Trying for Peace

When I arrived to collect him from the small hotel, Duo was as white as chalk, with dark rings around his eyes, his hair limp and greasy, his cheeks hollowed out. He looked ill and in pain, and he had the stale smell of illness about him, too, the reek of desinfectant, sweat and patchy hygiene.

We knew all of this. Memories of the wars we fought. I had hoped they would have faded into the past forever, only to find him wounded, bandaged up, and fatigued enough to die. Though this time, he had brought it upon himself, with deliberation and intent.

I felt numb. Tried to help him into his jacket and ended up draping it loosely over his shoulders, over the days-old tee he had slept in too because he hurt so much he could not lift his arms to strip the rag off and change into a fresh shirt. I could not look at him, at his body, and carefully kept my eyes on his face, or elsewhere, just not on his shape.

Until he leaned against me and whispered, "Don't wanna see me now?"

I held him, not sure whether to draw him close or what else to do. So I just kept my arm angled around his shoulders, cautious not to press him against me, and my fingers laced into his hair. "I don't know," I answered, unable to lie now.

He dipped his face into my hair. "Home," he murmured exhaustedly.

xxx

The trains were delayed, we had a bit of rushing around to do to chase after the connections, missed one, had to wait, and all the time, he was as quiet as a mouse save for those small sounds of pain that occasionally slipped his lips, and he looked awfully pale. He was fading, staggering about with a dazed look on his face, and sagging into me every time we stopped.

It scared me.

The whole shit scared me because I felt helpless and utterly out of my depth.

Not perfect at all.

xxx

I was glad about the distraction work provided. It was piling high on my desk, and my mailbox was crammed with messages, so I plunged in and ploughed my way through paperwork, case-studies, briefings and a few extremely cranky messages, each subsequently more urgent, from Zechs regarding the Terraforming Project. He was awaiting a delivery of heavy machinery, plus one of the Preventer Special Agents. Neither had arrived so far, and I went hunting for the lot.

It would have been useful to believe that I had put Duo out of my mind while I was working, but I couldn't. At the back of my mind, something kept humming, like the faint white noise of bad radio reception, and I found myself staring at a sheet of text for minutes without reading while having come tea and wondering whether he was ok, at home by himself.

Leaving the office, I could not wait to get home, but when I arrived, my steps slowed, and a heavy sensation settled in my chest. It would have been great to see a few mates that evening; it occurred to me that Quatre had complained a little about Trowa being out and about for weeks on end, and that we had not heard from Wufei for ages...

The door opened a crack and a worn, pale face greeted me, with a faint smile that shone from dusky eyes. "Heero..." Duo stepped aside to let me in.

This time, it would have been rude to turn away, and so I looked. At his face, his hair – "Man, Duo, the brochure said you should not wash your hair and stuff where you have to lift your arms." I slung my bag into the corner behind the door and hung my jacket on the peg.

He had made an effort to turn himself out presentable. He looked better in his favourite green jumper and a pair of grey draw-string trousers, and he clung to the doorknob to steady himself. Pain. I could read it deep in his eyes, through the smile and the warmth that greeted me there. "Is ok, Heero. I have to get on with it now. I made dinner... well, I tried," he said quietly, his voice tight and way too controlled for Duo.

I could not help but notice what I was not sure I wanted to see: a rounding of his chest, ever so slight but there, a mere softening of its former angular contours, and a smoothness to his groin that made me wince. Suddenly, my throat felt thick and woolly, and I definitely did not want to see him undressed.

We ate mostly in silence, though he tried to talk and even managed to crack a few jokes, but he gave up when I returned only grunts and kept staring at my plate. After an uncomfortable silence, he got up to put the radio on and do the washing up. With his back to me, I felt less put on the spot, and I looked again. From behind, he had not changed at all, same slim, sharp lines, bony shoulders, narrow hips, lanky arms and long legs. Duo as I knew him. As I loved him.

But there was his hair that he had changed to suit his idea of himself, and that fell over his shoulders a glossy gold, freshly washed and fragrant with apple shampoo. And his front...

I found I had lost my appetite and pushed back my half-empty plate of rice and stew even though he had done well and it was tasty.

As I shoved back my chair, he said over his shoulder, "Can you help me wash? I stink, and I can't do it myself. I tried, it's only that I can't reach behind me, and a shower would soak the bandages."

xxx

The day he took off the wads of cotton and elasticated strips of white fabric... It was not as bad as I had feared, but it still made me nauseous to see those huge scars where his flesh had been slashed and sutured, two long, wide strips of knotted skin, burning an angry crimson to both sides of his chest. That showed the faintest rounding, no more than some blokes have anyway when they drink too much beer and put on weight. On his skinny frame, it looked odd.

And down between his thighs... something missing. Incomplete. Neither one thing, nor another. Too little, or too much, out of balance, the perfection of natural design destroyed.

I knew he was watching me. So I had seen the brochure with before-and-after photographs, and was kind of prepared. But I wasn't. He looked raw and ugly in those places, pain made flesh, and for some reason, I was disgusted and angry with him.

It was wrong. It suddenly felt terribly, irrevocably wrong, and a whole mountain came crashing down on me – I should have been stronger, talked him out of it, banged him more often the way he liked, or let him bang me to confirm his masculinity, so what now, I don't like this one bit, I cannot betray him now, after all I reassured him, told him we'd be in this together-

"You don't like it." A statement, dry and unsurprised. Duo smiled at me, without warmth. "That's ok, Heero. You don't have to look." He turned around. "I'm sorry to ask, but can you help me please? Only for a few more days. Scrub my back a bit with the washcloth, here. I'll do the rest."

