((Summary: Duo Maxwell is the golden boy of Yuy Business Solutions. A man of all work, so to speak. He has it all, popularity with his coworkers, beauty, a job tailor made for him, and an active life. But all changes when he disappears. When he returns, secrets are kept, and the echoes of hollow living resound. What happens then, when he must prove himself to the new president of the company, Odin Yuy's son?

Disclaimer 1:

I do not own Gundam Wing. I merely borrow the character ideas for my own nefarious purposes.

More Disclaimers following the fic.))

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Big Ol' Texas Soul

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."

- John Muir (1838-1914)

Texas, known for its breeding of strong men, tall and beautiful, rangy and willing to die for the love of a woman as good and true as they themselves. Texas, a state pouring out men speaking in a laconic drawl, an easy side long grin, and narrow hips coupled with broad shoulders. Texas, harboring bigness; big peaks, big cities, big plains, big sky, big souls, big hearts.

And Duo Maxwell.

It was a well known fact that every woman on accountant floor C of Yuy Business Corporation, the Payroll section, had been heard to giggle at least once after being called "ma'am" by the slender, light-brown haired, young man. His days then, when he'd first started as an assistant to the head accountant, a simple enough job and one that was a step below that of a secretary in pay, yet had the opportunity for rising into an accounting job, were filled with going to this or that young woman to ask for paper or pencils or where the copier was. It wasn't such a large office, and late night movies between friends laced with wine, led to more than one conversation about how showing the copier to the new boy, could be twisted into all manner of delights. And often a squeal of "But you're married!" did little to chagrin the speaker.

Personnel knew that Duo Maxwell was twenty five when he started. He looked eighteen however. His large golden violet eyes were shot through at various points with something that may have been considered feral even and his Texas grin had all the hints of rakish joy that a boy of eighteen should have when given free reign in an enclosed space filled with seven well adjusted, interested (though not all available) women. Tongues toasted his presence in the firm.

The Yuy Corporation sits in a high rise in the northern states, glittering at the west of the city center, fifty five stories tall not counting the penthouse at the top. Steel and mirror, it seems much like all the other buildings, with a delightful foyer complete with waterfall fountain and statues in the center where sunlight can lance off of the Harbet Office building's facade into the windows and make the silver and white marble interior shine. The difference being that it, alone with two other sky rises in the area, has departments all belonging to the same corporation, rather than various business titles on the black directory in it's aluminum frame set behind the guard's desk. That and the twenty foot letters describing the name of it's familial holder at the edge of the roof, "Yuy."

Yuy Corp., being a large enough company, it may easily be stated that many a man can have lived and died in the building and never been known by any but his secretary, and she only because of the messages she must pass along every morning. Truly, many a face passed through it's doors and was forgotten about before it even managed to hit the sidewalk outside.

But then, being a large business, with so many tongues to wag, it is also just as true a statement to say that there were some who simply could not help but be known by each and every eye, either for their outlandishness (as was the case of Mr. Ireland and his enormous ties and bad comb over and halitosis and disgusting habit of scratching himself whenever he had to wait for the elevator) or for their extreme perfection in dealings like Ms. June who headed the entire payroll almost completely on her own and was so impossible to work with that she rarely kept her assistants more than a month (six and a half weeks being the record - held by someone no one could remember). There were others; the guards were all known because it was good to know your guards and one of the janitors who sang as he mopped was known by face if not by name to all. Everyone knew the bosses, the board of directors were fairly well known, and Missy Rump in the Mail Room was known because besides blessed with a horrible last name, she also was trying to sleep her way up and had so far, in three weeks, managed to move out of delivery and was footing a door open in Receiving.

And after three years, everyone knew Duo Maxwell. And everyone knew that he lived with Ms. Delia Utherwood - manager of the advertising department and one of the board of directors, and that the pair of them were seen always together for the most part. Everyone also knew that Duo was wanted by at least one verbal person with some manner of deviancy on every floor. Duo simply attracted such attentions. He was, in short, incredibly gorgeous. Others managed to be gorgeous, beautiful, handsome, perfect, or some other thing. But Duo was all of these and more. Tall and slender, with a boyish charm and an innocence that was almost too real to be anything close to put-on, he belonged on a front cover of some Vogue magazine or in a Gap commercial with his arms around some slender, gorgeous, model perfect woman like Linda Evangelista.

