It's true though. I'll take you out to dinner when you do come back if you'd like, my treat, and maybe you can tell me about the meeting. Or, if you are too tired for such thing, maybe I can just rub your shoulders and feel you there again… I'm lonely without you already, and as I write this, you are only in the shower preparing to leave. Come back soon, and be careful.
Your Quatre.
The note was dated more than a month ago, he could read that in the top corner as it shook within his grasp. It was that old, and Heero had kept it for whatever god forsaken reason. The part of Duo that was already beyond gone thought it was because somehow, the brunette had known he would see it now and had put it there as some last revenge, even from beyond the grave. The more rational part, which was fairly completely ignored, knew that it was one of those rare signs that the bastard youth had, at least on some deep subconscious level, cared for the effort Quatre put forth.
Whatever the reason, it stung him now. At first, his pale fingers had moved to the top of the page as though to shred it, but he couldn't do that.
If he had stayed home that night months ago, Quatre would have come to him, like he usually did. If he had spoken up when he'd first walked in and seen Heero's hand stroking his blonde's pretty locks, this wouldn't have gotten so far. If he'd just -told- him for once instead of joking, this would have been his sweet note, and it would have been in his wallet only to be pulled out and looked at daily.
The next one that came from those beautiful, childlike fingers would be his.
This one, he would keep as a reminder until he got his own. He carefully refolded the long-ago written letter, then slipped it into the back pocket of his own pants.
In the yellow light within the jeep, so like the unforgiving sun that bore down on a dying man in the desert, Duo got to work.
-----
The tall grandfather clock that rested opposite the large TV in their living room (an addition that Wufei had oddly enough insisted on) was chiming out it's melodic song for three o'clock when at last the front door of the team's home opened. Eventually, they would divide up again, go their own ways and build their own futures, but for now the past still lurked around each corner and threatened to overtake them, and it was easier to survive with someone to lean on.
Duo crept in, turning to silently close and lock the door behind him, then moving towards the hall and the nightlight that illuminated it's long corridor. He was tired, and he'd never felt better.
He turned down the hall with a silent whish of hair slapping against his backside, and behind him, the figure he'd disturbed on the couch closed his sleepy emerald eyes and lay back down, his book again forgotten over the tanned planes of his bare chest. Trowa wasn't bothered enough by Duo's late night return from what he presumed was clubbing to get up and trudge to his own room… He would in an hour though, when he dreamed of something with sharp teeth and a manic grin, skeletal hands reaching for him, and thus rolled off onto the floor with a yelp.
The American didn't see him. His destination was the second door from the end, the one with the lamp glow seeping from under it like water.
He approached it with the reverence of someone entering holy ground, his touch on it's imitation gold painted knob like one handling a relic. It was turned without a sound and the door was pushed open a mere inch, Duo shifting until one rich purple eye was plastered to the crack.
With the warm room, there was a dresser decorated with an army of pictures, most featuring beautiful smiling girls with heads of familiar blonde hair. The bedside table was likewise decorated, those the ones here held the same females clustered together, and there was on of an adorably young Quatre clinging worshipfully to the legs of an older brunette. Duo had held Quatre multiple times when the boy would dry over the man in that picture, and he had reassured him and run his fingers over his hair when that earnest face had lifted to his, begging to be told that he had been right, and that maybe that dead father was at last proud. Duo didn't know his father, couldn't care less about ever doing so, but he cared for Quatre's simply because the boy did, and he always nodded and said he thought that Mr. Winner was in fact very proud wherever he was.
The walls were decorated with posters, somewhat plain ones that featured instruments with flowers usually beside them, but still undeniably lovely. Duo's favorite was the one just over Quatre's bed, the violin . A single rose laid over it's strings, and for some reason, that struck the braided male as romantic and sexy. One day, he'd wanted to surprise Quatre by placing one on the instrument that rested respectfully in it's case in one corner right now. There was also a chair against one wall, and beside it a small table that was overburdened with books. Duo liked to read a good story once in a while, but more so, he liked to sit on the end of the bed and watch the Arabian as he sat tucked in that chair, with a tome in his lap, and immersed himself in whatever world was written on it's pages. Sometimes, he wanted to be that world, but more often than not he was content just to know he was occasionally in Quatre's.
The bed was really the only thing he was looking at now. Resting against the backboard, propped up on a stack of pillows and with his head tilting to the side in his slumbering state, the boy Duo lived and killed for, rested. In his lap was a book of poems, marked with a piece of ribbon that Duo knew he sometimes would nibble absently on when the reading got particularly good. On the table nearby sat a mostly full mug of cinnamon tea. He couldn't disillusion himself and think that Quatre had fallen asleep waiting for him, he knew better, but Duo wasn't upset.
Like the note, the next time it would be for him.
Of course, his Quatre would rarely be forced to wait up for him at all. He would do his very best to get home each night and surround himself with the arms and kisses of the other male. He wasn't stupid enough to make Heero's mistakes.
Part of him yearned to go in and to pull the thick covers up over that slim form, to brush back those flaxen bangs and kiss the half-moon of Quatre's forehead… But he might wake up. That wasn't good, not yet. There would be time for that in the future. Not tomorrow, because there would be much crying and mourning for all of them (he would be sorry for Quatre being unhappy so he knew he'd manage without drawing suspicion), but some day soon.
He settled for blowing a kiss to the sleeping male, then closing the door, crossing the hall to his own room.
Not bothering to flick the switch to the right of the door, Duo trudged through the known mess of his room and towards the bed, shedding his cloths as he went. They fell on the floor and were alone there, since he predicted right and the pile that had been developing a life of it's own in the corner had been pulled out, washed, and placed somewhere to wait for his attention.
His trip to the empty mattress -- not for long, though -- was interrupted only when he pulled the note free of his back pocket. The pants were dropped, the folded paper was not. Duo knelt and felt along blindly under his bed, fingers seeking out the narrow tear in the bedding there, delving inside, and at last emerging with a small black book trapped between them. It's pages, most covered from top to bottom and side to side with messy, nearly unintelligible script went ignored. The hatred that populated one that parchment wasn't for today either, and maybe never would be needed again. The problem that had tainted those narrow pages was gone. Dead.
Killing someone shouldn't affect your relationship. Or at least any of theirs, since none of them could claim to have clean hands (even the boy that was sometimes jokingly called an angel) but in this case, it did. It granted him a key into a life that before had been locked against him. He had a way now, to live again, and he thought the price of one life was more than a fair trade. Besides, like he's told Quatre, Heero wasn't any good for him…
He pushed Heero's letter between the pages around the middle, closed it, then put it back.
Then the boy with the long hair crawled between the cool sheets of his bed, closed his eyes, and drifted away into the all consuming embrace of sleep.
Trowa may have had nightmares that he couldn't remember and wouldn't speak of if he could, not even to his best friend, and Wufei may have awaken once with the words 'Oh gods, what has he done?' stuck within his throat like clots of dead flesh only to tumble back then into a feverish, uneasy sleep, not to remember such a thing the next morning when the policemen's knock of their door awoke them, but Duo slept that wonderful, well deserved sleep that people got after a long day of very satisfying goal completion. His dreams were light, and most were centered around a smile that was like the sun, and eyes that were like the sea after a storm, welcoming, warm, and only for him.
Sometime, in the impenetrable darkness that owned the land just before dawn, Duo rolled over, and he smiled in that sleep. It was an enchanting expression, filled with hopes and dreams, treasures buried deep within the mind that could only come to the surface of that dank, polluted inner well in moments such as unconsciousness.
Tomorrow was going to be a beautiful day.