A/N: Well this was a fun one. They're all fun, though. I'm really hoping to get some review on this, see if I should keep pursuing it. So... R&R, I guess. Flame if you're in a bad mood (we all have those kinds of days)
Chapter Four- Blackbird SleepingHeero woke with a bare sunrise streaking through a crack in the curtains. He couldn't remember leaving them open. His paranoia was too great for that. He rolled his body slightly, surprised not to feel the dull ache of having worked it too hard the day before. Warmth slid across his stomach, and slumped down around the waist of his boxers. He glanced over to see Duo half-sprawled on the bed, with one arm around Heero. His bangs were flopped across the pillow, and his unmade face had a tranquil, angelic expression gently painted on. Heero couldn't help but smile. No war nightmares. That's good. Duo often slept fitfully, moaning and waking up screaming on more than one occasion. The war had scarred all of them. He slid out of bed and threw on a T-shirt before shuffling to the kitchen to make his coffee.
When he arrived, Lela was standing in the center, rocking Julian back and forth as she waited for a microwave to heat up his bottle. She was not heavily clothed at all, wearing on of Duo's baggy old T-shirts (black Orange County Choppers) that only fell a few inches below her crotch. He glanced at the clock. It was about six-thirty. He had a little bit of time.
"Want some coffee?"
She glanced up at him, her eyes filled with a deer-in-headlights expression. "I don't know," she answered softly before turning her head back to Julian. He let it go, and wandered to the cabinet, grabbing a bag of coffee beans.
"We've got Vienna Blend."
"I'm only up to feed Julian. I'm going to try and get some more sleep in a minute."
"Oh..." He shuffled around, filling up the water part, adding the filter, and throwing in some of the ground-up powder. "I've got to be at work soon."
"I figured," she answered. Her voice never moved much above a whisper, and he had to strain to hear her occasionally, especially when the microwave beeped loudly. He knew it wouldn't awaken Duo, who had been known to sleep through fire alarms and the occasional shuttle launch when he was duly tired. He could only imagine what time the boy had stumbled last night.
"Our neighbor had a baby a few months ago. She had to get rid of it or something, but I think she still has a lot of the clothes and toys and stuff."
"Oh."
"After Duo wakes up, you should get him to go over there and help you get something."
"He bought formula last night."
"What?"
"Julian woke up in the middle of the night," she replied. "I was trying to hush him up, but he was really hungry. Then, Duo came home. He'd bought some formula when he was doing the shopping you gave him." She smiled gently. "So, Julian's eating well for the first time in awhile."
"Good."
The silence pulsed around them, as Heero heard the beginning of the percolation from within the coffee maker. He loved that smell, the fresh brewing of good, strong coffee from somewhere real and authentic, with real and authentic beans that you could grind on your own. Ever since he'd started living on the colonies with Duo, things like that had been harder and harder to find. Occasionally, he would be able to navigate his way to some fresh coffee all on his own, not that worthless synthetic shit that you could buy at a convenience store. Most of the time, however, only Duo was able to weave his magic and find some true blue, wonderful coffee beans. He preferred the Vienna Blend to any other; it was, quite possibly, the best shit that anyone could get on L3.
"Did you lie to me?"
"Hn?"
"About Victor. Were you shitting me?" She'd placed the bottle in Julian's mouth, who began to greedily suck down the contents.
"No," Heero answered, his eyes down. He couldn't bring himself to look at her, not when she was like this. "I wasn't."
"Okay..." She pursed her lips then, trying to think of what she wanted to say next. "Thank you."
This caught Heero by surprise. He stared at her, rocking the bundle in her arms, and she looked back up at him with the first light of happiness that he'd seen in her since the night before. "What?"
"I mean... I don't feel good about the fact that Victor is dead. I really, really loved him. And I really don't feel good about that fact that you're being so nice to me because you murdered the love of my life." Heero winced. He'd been trying since the war to avoid thinking about all of the things he'd done as 'murder.' Whether or not it was seemed to be the kind of thing he would leave up to individual opinion, and not dwell on himself. "I think my parents would have warmed up to him after the war. But, sometimes, these kinds of things are just meant to happen." She shifted Julian in her arms, who was still intently focused on getting nutrients into his system. She continued, even though Heero didn't want her to.