He also knew half of the city and to go out to lunch with Duo, was to go out with half of the city as well. He was a man who was never alone. Never.

Truly. Never.

Not even at home.

It wasn't that he attracted attention so much as that he was so open to invitation. He was the complete social butterfly to the hilt. He was the ultimate party planner (though never at his apartment, for Ms. Utherwood was a bit less social than he and wanted their home to be her last place of refuge against the large crowds that gathered around her roommate) and every evening was spent out on the town until midnight or one o'clock in the morning. Saturdays he slept in until five in the afternoon, catching up on what he'd missed throughout the week, and then he was back on the remainder of the weekend.

There was no sense of clique about him, anyone nearby was invited and not one person had a bad word to say about the young man (except for Ms. June who never had a nice word to say about anyone - and Missy Rump who had not been able to get him into bed) and it was well known that his favorite words were "The more, the merrier!" Most of the staff of the great building called him "Tex" behind his back and even sometimes to his face. And it was joked at times, that he was the one man welcoming wagon and sunshine committee. No new face got by a week without being introduced to Duo (if for no other reason than for their fellow employees to have someone to sigh to about their sexual frustrations centered around him).

- - - - - - - - -

After three years, he still has a slight Texas drawl in his throat and his smile remains rakish, his polite demeanor is legendary and his backside is the talk of many a cocktail party. He is no longer in the accounting firm as an assistant, but rather is working on projects for second tier upper management in dealing with funds and recovery, a skill he's proven he is as astute at as he is any other task he's given. A golden boy, Duo turns his strength of will and drive to anything he does, not just parties and socializing, but his work as well.

It's a Thursday morning, nine o'clock and Mr. June (the gentleman unfortunate enough to have been married to a Ms. June who still rules over Payroll) looks down at his watch with a slight frown on his face, tapping the bright face before looking back up at the clock on the back wall. His secretary, round and severe, lifts a brow over her dictation notes.

"Late.. never late.." the man mutters to himself as he goes back over his notes and glances at the woman seated across from him. His thin upper lip twitches and accordingly, the mustache there, sparse and holding on for no other reason than it bothers his wife, darts up and down as well. "Mrs. Burnside, would you be so kind as to call down to the check in. We've seem to come up with a missing Mr. Maxwell."

Mrs. Burnside tightens her lips into a severe line and with a quiet nod of assent, slips out of the room, and makes the call while her boss turns in his chair and gazes out of the window, perplexedly rubbing his upper lip with the pad of his thumb. "He's never late.."

The report that there is no check in at the front desk and that there is also no reply at the Maxwell residence does not raise too many eyebrows. It's not that this is a common occurrence for Duo to be late for work, far from it. The man had also proven himself to be inhuman in his timeliness. However, it is not in the main of most human consciousness to consider such anomalies as disasters.

Granted, there is always the possibility that things have gone horribly wrong somewhere. A man laying in a gutter in a pool of his own blood at the bottom of the hairpin turn on Highway 54, a woman murdered in her sleep, a mother with a heart attack on her bathroom floor, a child stolen during the usual run down to the corner store.

Still, in the usual meandering of life from birth toward death, such shifts in the calm burbling of moments, one tumbling over the next, are so rare that they can be classified in the "happening to other people" category. Because even when they've happened, they've happened to other people.

The missing, the dead, they are past it happening to them. It has already happened, in fact. The matter of them being gone is gossip for local coffee shops and church gatherings around the juice and cookie window at the basement get-together after the service. Now and then, someone might mention how their sister is good friends with the brother of that mother, you know, the one of the boy who disappeared. How it is just a shame, but it just goes to show you that you can't be too careful of children and their safety these days.

Only no one really believes that. Because everyone knows that before society, it was things like a falling tree or a shift in the snow drifts or a broken plow.

Tragedy follows the same rules it always has, sudden, unexpected, and always someone else. Because it's a matter of continuing on after. Life just keeps on and leaves behind the person to whom the thing that happens to others had happened to. Mothers have other little ones and they speak in tears years later of their lost child, sisters cry on lover's arms as they are being made love to because their brother won't be there when it is time to tell someone they've found "the one," and men cough uncomfortably as they clean out the locker for their pal who had met with the wrong end of a hydraulic, and they all walk around where the blood had spilled until someone forgets exactly where the blood had spilled and then soon they all forget where things had begun for the one who'd ended there. Because it simply had been a moment, terrible and forming a past story more colorful than it had been before, but it had happened, as it were, to someone else.

