Title: Suede 4?
Author: Seraphim Grace
Archive: if you want it, just ask.
Feedback: Always appreciated and replied to.
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: 1x2
Warnings: Angst, shows an attempted suicide -NOT A DEATHFIC
Notes: the lyric is from Tori Amos' Suede which gave me the idea (and
happens to be uber sexy for those interested)

Suede 4

"You always felt like suede
There are days I am your twin
Peek a boo, hiding
underneath your skin"

01.32

Time passed with inexorable slowness as Heero watched the clock blink slowly into the night. Poets said that a moment was eternity for a prisoner and eternity a moment for a lover. The chill winter night of Prague was among the longest he had ever known. Duo had left him nearly nine hours before. He wondered if eternity was shorter than those nine hours waiting in a hotel room and worrying. He had ordered food that had gone cold and now sat in a pool of it's own congealed grease. He had tried to read, but couldn't settle. He stood at the window for a long time, telling himself that Duo was perfectly capable of looking after himself, that Duo scared armies, he could certainly make his own way back to the hotel, but another part of him saw him floating face down in the chill water of the river.

01.33

He flicked the television on, and scrolled through the channels. There was a news broadcast talking of an upcoming sports event in the city. He turned the TV off and looked hungrily at the white bed. He was tired. Duo wouldn't like it if he waited up for him, no matter how desperately he wanted to. There would be an argument. He could go to bed and then pretend that he had been asleep and that Duo had woken him. Even though Duo would recognise it for a sham. He might also recognise how terrified Heero was that Duo would leave him again.

01.34

The past few days with Duo had been calming. He had slept better than he had since the war, even when his sleep was fitful and broken by nightmares. Somehow just listening to Duo's soft breathing, neither of them snored, calmed him. He wondered if it was because they were comrades, that they knew the horrors the other had seen, even if only by sharing their own.

01.35

He came to the ready conclusion that he would pretend to sleep. It would show Duo that he trusted him. He would give him until oh-four-hundred hours before he went out searching, even if part of him was convinced that in some dark twisting alleyway of the Stare Mesto that there was a knife between Duo's ribs. He pulled his sweater over his head and stripped out of the thick jeans. In just his cotton briefs, he slid into the bed and resolved to wait.

01.36

There was some sort of movement outside the hotel, the sound of something dropped. It wasn't Duo.

01.44

Heero decided that giving Duo to oh four hundred was a little long, it would have meant that he was on his own for twelve hours, he decided that fifteen minutes was more than long enough. He would wait until oh two hundred and then go out and start searching, showing Duo he trusted him or not, they were in unfamiliar territory and Duo was weakened by his hospital stay.

01.52

Duo opened the door as quietly as he could to avoid waking Heero. He half expected Heero to be sat up, facing the door, arms crossed practising his glare on the wood. He wasn't.

Duo was a little surprised, and he didn't know if he was offended or honoured, that Heero had gone to bed; that he trusted him to come home on his own. He would decide that later. The room was warm and he was cold. The two beds seemed acres apart.

"Heero," he whispered into the dark, sitting down on his own bed. "Are you awake?"

"Yes," Heero answered quietly.

"About earlier, I'm sorry," Duo said, his eyes were downcast in the moonlight from the window. "I just needed some time."

"I know." Heero said quietly, the line of his arm above the quilt, where he lay on his side, was mesmerising.

"Heero," Duo said, "can I get into bed with you? I don't want to be alone anymore."

Heero scooted over the bed and opened the quilt with a faint smile. "I must have imagined a thousand ways for you to be dead," he said as Duo climbed in beside him. "It took all my reserve to trust that you'd be okay."

"Thank you." Duo said, tilting his head up to look at Heero where he lay on the pillow, his arm casually draped over Duo's side and their legs twined together. He licked his lips and took a deep breath, but Heero merely pulled him tighter, and tucked Duo's head under his chin.

"Go to sleep," Heero murmured into the night and the feathery softness of Duo's hair, "I'm here, I'm not going anywhere."

About a half hour's drive outside Prague was the town of Kutna Hora, and it was to the small suburb of Sedlec that Heero drove them. He stopped the car outside a gothic looking church, but as Duo's eyes were fixed on the ground for the whole journey he didn't see the unusual weathervane.

Heero opened the door for him and he climbed out of the car wearily. "This," Heero said with an expansive arm movement, "is the ossuary."

Slowly, as if he had been cast in lead, Duo followed Heero up the steps to the church and didn't balk as he paid the small entrance fee. "Is this your first time to the Church of Santa Barbara?" The old man on the door asked.

"No," Heero said, "I've been here before, but my friend hasn't."

The man opened the drawer on his desk and handed him a small brochure, "these are local restaurants and hotels and some pictures of the church. Enjoy your visit and go with god."

Duo snorted in answer but said nothing.

The church of Santa Barbara in Sedlec was the ossuary, and looking around it Duo let out a low whistle. "I don't know if this is heresy or worship." He said.

The church was adorned, liberally, with the bones of the dead. Streamers of human skulls and tibia crisscrossed across the ceiling.

A giant coat of arms decorated one wall.

In alcoves were cups made of bones.

The stands for candles were made of bones.

There was a pyramid of skulls behind a cage.

The chandelier was made of bones.

"An ossuary," Heero said, "is a place to store human bones," his voice was low, "and when they ran out of room in the ground they got a local artisan to find a use for the bones rather than grind them up and use them as building materials, like other churches did. This is why I took you to Prague."

Duo was gaping at the spectacle, which although grim and ghoulish had a weird sense of celebration about it. As bizarre as the items were they were, in a strange sense, also beautiful. This was not, as it would seem to others, a despots favoured sense of decorating, but a celebration of death that was in no way ghoulish. The artist had taken the materials at hand and created something wondrous. "How many?" He asked, his voice low and awe-struck.

"Over forty thousand." Heero answered. "They were already dead, they just had no more room for them."

"It's," Duo began but the words were gone. "It's," he started again but failed, "it's."

"Perfect for the God of Death." Heero finished. "I knew you'd love it. If it was a war memorial, or the remains of a great plague I think this place would be hellish, but…"

"It's the memory of someone's desire to be here even after death." Duo said. "When I die, I want someone to build something out of my bones, just like this. Heero, thank you, for bringing me here."

Heero smiled, a little shyly, "this kind of place is no fun to see on your own, now go stand beside the monstrance, I've brought my camera and I know you'll want a record of this."

Author's Note:

The Ossuary in Sedlec is completely real and is amazing and gruesome and there are pictures of it on the web if you look it up.

This is a good link for it http: www. ludd. luth. Se /users /silverp /kutna.html (to make it show in FF net I had to add spaces)

And the little moment between Duo and Heero in bed, I aint explaining it, was Heero dense, did he ignore the come on, did Duo intend to give such a blatant come on, was he offended by the rebuttal or relieved? I aint saying. Come to your own conclusions on that one.