"My whole life, I've been dependent on people. It's pretty sick when I look back on it, but I couldn't fight for myself. Someone always took care of me. My mom, my dad, Victor, they've all done wonders for me. But, then they all died. I've been on my own, and even better, I've been in their position. I can't rely on someone else to resolve everything anymore. I've got my own problems to take care of, but Julian needs me more than I need myself. That's the kind of dependency I've been putting on other people for as long as I've been around. Only now, I'm finally cured of it. So... thank you, Heero."
She turned around and went to the hammock where Julian slept. After he burped, she set him down and wrapped him up again. He swiftly went to sleep, closing his poetically beautiful brown eyes. She crossed back through the kitchen, only for a moment, to see a still speechless Heero standing in the spot where she had been. She smiled at him, a true smile. "You'd better go. I wouldn't want you to be late for work."
It wasn't until she'd left the room and was back in her bed with the door closed that Heero finally found the words to say in reply.
"Hn."
By the time Duo finally forced himself out of bed, he wished he hadn't. Heero was, of course, gone; he always left for work at some ungodly hour. Duo always found the sheets a bit better, neater than they had been when he fell asleep in them. He sighed to himself as he groped around on the floor with bleary eyes for a pair of jeans. As his hands finally found their goal, he shook his head back and forth. He wished that Heero worked less. Things were a lot easier when they were unemployed, just after the war, when some of the funds still went to them. Finally, they knew that they would lose it if they didn't find jobs. Temporary insanity makes job searching difficult. Even if the two of them could manage to get an application, references were either dead or in hiding. Under the alias of Megan Rose (who was a transgender twenty-two-year-old with loads of experience and a half-decent education) Duo had found a job bartending at the nearest gay bar. The hours were a pain in the ass, simply because there's never anything perfect about a job. However, he did love what it was he did. Not long afterwards, Heero started working for the Preventers at the request of Sally Po. Duo should've thought of that before Crazy Legs. Did he? No. And now, he reaped the benefits. Which was basically equal to dealing with Heero's flashbacks and never getting laid. Fact: Duo Maxwell was not the kind of person who could go long periods of time without getting laid. Fact: Duo Maxwell was involved in a committed relationship with longtime friend and partner Heero Yuy.
Fact: Megan Rose was not.
Duo stepped out of his room, not welcoming the sunlight that streamed through the kitchen windows. He stared at the walls, admiring his own work. He wanted to change it again, but he couldn't imagine what he would do. His ears suddenly caught a light giggle coming from the next room, and he deemed it necessary for his own shirtless self to investigate this matter. Julian was propped on the couch, laughing gaily as Lela danced in front of him. Duo leaned against the doorframe and watched her with his arms crossed. She was dancing with her eyes closed, holding one of his boas in both hands, looped over her shoulders as she spun. She looked different than he remembered her then; she wasn't the product of many efforts on the part of Megan Rose and Her Magical Myriad of Make-ups. She was Lela Donnelly, a little girl who'd worked too hard and had to move on too fast. For an instant, he saw her as a small child in his mind's eye, and it brought a smile to his face. He could perfectly picture her dancing in the rain with a soaked T-shirt and white Keds sneakers. She opened her brilliantly green eyes and stopped moving immediately.
"Aw," Duo pouted half-heartedly as he watched her reaction with bemusement. A gentle blush was creeping its way into her cheeks, and her arms straightened out with the bright feathers clutched between her fists.
"Sorry... I figured you'd be asleep for... a little while."
"Well, I'm not," he replied, stepping towards her. He gave her a light kiss on the cheek and she smiled at him.
"You're a good kid."
"Nah," he replied, and he meant it. "Come on. Have you had any coffee?"
"It's three in the afternoon, Duo."