So it simply is not a serious issue for anyone that Duo Maxwell has not shown up for work on Thursday morning by nine a.m. There is, of course, some other reason for his being late besides a common place tragedy, as there always is when one's imagination makes up terrible possibilities and we find that in truth it was only a blown tire or a mistaken address or just that the alarm did not go off.

- - - - - - -

Even though it's all in his imagination, for the next hour, Mr. June continues to wrestle with the feeling of unsettled panic. One comes to be aware and comfortable with the patterns of one's employees. Duo was not one of his direct employees, being more of a free lancer within the company's body, yet he had his patterns the same as anyone else. He never broke formation and thus, he should be at work now that it was coming up onto ten.

The possibility that perhaps one of Duo's nights had gone a bit longer than usual and that he might have drunk too much or finally managed to run himself into the ground, does cross Mr. June's mind. Yet it simply does not fit into the schedule of movements in Mr. June's life. Mr. June is a man who needs more consistency than most and he finds he almost always is attracted to those who will fulfill this need of his. His professional contacts, within and without the company, are strewn with the most responsible of figures because everyone knew that Mr. June has enough chaos with the militant insanity Ms. June brings to his life and therefore wants nothing more than no good reason to have to deal with some conflict or another due to someone being late or forgetting a deadline or even simply sleeping in one day.

The chair creaks under Mr. June's weight as he touches on a speaker button near his computer. "Mrs. Burnside, patch me through to the advertising department."

A tinny "Yes sir" responds and as he waits for his phone, he fingers a pile of papers upon which a small neatly noted post-it in neon pink states that it must be done by Friday at 11:30. The Malcron Co. was a secondary client and it is the project that Duo Maxwell is going to be helping with this morning. Duo Maxwell had told Mr. June that things would easily be finished in time given an early enough start on Thursday morning and would eight o'clock be acceptable? Only Duo Maxwell had not come at eight o'clock and the pink note is waiting to be moved to the side and stuck on a memo pad while the papers are gone through, because Duo Maxwell has numbers to add to the documents to make them workable and he has simply not shown up, even though it is past ten in the morning now. A moment after Mrs. Burnside's tinned voice dies off, his phone rings.

Picking up the handset, he leans his forehead on steepled forefinger and thumb and stares at the burnished mahogany surface of his desk, trying not to feel too confused at how his general internal clock has somehow gone haywire. But then, there was Mrs. Burnside and she never went wrong and she was here, as well as his watch and the clock on the wall. It was ten thirty at this point and Duo Maxwell was delinquent by a good many hours with no call in and no polite excuses that even the most hard hearted could forgive. Duo Maxwell had never had to make a polite excuse, for he was always on time. But if he had, Mr. June is fairly certain that he'd have forgiven it, that anyone would have forgiven it. Duo has that way about him and you simply like him too much to hold anything against him.

"Ah, yes, er, Ms. Utherwood please. Hmm, yes, thank you. Ah, no." He turns in his chair once more and stares out over the city landscape. He was only on the forty seventh floor, but it is high enough in this city and he could see the blackened spires of the old Anglican church (it had originally been Catholic but due to some mismanagement of funds in the early 1900's, it was lost and changed hands a good many times - being a health spa at one point, a restaurant at another, and finally retaken over and reinstated as a church twenty years before this), and it was a mighty fine view, if he did say so himself.

"Ms. Utherwood, yes, this is Mr. June in the Technical Instatement department. Yes, please, I do realize that I have not ever spoken to you before, but you see, I had a meeting with your, er, that is to say, I had a meeting planned with Mr. Maxwell and we have, er. - Yes, yes, we've called and there is no reply. I'm so sorry to bother you, but I have never known Mr. Maxwell to be late before and seeing as how he is your, er, yes, well. – "

Mr. June twirls his pen over his fingers as he speaks, remarking to himself somewhere that Ms. Utherwood has a pleasant voice and how it is decidedly different from that of his own wife. He hasn't managed to see anything other than a picture of Ms. Utherwood on the wall downstairs where the Board is behind oak frames on display to various interested public and employees, and how her voice fits her face. According to the picture on the wall downstairs, she was a comfortable sort of woman, with an ease that made any man wish he knew her better. Her eyes were an icy stormy sort of blue and she wore (in the picture downstairs) blue eye shadow which on any other woman would look tacky, but managed to look fairly beautiful on her. She was one of those pretty ones who didn't look like she'd be disagreeable or easy to hate unless you had some deep seated anger against beautiful, talented, and easy going women, which he did not. If anything, it was the opposite.

