Part 6

Duo woke to the persistent shaking on his shoulder, "g'way," he mumbled turning back into the warm pillow, the curtains around the bed had kept it quite snug and he was lovely, warm and comfortable piled underneath the mountain of covers and furs that were on the bed.

"Duo," a woman said very clearly, "Duo, you have to wake up."

"Snot morn'ng." He mumbled pulling the blankets up tighter about his neck.

"Duo," her voice was calm and gently chiding, "Duo, you have to wake up."

"Don' wanna." He protested.

"Duo." She repeated, "Duo, you have to wake up."

"G'way." He snarled.

"Duo Maxwell, get out of that bed this instant, or so help me, I'll." Duo sat up, simultaneously rubbing his eyes and yawning. The woman was unfamiliar to him, she was perched on the side of his bed, a feat that was worth mentioning as she had crept past Heero where he slept on the ottoman and then his defences. She had short wild dark hair and large almond shaped eyes that were a piercing and rather chilly blue, her mouth was a firm line and she wore a pair of overalls. He hadn't seen anyone in Dathyl that had worn anything like that. "You have to help him, Duo, you have to help him."

"Help who?" Duo snarled, "is little Timmy down the well, perhaps? Or maybe it's lassy who's been attacked by a killer kangaroo."

"No," the woman said, reaching out to affectionately brush Duo's bangs away from his face where they were sleep mussed. "It's Heero, he's dying."

Duo blinked repeatedly as his brain tried and failed to understand the message. "What?" he said.

"Heero's dying, it's the cold, he's asleep, he won't wake up. Help me, Duo, please, help me."

"Heero's sturdy, I'm not sure a little chill in the air is going to kill him." He stood up on the carpetted stair that surrounded the bed and tugged back the heavy velvet curtains. He took a swift intake of breath from his teeth, and it steamed in the chill air. The temperature in the room was brittle, the warming fire of the night before had long since burnt itself out and it was as if no one had stepped into the room in ten years the chill was that deep. "All right, maybe it's colder than I thought," he snapped at the woman with the amazing eyes, "what am I supposed to do? I can't light a fire." There was a halo around the moon where it hung high in the sky and the sky was the same crisp blue as the woman's eyes. "And it's far too late to find a servant to do it for me."

"Your bed is warm." She said, "put him in bed with you."

"Are you mad, lady?" Duo asked as he laid his hand on Heero's cheek, his breath was slow and uneven and his skin felt like stone. "Do you even have an idea what he'll do when he wakes up?"

"No," she answered, "you know who I am, please Duo, I can't help him, only you can, please, warm him through."

Rolling his eyes and suppressing a yawn Duo bent down and tried to shake Heero awake. There was no answer, he wasn't sure he expected one. With a muffled curse he picked the perfect soldier up, who was lighter than Duo expected, and carried him up to the bed, blankets and all. "If he kills me in the morning, lady, I am so chasing you down."

The woman smiled then reached across and moved Heero's bangs, he murmured under the pressure but didn't wake. Duo knew that if Heero hadn't been so out of it then he would have broken the woman's wrist for the presumption. One did not touch the perfect soldier except with his express permission in triplicate and signed in blood. "He won't kill you, Duo," her smile as she looked at Heero was remarkably fond, "I promise." Then she leant down and placed a kiss on the area of his forehead that she had cleared. "Thank you, Shinigami," she said and laid a kiss on Duo's palm in a gesture of genuflection. Then she was gone.

"If you're still here in the morning, Heero, I'm going to tell you about the bizarre-ass dream I just had, and then bawl you out for getting into bed with me." Pulling the blankets up so they covered both of them before reaching out to jerk the curtains shut again Duo lay back and thought about what had just happened. It had to be a dream, he thought rolling unto his side to face Heero. Heero was impervious to cold, wasn't he, and not likely to fall to hypothermia from a few hours in a freezing cold room with far too many draughts and snow on the way, was he? He reached out and touched Heero's arm, he was still chill to the touch.

"Well, buddy, if you wake up, you have to promise not to kill me for this." Duo took a deep breath before he crawled across Heero, straddling his thighs. "Some days I am so glad I had to listen to Howard teaching me to be a Sweeper." He said, he was talking so that if Heero did wake up he would know that this was not a threat and hopefully not kill him first and then ask questions later. "You see he lost a man to deep cold once, on a salvage ship, within an hour, and so he learnt everything there was to know about how cold kills." He spat on his hands and then started to rub Heero's arms roughly, forcing the circulation back into the clammy skin, "and how to stop it, you see what I'm doing, buddy, is trying to get the warmth deep within you back to the surface, it's easier with fluid, because, hell, for some things you need lubrication, ya'know, and as it is we're both gonna chafe somethin' awful." He spat into his hands again and began rubbing down the other arm. "If there were people about I'd get you into a hot bath to do this, but there aint, so I'm making do." He started on the chest which was barely rising and falling with Heero's breath, if he hadn't seen the steam outside the bed he would have been sure he was dead. He reached down and tugged off his sleeping breeches leaving him only in the underwear they had given him. "I'm pretty warm, hey, you used to whine that I was too hot all the time, and though I don't like to brag, I'm gonna be your hot water bottle, tonight," shimmying down Heero's body he began to rub hard at his legs through the fabric. "Sorry, buddy, but until I get a better offer you're sleeping with me."

Heero woke with a mostly naked Duo lying sprawled asleep across his chest and a strange stinging in most of his extremities. He did his best to process the information as it presented itself. He had banked the fire as best he could, not being used to such instruments, and then gone to sleep on the ottoman. The last thing he remembered was curling up because he was cold. He surmised he had gone to sleep.

He was definitely not on the ottoman, in fact he was in the down mattress bed that Duo had claimed the day before, and more disturbingly Duo was using him instead of the mattress. He was also snoring, and his knee was remarkably close to Heero's crotch and pressing against his bladder reminding him that they had had several bottles of wine and he desperately needed to relieve himself. Unable to think of anything to say, he mumbled "hn," in a bad temper.

"Sorry," Duo mumbled half asleep, then tumbled off Heero without a bye nor leave and curled up on the mattress beside him, clutching his arm and went back into the deep sleep he had had before.

"Baka." Heero murmured and slowly slid his arm out and then slipped across the bed to make his way to the privy. He opened the curtains to reveal it was still dark out, the curtains were heavy thick and dark so very little light was able to penetrate them. The servant girl, Primaverra, was laying out workings for a fire and she blushed when she saw him, and dropped a quick curtsey. Assessing his own body's instant rejection of the cold he pulled one of the furs off the bed and slipped his feet into the slippers on the step and made a very fast trip to the privy before deciding his best course of action was to get back into the warm bed and let the world go away until the room warmed up.

He slid back into the bed and Duo, still mostly asleep and probably not registering what he was doing curled up against him again. "Mary, Joseph and all the saints." Duo swore sitting up. "You're ice all over again, now lie down." He pressed his point with a hand to Heero's solar plexus and a naked leg thrown over his thigh. "Now go to sleep."

"Duo," he said, "why am I in your bed?"

"Too damn cold outside it, damn woman woke me up, said you were dying, cold as hell outside, brought you in, had to rub you down, didn't wake up, too stubborn to die." His voice was slurring as he slipped further and further into sleep.

"Who was the woman?" Heero asked, worried that someone had got past him.

"Your mum," Duo answered. "Looks just like you." Heero didn't ask any questions after that

Author's note:

I'll be honest, this is unbetaed and was a little rushed.