Jess: Damn that Nuri and her damn angst!!
Heero: You did say that you can't make things too easy on us because then you wouldn't have a good story.
Jess: ((grumbles)) I guess… at least that means I can have fun with the Fluff… but now I feel an angst streak coming on! ((pouts)) I'm a sucker for angst fluff and I've always wanted to write a tearjerker but I guess that'll have to wait.
Heero: Are you going to get back at those two idiots of now? For someone "so much like me," you sure have poor organizational skills and lack of focus. We are on a mission!
Jess: Ninmu Ryokai!!! .
Lunar Symphony
Chapter 10: Heero POV
I woke up slowly, stretching under the sheets as I savored the warmth of my bed and the lazy contentment lingering in my consciousness. Never had I felt this level of coziness and I attributed it to the fact that I had finally let my feelings for Duo be known, even if he was asleep when I said it. I had waited until Duo was in that sleep-waking space and whispered that I loved him. My world was at rest.
I rolled over slightly, intending to wrap my arms around Duo but only found cold sheets. My eyes snapped open and I sat up in bed. All traces of my Duo were gone. I got up to put on some boxers and an undershirt then went to go check the kitchen then the bathroom. When I didn't find him, I went back to my room to get dressed and look for him and I spotted a neatly folded paper on my pillow. This could not be good. Slowly, I reached out for the paper and plucked it off its cushy surroundings. I read it slowly, read it a second time, then my eyes just seemed to stop reading the words and I dropped the note. I turned around and punched the defenseless wall over my headboard. The single punch caused a crater in the otherwise flawless wall and left me feeling empty with only a mild soreness around my knuckles. I did say I had a problem with emotions. I removed my hand from the hole it had made and shook off the little white bits of plaster and chipped paint stuck between my fingers.
Why did Duo leave me? I sat down heavily on the bed then curled up in a little ball under the blankets and shook in anger and hurt. I am not equipped to handle this sort of emotional unrest. Rejection hurt more than I thought it would. Duo doesn't want me. He wants to be friends. I never thought those words would make me hurt as much as they were hurting now. I burrowed further into my mountain of pillows and blankets, unable to escape the cold feeling that was seeping into the general area of my chest. I knew I should get up out of bed and do something constructive. The soldier in me was yelling at me for being such a weakling, but the ache inside wouldn't subside enough to let me function. Besides, I didn't see a point.
I really don't know how much time I actually lay there, but it was obviously long enough for someone to notice.
"Heero!" someone called from outside my door after knocking on it. The knocking continued for a while but I ignored it. It went away eventually and I couldn't help but wonder if this is what depression felt like.
Some time later, the knocking came again, but this time, they let themselves in.
"Heewo?" Mei's voice called from my bedroom door, "Chwis came to get you fow bweakfast but you never came down." I grunted, but didn't move otherwise. "Cassie says lunch is weady. You skipped bweakfast and we'we wowwied. Awe you sick, Heewo?"
I stayed curled under the blankets, "I'm not hungry, Mei. Tell everyone to go ahead and eat without me. If I get hungry, I'll come down and get something myself." It was true enough. I felt queasy at the moment and I didn't have the energy to leave my bed.
"Kay…."
She left my room and left me to my misery. I stayed in bed all day and only got up to use the bathroom. Sometime during my voluntary bed-riddance, I picked up the note again. Why I was subjecting myself to more torture was a mystery. I re-read the scrawled handwriting, the words making my eyes sting.
He said he wasn't worthy of me…. He was rejecting me with an adapted version of the antiquated, "It's not you, it's me," line. How could I NOT feel like a loser?
How could Duo just dismiss me with a simple note on my pillow?
I was about to crumple the thing up and throw it across the room when I noticed something amiss; there were tearstains on the paper… but that was impossible! Duo never cried! He always began chanting his mantra, "boys don't cry" whenever tears threatened to spill, but that didn't change the fact that there were teardrops on the paper.
Did I hurt Duo that badly? Did I hurt him enough to leave me? Enough to cry? I didn't know what I could have possibly done to hurt my Duo. I thought that the talk I had with Trowa and later Mei would help me, but it didn't. I still managed to hurt Duo all the same. I still made him leave me.
Maybe I would have been better if they had never interfered. I would still have Duo if I had not followed their advice. Granted, I might not have a happy Duo… but I'd have him nonetheless.