A moment after, calls made to Ms. Utherwood and to the guards at the front desk, Mr. June has come to a sufficient state of alarm to seriously consider putting in a missing persons report. But he is aware of the time distinction that an hour or two of missing work cannot substantiate the means of such a move and instead, he goes up to Advertising and meets with Ms. Utherwood (who insists on being called Delia and smiles and takes his hand in a firm but not too firm handshake) and the pair drive off to check her home as well as using both of their cell phones to call the various peoples they think might be most likely to have met with Duo the night before.

Three hours later, it being a quarter of two, they pull back up before the office and stare at one another in confusion. The car idling and the smell of hot leather seats, the faint scent of perfumed skin, and the rustle of the aspen trio sitting sidelong against the building's front, beside the tumbling waterfall set in amongst two flights of stairs heading upwards to the main entrance. Somehow, what might have been a moment of almost peace in a pair of lives that held so little of it, is marred by the sick feeling both sense at the base of their souls.

"I can't imagine it." Mr. June rubs his palm back and forth along his balding pate as he shakes his head slightly in confusion; this was that moment someone else was supposed to be living, not him. "Can you think of anyone else to call? We've tried the mailing floor room. And Marty says that he left the SexnKitten," Mr. June still finds it difficult to believe that anyone would have managed to get that name past the decency committee they must have somewhere on the planning board, "at eleven last night. He should have been home not more than eleven thirty even if he did have car difficulties."

Delia's blue eyes have a watery mist that only makes their color more alive and alluring as she clenches her hands together over her knees. "But I was up until midnight working on the Franklin Myers case and he hadn't made it home by that time. I would have seen him." She seems lost for a moment as she stares out of the window before turning to gaze at Mr. June and opening her mouth, thinking again over it and taking a breath.

"Doesn't he, er, tell you, ah, that is, where..." Mr. June flushes.

"Duo and I are not an item, Mr. June," and Ms. Utherwood manages to seem almost prim rather than agitated at the idea. "But still, he has not had room for a relationship from the first I've known him. He is very dedicated to his work, you see. He simply has never seen the reason for anything beyond his work and his, what he calls - I-I keep wondering if I - should be - you see, it's the present tense of -" She stops and clamps her jaw closed, dropping her head as she struggles to regain control of herself.

Mr. June clears his throat and rubs a finger over his minuscule mustache, narrowing his eyes down at the steering wheel and how it cuts the view of the asphalt parkway into two shining black halves. In desperation, he coughs out, "Yes, well - anyone else? We may have missed some lead, somewhere. There simply must be a reason, you see. We cannot give up hope just yet." Mr. June tries at times of stress to ferret out of his imagination the images of an English detective or gentleman from the various PBS specials he's seen on the television since he was a young man, it's become a habit and for a moment, he feels almost outside of his body, alongside the problem rather than deep in it's clutches, and the relief is formidable, considering what may be coming.

Delia crinkles her brow (a rather cute gesture, Mr. June thinks - very unlike Ms. June's habit of turning her face into a series of lines, all which point to how incompetent you have just managed to prove yourself to be in whatever you recently said or did) and tucks her arms around her small body. "No - I have tried everyone. I really can't think of who else might know." Her blue eyes fill up with tears and Mr. June pats her hand awkwardly, never one comfortable with physical touch.

"I - I suppose we should - should consider checking - oh I can't even say it!" she sobs in horror, finally overcome if even for that specific moment, soon to be over. She won't put words to the fears. But Mr. June knows what she means because it was only logical that they begin to consider the worst now.

- - - - - -

And so they do. Check the hospitals that is. Boundary County General had three John Doe's that previous evening and two of those were dead, but only one had light brown hair and he was forty five and a man known to the staff as a local hobo who came every summer from Mississippi. Harborview was much the same, though there were no deaths out of the five, yet none young enough and one too young at sixteen - and that young man had a mohawk.

Twenty four hours later, they and a great many friends who have all come to stay at Ms. Utherwood's apartment for support, have called the police department and filed the report with the desk sergeant and now mill about, drinking coffee and whispering low to one another or cry softly as the weight of tragedy wrings another burst of pressure out of them, each a bent pipe in a long, confusing mess of machinery of grief. They lean against walls waiting to be inserted into the works or quietly hiss into cell phones and to one another, whispers of sad steam. Some sit out on the verandah and stare into the grassy lawn and the small pond out back, reflecting the black hulk of building before it.