He sat down on the edge of the bathtub and pulled a towel across his lap as he hunched his back and reached up to gather his hair and lift it out of the way. From behind, he still was Duo as I knew him, well, except for his hair, and that did not count. Not really, not anymore, because it was such an easily changed feature. How could he appear so laid back about all this? I was fraying.

I trailed the wet washcloth over his bony back and wondered how he would feel if all those sharp angles and nooks of his body began to fill out, to mellow and round somewhat. It would happen slowly, and not much because Duo refused to take anything to force his body down that line, but he had been radical with the rest.

How could we now sleep with one another?

Did I still want to sleep with him?

It hit me like a train, there, in the bathroom while I was washing his back and he was sitting still, head bent low, neither leaning into my touch nor avoiding it. "Duo..." I trailed off – what could I say? How could I ask him THAT? Now? I should have asked before he had someone chop at his body and take away something there, add a bit in another place, tug and pull and cut and sew him into someone I did not know.

"Yeah?"

"How does it feel?" No, I never was good with words, always a tad too blunt, which is fine in my line of work.

"Odd," he said quietly, without moving.

He had the knack of throwing me, even when I thought nothing could shock me anymore. "Odd?"

"Yeah. It's like I'm neither here nor there. But it's ok."

I sat down behind him, my legs a bit wobbly, and I needed his warmth. "How ok if it's odd?"

He shrugged a little, winced – he still hurt – and then cautiously leaned back against me. I always liked the way his skin feels, all muscle underneath but smooth and soft for a guy, and much warmer than mine. Unthinkingly, I kissed him on the shoulder. Call it a reflex; I had kissed him like that countless times, it was soothing, familiar, something we would not do in public, something belonging only to us.

He stiffened a bit against me. "Dunno. I'm glad it's done. Road of no return, that sorta thing, yanno?"

End of months of agony and soulsearching, of storms of depression, bleak and blacker than night, of him falling into those black pits and barely able anymore to scramble back out, with me unable to reach him down there and watching, so damn, agonisingly helpless. Until he had made his decision, and calmed down. Looking back, I realised it was then that he had begun to change. Accepted himself. Learned to like what he was.

"You feel squeamish 'bout me now?"

I did not know. I had hardly looked at him. "I'd like to hold you," I said, still rubbing slowly up and down his back. "And I'd like to go to bed now, or I'll fall asleep at my desk tomorrow, and that would never do."

xxx

So we get up, and he pulls on an oversized white tee and briefs that lay neatly folded on the toilet lid, and only then he turns towards me with a nervous smile. His eyes are still the same, a dusky shade of blue, and they shine at me with the same love as before. "I'm just gonna brush my teeth, and then I'm done in here," he says.

"Hai." I can do that in the kitchen, therefore I leave him to whatever he needs to do in here.

A little later, he crawls into bed with me, but keeps himself carefully cocooned into the cover so that I don't have to touch him.

"Duo?"

"Hm?" He turns his face to me, smile in place, wide and jittery. Very Duo.

"I meant it. Let me feel you." Learn him anew, from scratch, hoping to discover enough of the old sensations along the way to reassure myself that I can handle this.

Without a word, he tugs at the folds of the cover until I can feel it slip from between us. Touch his skin. Slide my hands over his arm, sinewy and bony, up to an angular shoulder, down skinny ribs and a high hip bone, along a muscular thigh. Enough of him to tell me it really still is him. "Those scars... how bad do they still hurt?"

"Not too bad," he says quietly, but I can hear the tension in his tone.

I don't ask. I touch. Feeling knotty, puckered flesh, flinching muscle beneath jagged skin. Then softness, a couple of small mounds that fit into the palm of my hand. I do not like the feel of them one bit, this is not him. He lays still, letting my hands explore his new body that is not really new, and yet, and yet...

He shifts a little to make it easier for me to touch him down there, and I nearly cry with shock and loss. Don't know whether some sound made it past my bitten lips when Duo winces and squirms away from me.

Yes, I can still have him. I would not even have to see if he would lie on his stomach when I make love to him, and I could still jerk him off along the way. Right then, I felt nauseous and full of sorrow.

He rolls over onto his side, his back to me, and drags the cover over his shoulders until he his all wrapped up with only a swath of hair peeping out.

This I cannot bear. Anything but not him closing me off like that, letting himself spiral down into one of those hellholes of depression and stupidity that sometimes scare me for him.

And so I spoon around him and wrap him in my arms, his lanky form fitting nicely as always into the curve of my chest, stomach and thighs, and my nose against the nape of his neck. He still is that annoying tad taller than me, and the somewhat cynical thought strikes me that they cannot fix that for all their surgical skills. Feeling his front is a definite turn-off, but it doesn't matter right now because I want to hold him, not bang him. We'll figure something out later, I tell myself, we sure will. We were always good at improvising. We're tough, as a team. As friends. As soulmates. He has always been nuts, and I levelheaded. So nothing new here, right?

He smells good. His own scent.

Perhaps, it vaguely crosses my mind as it tots up the total, not much has changed after all. Even the tiny whisps of hair at the back of his neck feel the same as I kiss him there. "Good night, Duo."

And I can hear the exhaustion in his voice, along with his smile as he replies, "Good night, Heero."

I still love him.
I still wonder how it would be to have sex with him now.
I don't like the idea.

xxx