I dropped the note on the floor and buried my face in the pillow. Maybe I could smother myself and let that be the end of it.
I drifted between my levels of consciousness wallowing in self-pity when someone started pounding at my door. I ignored it and covered my head with my blanket. I really didn't care who it was or why they were at my door, all I cared about was that my Duo was gone. The next thing I knew, I was sitting in my bathtub with the cold shower water hitting my head and soaking me along with my clothes. I blinked and shivered. Through my wet bangs, I saw a tall figure looming over me but I didn't care.
"What is with you, Yuy?" I heard a voice ask me. I grunted. "Snap out of it!" I felt his hands stand me up and shake me, getting his own jeans and t-shirt wet. "What happened to you, Yuy? You haven't been to work in two days!"
"I don't care." I slumped back to lean against the wall while Trowa turned off the shower.
"Well at least you're not catatonic any more. What is going on?" I didn't answer. "You either spill what's going on in that head of yours or I'll make you spill." I still didn't answer and stared at the wall. The next thing I knew, my head snapped back with the force of his fist in my jaw.
I growled at him, but didn't react until he punched me in the stomach. I bent over, clutching my abused abdomen then leaped toward him, sopping wet. We took the fight into the bedroom and rolled around, knocking things over and making a mess.
"Now will you talk to me?" Trowa ground out as he shoved me against the wall, his forearm at my neck, pinning me there.
"This is all your fucking fault!" I screamed as I kicked his legs out from under him.
Trowa fell to his knees, bringing me down with him, "What's my fault?" He rolled me over and pinned me onto the floor with his long limbs, his hands holding my wrists on each side of my face.
"It's all your fault Duo left me!"
Trowa started and got off me then offered his hand to help me up. I took it and was hauled to my feet. "Okay, I'll bite. How is it my fault he left you and why haven't you been eating? You're not at your usual strength today and you're thinner than I remember you."
I grunted and sat at my bed, then bent over to pick the rumpled paper from the floor and held it out to him. "I told him I cared about him… I told him I love him, we had a perfect night, and when I woke up, that's what I found." Trowa took the note and read it while I continued talking. "You and Mei told me that I was hurting Duo by not telling him what I was feeling. You told me that I should show him I care and that I should make sure he knew I wasn't using him. Well I did! And do you know what happened? He left me, he fucking LEFT me!" I was on the verge of another breakdown when Trowa sat next to me and put an arm around my shoulders. I turned to him and let the tears spill, as he rubbed my back."
"And you're letting Duo get away with this?" he whispered.
I looked up and blinked dumbly at him, "What do you mean?"
"Well… it seems to me that this is Duo trying to test how much you care about him. He feels like he's not worthy so he's letting you go. If I'm not mistaken, Duo is waiting to see if you'll go and find someone else, or if you'll go after him anyway. He wants to know if you'll take him the way he is, imperfections and all."
"How do YOU know?" I asked petulantly.
Trowa smirked at me, we've both changed a lot after the war. "Because I did the same things to Quatre," he said.
I was stunned, "Why would you do a thing like that?"
He smiled at me, "Well, it's kind of hard to think you're worth it when the person you love is worth a few hundred billion all on his own… not counting all the rest of the Winner assets he owns and runs. I couldn't think of a reason he'd want to be with a no-name ex-clown nobody like me when he could have anyone or anything on earth or space." He paused and started blushing, much to my surprise, "It turns out that Quatre can be a very stubborn, pig-headed bastard. He didn't give upon me… he even went so far as to track down every circus on earth and space to find the one I was traveling with. When he found me, he forcefully dragged me back to his home and refused to let me go until I agreed never to try that sort of thing again."
I listened intently to Trowa's story. I never even knew that their relationship was anything less than gundanium-solid. To think that maybe Duo and I could have that level of closeness in the future was a very promising thing indeed.
"So I should go after him?" I asked quietly.
"Yes. And fast. I want to finish this mission as soon as I can so I can go back to my Quatre."
"If Duo takes me back, I'm quitting the Preventers, you know."
Trowa nodded, "I figured as much… are you going to go talk to him?"
"Hai." I got up and got a change of clothes since what I was wearing was apparently two days old and headed for the shower. I was currently wet, but not clean. Twenty minutes later, I was dressed in some loose faded jeans and a royal blue t-shirt with the numbers "01" stenciled on the front. I saw Trowa off then put on my shoes and went in search for Duo.
