Nobody's fault but mine
Nobody's fault but mine
I'll raise my soul to the light
Nobody's fault but mine
Take it on, take it on

I got a monkey on my back
I gotta monkey on my back, back, back
I'll raise my soul to the light
Nobody's fault but mine - yeah

Nobody's Fault but Mine (trad. gospel)

Morning split the night into shards then dusted them away through chinks in the floorboards.

Duo raised his head off of his pillow. His hair rustled over his back in a mass of knots, mirroring the state of his sheets and the one blanket that he rarely used in the warmer climes of southern United States. His bedding endeavored to keep him in one place, tangling with his feet and his ankles as well as his thighs to hold him down.

Feeling too groggy to fight the resistance of the cotton, Duo merely raised on his elbows and stared blearily at the headboard of his bed. His head felt muzzy and unfocused. He couldn't remember exactly when he'd fallen asleep the night before, but it was well into morning by then.

Twelve fucking hundred dollars had managed to extend his living a few more months. He could have called it a windfall only to think very long on it at all made his gut clench. So he'd wasted it almost. Suze was pissed at him, called him a whore (which, he thought, was rather a ridiculous insult, considering the profession both of them were engaged in). She called him worse later on when he revealed half of the twelve thou had gone into buying coke and some clean pot. The pot was stowed and he'd be able to use it later. Clean shit was worth its weight in gold, really. What with the dealers cutting it with meth. Duo considered himself thin enough. He had no desire to lose more. And if he had, the sight of those girls walking the streets, heels spattering on the concrete unevenly, skin marked here and there where their bodies attempted to thrust the poisons out, burning pores to nothing, cheeks gaunt and circles under their eyes, that sight would have moved him right on past the idea of meth as a means for weight loss. Sticking a finger down one's throat was probably better, if he hadn't had any choice.

Three months rent in advance, paying Suze's debt to her pimp, and a really classy night in a hotel where he didn't have to do any work all night and the doorman was forced to smile and say "Have a nice night, Mr. Maxwell," instead of, "Shove off, mate," had taken care of the last of it.

"You could have at least bought some shit to make your place look nicer. For fuck's sake, Duo!" Suzie groused, her naked lips pursed and not pouting in the least bit. Lounging on his couch after it was all over, her too normal body not pushed up or tucked in or played with by a makeup duster, she could have been a normal grunge twenty something, a cigarette tucked behind her ear and maybe a too stupid to publish novel on an ancient laptop kept out of sight in a bedroom somewhere.

Duo just shrugged, not caring much about her opinion on his apartment or the way he looked. She'd never minded before. Get a few thousand and all of a sudden he's supposed to be different?

The beginning of the rift was slow, carefully planted without either of them aware of it being there. Something in his walking away from a deal with that much money bothered Suzie on so many points, least of which being the fact she'd never managed to pull in that kind of profit before. They had been a sort of partnership until then. But with the following weeks, an uncertainty festered and they slowly began to speak less, walk together less, work with one another less.

The lack of a friend led Duo into areas he might have disregarded before. Now, an almost flat out defiance of death strung along behind him, catching at his heels and hounding him into corners best left undocumented. The cocaine took the edge off of what he did every day and the pot was a nice touch at the end. But he was sleeping far less and the mornings came through the grimed windows with greater insistency because the hours of waking were later and later with each passing week.

Duo couldn't think of a single reason to get up that morning. He let his head fall back into the pillow and groaned softly into it, ignoring the shaft of sunlight tapping his bare shoulder and smoothing down across his nude back. At least he hadn't brought a john back to the room like the night before. That was some small comfort. Waking with another in a room that, until then, had been a haven, was a rude and uncommonly disquieting experience. He had no desire to repeat it.

As with the oddest of times, when he was least expecting it and least desiring it, his mind sought out and produced the picture of that man from the car. Heero. Our hero, his inner voice sneered. He delighted and despaired hating the man with an active imagination both dealing out all manner of death as well as delving deep into some safe sense of chaos the man emanated. The world turned upside down when that Face came to mind. Duo shoved himself out of bed, ass hitting the floor with a loud and painful smack, and the image fleeing before his enforced waking.