Ms. June demands that her husband return home and with a hang-dog expression speaking volumes to Delia Utherwood, he kisses the slim hand that fits neatly in his own, and makes his leave as the best of Englishmen have ever done, despite the fact that he's really originally from Minnesota.

The door closing behind him shuts out the sounds of voices, hushed and loud, but all free. Still, there are shackles of every kind on every life that was ever lived and that his wife might control much of his movement on the planet does not mean that there could not have been far worse ways to go.

Mr. June's bucket seats crinkle loudly in protest in the hot summer evening air. There is too much herbicide on the perfect lawns in this upscale apartment housing complex to give crickets a place where they might sing without choking on fumes, so that other than the faint passing hiss of a car out on the road which cross before the wall of rhododendron hedge which encases the perfect lawn, nothing makes sound and the leather can say it's complaint quite clearly.

It really is strange, Mr. June considers, how living becomes so much more sharply inlaid against a backdrop of terrible things such as loss and uncertainty. It almost leaves him wishing that he were home at this very moment. Ms. June notwithstanding, he is fond of his quiet den and it's old faux fur chair, what he calls his "bear chair." A great, old eighties form recliner with acrylic fuzzy, and worn fabric, brown as pine pitch, he'd received it some years before when his father had passed away. He wasn't exactly certain if it were the same chair it had been when he was a child. He did think it possible his mother might have refinished it but in the same fabric because his father had been fond of how it had felt like a great soft cushion, and had made the comment more than often, that he felt like Romulus or Remus, though it didn't matter which, for either way, he slept on the warm side of a passing animal.

Mr. June had never wondered why his father had slept so often in the chair and so little in his own bed. But then, now he found that he went to the softness of the chair after a particularly painful bout against the hard lines of Ms. June's tongue now and again. Maybe, he thought, he'd have to reupholster the chair in the same fabric himself, that is, if Ms. June didn't have the chair removed during one of his bi-yearly business trips. She had a habit of rearranging his universe when he left for a few days so that it fit more in her view of what the universe of a man in her life should be.

The tires of the convertible crinkle asphalt in a long rolling purr down the steep driveway, past the wall of rhodies and out onto the street. Mr. June shifts into gear and in a fit of adolescent joy brought on by memory of a small hand fitting his and the lifting of a weight of tragedy that must no longer be in his realm, but which remained far behind him, in that room of whispers and vague trilling cell phones, lets his engine catch and shove him back into the seat as he leaps onto the street and back toward downtown to catch 7-North to Hisleton.

- - - - - - -

Sgt. Blake finds the body and makes the call. There is the identification of course. And the body has been fairly beaten to nothing considering that it had fallen into an open sewer manhole and fallen deep into it about three days before. But it has a Slate Watch with the name "D. M." etched on the back and while the sewer rats had done a number or two on the face, they also took note of the half drenched parking pass to Yuy Corp. underground parking, Lot 48B in the wallet found nearby.

Of course, to be sure, they put the body in the morgue and call Ms. Utherwood, as she is the only contact they know of for Duo Maxwell. There is nothing to recognize, but the watch and the parking badge and the wallet are enough. It has been six days and with the watch in her hand, the letters etched on the back blurring into a silver smear in her eyes, she is fully alone.

An acquaintance of Duo's had come to her aid, a woman with a particularly take charge attitude and a good eye for networking of names and faces. Named Maria, she fits the name well, black hair and black eyes and a sharp voice even though she fills all the curves of her body like a hand in a kid glove, hot, warm, and delicious to the touch.

Delia doesn't want her near. The enforced perfection in Maria - in the face of the silver blur in Delia's palm, cannot fit this world. Maria will never have red eyes as fat as melons, with a mouth smeared across because grief drags down the right hand corner and twists it under. It's been days, and Delia can't seem to recognize a bar of soap long enough to do more than use it minimally. There is the soft scent of vanilla on her forearms, but her hands smell like the iron on the watch. The hall clock ticks and Maria put a cup of coffee beside her arm before leaving as effectively as she had come in the beginning. And without a single note of sad music which she always has needed before, Delia bends forward, tucking her nose in against her left knee so hard that it feels as if might bruise the cartilage underneath the freckled skin, and in rolling hitches, begins to silently scream her cries into her CC jeans.