"No shit?" She shook her head. "Damn... well, I'm getting some coffee. I bet Julian's hungry."
"When is he not?" she quipped. He wanted to speak in retort, but she beat him to it. "After all, he did try to eat your hair."
"Damned kid," Duo muttered, making sure that there was no way Lela could take him seriously. He caught the small pink nose between two knuckles and tweaked it gently. Julian smiled with that same toothless grin that captured Duo's heart every time he saw it. "God," he muttered, walking towards the fridge. He turned back once and glanced over his shoulder. "I want one."
"Be glad you don't have one."
"What?" Duo had his head in the refrigerator, and was trying to dig up some good food.
"Nothing," she answered. She hadn't meant it and didn't know why the hell she'd even said it. She loved Julian with all of her heart. Still, a nagging little voice in the back of her head made a daily habit of telling her how much better off she would have been without him. She tried not to listen to that voice, as it tended to make her do stupid things such as take drugs or binge drink with her baby in some shit apartment. She had been a bad mother for a little while, but she was trying to recover. Her goal in life was to get over herself and start being less shitty to other people. It wasn't going as well as she hoped.
"Mmm... cold pizza," Duo said to himself, talking in that voice that people do when they're responding to their own thoughts. "You want a slice, Lela?"
"No thanks. Could you grab the milk, though?" She planted Julian firmly against one hip, and juggled with scooping formula into the bottle.
"Here, let me get that."
"I've got it, Duo."
"No, dude, take care of your kid."
"Duo, I can get the goddamned formu—," The plastic bottle fell onto the ground. Both of them stared at it for a moment, at the valuable nutrients in the powder that had just spilled all over one of Duo's linoleum creations, a lotus blossom floating on a silvery pond. "Well... shit."
"You want me to get it?"
"Sure," she replied with a sigh. Suddenly, she had a thought. "Duo?"
"Yeah?" he asked. He was bent over, trying to usher the errant little flakes back into the bottle so that he could toss it out and start over.
"Heero mentioned something earlier..." She subconsciously twisted her hair in one hand, still holding Julian firmly against her hip, "about... someone next door."
"Zach?"
"...I don't know..."
"Or maybe he's talking about Christian..."
"Whichever one had a baby."
Duo turned slowly, and pointed part of the bottle at her. "Aaaaah... then you mean Roselyn."
"I... I guess. I'm not totally familiar with these people yet."
"Right, right. Yeah, she lives across the hall. She's pretty nice. Why'd he bring it up?"
"He said they might have some stuff that we could use..."
"Wow... that's the longest conversation anyone's had with Heero in a long time."
"Yeah... well, you should've been here last night."
"Why?" Duo questioned, refilling the bottle and shaking it up. "What happened?"
"We just got to talking and... I don't know just stupid stuff."
"Oh... he told you about Victor, didn't he?"
Lela's face was pasted with this white expression of shock. "Ye-ye-yeah," she whispered. "How... How did you know about that?" Duo sighed heavily, putting both his hands down hard on the edge of the countertop. He stared at the dull tile and realized that he should paint that.
"You want to help me with the counter?"
"What?"
Duo gestured once at the countertop then turned to put the bottle in the microwave. "I just realized how bland it is compared to the rest of this place. I think that I should paint it, and was wondering if you wanted to help."
"I... I guess."
"Cool... Tell you what." He popped open the microwave door as the loud beep sounded, and dabbed some of the milk on his wrist. "Damn!" he cried, shaking off his skin. "That stuff's too hot. Let's go across the hall and see if we can get Roselyn to let us use some of her old stuff, okay?"
"Yeah... sure..." Lela didn't care about the stuff. She wanted to know why Duo was so secretive. She wanted to know why he put up the alias; it couldn't have been just for drag queen purposes. Duo was a transgender name. Lela could plainly see that. She wanted to know what Duo was hiding, even though it wasn't for her to know. She knew this, and that made her crave the knowledge more.
Most importantly, however, Lela wanted to know exactly what Duo knew about Victor.