There was something wilde and terrifying. While others might say his life was not one to be desired, there were rules and boundaries to everything. Here, in this world he lived within, he could say there were responses one would get. Here, the doorman at the hotel would tell him to shove off. Here, the cocaine would still get him high. Here, simple humanity wrote its laws and he obeyed accordingly. He knew Who he was and What he was.

Heero's world had a glimmer of the impossible. There, had he walked through that door, things would have changed. His surroundings would have been put to the test of those eyes which could do nothing but see the right of things. The tenants upon which he had forged his existence would be sifted, changed by the hand of some great alchemist. And nothing was more fearful to iron than to suddenly find itself gold. Duo, despite his desire to "make something of himself" felt no great wish to become what he could not understand and had never experienced.

The day slid past, oily and unpalatable. Duo hid from it in his room and under the closed shades and dimly lit lamps of his kitchen, stooped over a stove and a mound of uncleaned science experiments using various food stuffs. But Duo wasn't keeping from the sun, vampiric and huddling away. Instead, the results of that Face in his mind were his purpose. He had hopes of refraining from reaping the harvest of his wayward and unkind thoughts this day.

Finally, around ten, Duo peeled himself out of the darkness to meld into a greater darkness outside. The sky overhead had a spilled ink over velvet quality and the stars were just beginning to flare brighter than false. The golden man walked in jeans ripped at the right places and a tight tee shirt upon which was emblazoned the words, "Fuck Me? I try." He paced, actually, cat like, through darkness and with the hesitant certainty that these streets could be no home to him that night. His hips rolled from one edge of his pelvis to the other with each step and with his shoulders tilted back, he proudly displayed himself, bravado draped over him like a veil.

Still, it wasn't enough. He leaned against a store window, the harsh neon lighting from the display case behind him showing him off vividly but not in the least to his advantage, and stared at the silver glare of street off of the coming man's head.

"I should think that the corner is a bit too common for something as disturbing and erotic as you," the silver man purred.

Duo felt the same abhorrence and delight at seeing someone who somehow both didn't fit, and fit so well he might have created the very filth he slipped through. He was with the master of slime and slink and contented ambivalence. He wondered how he'd gone so long not seeing Zechs. The man was everywhere, leering at a fight down at the corner, chuckling all smooth and jazzed over sex in an alleyway, guiding the latest new face toward the one pimp most likely to succeed at pulling the girl or boy on in.

That is, when he wasn't circling Duo.

Zechs would not touch him, but instead, he paced around Duo, his eyes promising what had been. It haunted Duo, thinking that somehow the life he was leading was a past life already, even with him in it.

Duo couldn't be bothered. It was starting to bother him that he'd probably bump into some guy who would be stupid enough to be married or with a certain job that couldn't be jeopardized by being found out with a male prostitute and therefore more easily hit up for money than most. But until that last moment deal, Zechs would keep to the edges of the seedy light patch Duo had set himself inside of, and the man would turn away customers like the wrong polarization of a magnetic tip.

Zechs' eyes narrowed. He hunched down on the pavement, his fingers draping through his knees and touching the sidewalk. "You'll let me in. Because you'll hate being bound," he promised sweetly and his smile was smooth and uncaring, a safe haven for men like Duo who needed to not be cared about, needed the lack of responsibility, the simplicity of a emotionless and played out fuck together with nothing offered afterwards except for perhaps a beer if one could be had.

And Duo, despite his sense that he was still in someone else's life now, knew that what Zechs swore, would come true.

TBC…

(A/N:

Zmaj: Sorry for the lag of time in updating. This story, as I'm suddenly becoming aware, is dependent entirely (almost so) on musemanship and there has been an odd muse about it for some time and a great deal of fear as to what exactly is going on for the poor writer. Hee hee. But here's another chapter finally!

Bane's Desire: Ack! I personally am very much terrified of Zechs, and yes, I think he's an nassssty scary man. But hopefully Duo'll figure it out soon. As for now, there's a dance to do so that we can figure out if there are any "Good Guys" in this story at all! Yay! Thank you so much for reviewing! )