In Maxwell's Haven, I found Duo with the kids watching an old video clip in the main room. At the "G-fan's" request, it was one of the documentaries of the gundam pilots based purely on speculation. I walked up to the group quietly, all of the kids in the house were watching, and nobody noticed my entrance, then grabbed Duo from behind, a hand over his moth to keep him from attracting anyone's attention.
"We have to talk, NOW," I hissed into his ear. Duo nodded, a little shiver going through his body as I released him. We both left the room and I followed him into the room he had fixed up for himself at the Haven, which was on the first floor.
He closed the door as soon as we were both inside and looked up at me, shyly. "Is there anything I can do for you Heero?"
I was angry. I obviously don't take rejection well, and these conflicting emotions were tearing me apart. I threw the crumpled note at Duo and glared at him.
Duo caught the note then looked at it, recognizing his handwriting, "Oh…" He sighed, "I was wondering if I'd ever see you again…I… I was afraid you'd left. I kept sending kids to call you down for food, but you never answered the door or the phone. Mei even told me that you changed the pass-card code so she's been staying with us."
When had I changed it? I really didn't remember. "I want to know why the hell you left that on my bed," I ground out, glaring intently at the offending paper in his hands.
"Well… I thought I was being very clear as to why…" Duo trailed off.
I stomped my way to where he stood, backing him up into a corner, "Do not toy with my emotions, Duo Maxwell. I do not take it well." I placed my hands on each side of his head, my feet planted at shoulder length so that he couldn't escape. "Tell me right now… I want the whole truth. Not half-truths, not non-lies, not evasive answers." He nodded, looking a little frightened as I growled at him, "Tell me to my face Duo, do you want me to leave L2?"
Duo shook his head 'no' staring at me with wide eyes.
"Was this a joke on your part to see what I would do?"
"N-no, Hee-chan! I wouldn't do that to you!" I couldn't help but notice Duo's voice was cracking.
"Then why, damn it? What was the point in hurting me the way you did?" I felt something warm slide down my face, but I ignored it. "What was it that I did so wrong that you had to leave me?!" I pounded my fist against the smooth wall and created a matching wall-accent to the one above my headboard. I was shaking in anger, confusion, and hurt, trying to sort out what was happening between us.
Duo shrunk into his corner, his voice soft and vulnerable, "I thought that you were only with me out of pity… I thought that maybe, you didn't really want me the way I was, so I gave you an easy way out…"
The brokenness in his voice knocked all the steam out of me in an instant. I reached out, a twinge of hurt in my heart when he flinched as though I was going to punch him. "Duo…" I breathed, taking his thin form into my arms and holding him close.
Duo's arms came around me and hugged me back. Both of us were shaking and neither was willing to let the other go. "Trowa was right… I'll have to thank him after all…." I whispered to myself.
"Hm?"
"Nothing Koi." I hugged Duo closer to me, kissing his lips fully, making him moan in my mouth. We pulled apart, our faces merely inches from each other, both of us breathing heavily. "Duo…" I whispered.
"Hai?"
"I am a very jealous boyfriend. No one is allowed to hold you like this but me… and if I ever find you streetwalking again, I can guarantee you won't be happy with me."
Duo laughed a little at that. "Don't worry, koi… you've ruined me for that line of work, besides, I got kids to raise now."
"Good. See that it stays that way. Oh, and one more thing… If you ever get the bright idea to try and pull a stunt like this again, try telling me straight out, or cut the bullshit and shoot me…again." I grinned at the end, letting Duo know I was talking about our meeting and trying to lighten the mood.
Duo laughed at that and gave me another soul-searing kiss.
Jess: Another chapter and another round of hot potato.
Duo: You two just love messing with our love lives… we should do the same to you!
Heero: Duo.. They're not together, so how could we?
Duo: Well, that's what fics are for! We make stuff up and put them in the situations WE think up… besides… if they can make us dress like, or actually BE women… I'm sure we can do a gender change on one of them….
Heero: You know it's Nuriko's turn to write, don't you? She's the one that's all vicious with us. At least Jess gives us fluff.
Nuriko: I heard that, you little ingrates!
Duo and Heero: ((at each other)) see what you did?!?!
Jess: Until the next exciting chapter of Lunar Symphony, Ja mata ne!
Nuriko: Hey! That's MY line!
Jess: Bye!! .