- - - - - - -

At the morgue, Dr. Sande frowns, staring at x-rays and reaches for a phone.

- - - - - - -

Down at the corner of 8th and Ash, in the Ides Tavern, Andrew Pollich drinks another pint with a twenty he'd "bummed" off of his pal a week before and he makes a loud toast to "th'fugger Hiram who'sh fuggin' m'gurl 'gin.. fugyer awl," as his girl tugs on his arm and hisses for him to watch who he tells it all to.

- - - - - - -

Speakeasy Sue, finishes her nightly routine on the stage at the SexnKitten and begins to work on the fake breasts that hang off of her chest, peering down and wondering if she should pluck her chest again and makes a note to talk to her therapist about it, would that mean she's less of a woman if she is sick of plucking her chest after six months of plucking and would the hormones make the hair stop growing? She tucks her slender body into a dressing robe so that friends and fans can come in to bring flowers, and she wonders why Jimmy hasn't shown up to try and make things good between them again and if Jimmy was off sleeping with some tramp that he'd picked up in an alley or some other hole just to get back at her.

- - - - - - -

And Delia is roused at two a.m. by a dull knock on her front door. She stands, tear free, every liquid in her body wrung from every cell, and with the watch held in gently curved fingers - opens the door.

Heat enters the air conditioned ground floor apartment door, the cement is wet with something dark, heated and flushing the white with red, and Delia grips the door frame and does a moment's spinning in her mind until the shoulders that are bent before her make sense and the blood turns into regular shadows and a single tawny and violet eye stares up at her from under an old bruise and a violently tended mouth gasps. Her nails are pushed into their beds when she clenches her hands and the witching hour comes upon her too hard and she runs through her own head, wondering if she's only dreaming and that if she is, than it's the cruelest of dreams. One is supposed to have dreams of a smiling face, light flowing around hair, angelic music filling the ears and that laughing voice saying that everything will be okay. Not this nightmare.

But the gasp is too real and she sobs, discovering wells she'd not tapped yet as the watch falls to the concrete and the face shatters and she catches him as he stumbles in against her. The thick press of a body against hers cuts her tongue loose from it's moorings and keening, she screams out, "Tex!!!!" and pulls him so close that he screams and passes out when she tugs too hard on a dislocated shoulder.

- - - - - - -

The memories of that evening are too muddled. The body in the sewer had shown no sign of trauma but for the fall, an accidental death. Six weeks later it is identified as that of James Hynde, a local transvestite singer at the SexnKitten singing under the stage name, Helen of Trojans.

On that score, Duo Maxwell will not add. He had, yes, known Jimmy Hynde, some years before. They had gone to school together and knew one another vaguely. Yes he'd seen the man the night of his death. But he'd left for home and next thing he'd known, he'd woken up some miles outside of town in a basement of one of the new developments. He wasn't sure where it was, he hadn't been so sure of where he'd been, dammit. And yes, he'd woken up in the state he was in when he'd arrived, albeit, less dirty.

Or more, if one were to say. Dr. Jill Norris had her concept of what he might have been covered in, but she keeps quiet on the matter. It's consideration, confidentiality. It is why the PD chooses her for such cases, because she's got a mind like an iron trap and a mouth much the same. Without the permission of her patient, she'll say nothing. Duo Maxwell does not give permission and beyond basics required by law, the rest is buried deeply in the memory of the man and his physician.

Jill is a slender woman, because she jogs four miles every morning, a quick work out, and only to keep her in shape for the weekends when she does cross country afternoons on the hoof, as she calls it.

Her fingers belie her body type, short and deft, with stubbed ends, they are a farmer's wife's hands. The hands of her German grandmother, intended for shucking corn and peas, milking cows and tending fields, a man's hands. But they worked just fine in Germany at tending the cows and six children and they work just fine in the city's Harborview Municipal Hospital.

She finds pride in having made it as far as she has on farmer's hands, Germanic or otherwise. And she uses them with a comfortable sort of blindness to humanity and it's needs or wants. She had learned quickly in her practice that hands too aware of where they were, only managed to make people tense.

She is a mechanic, looking over a body as if it were machine. But like any mechanic, she has her soft spots and she does her best to keep too much tenderness from touching Duo Maxwell's skin, because she has a job to do, even as she would have loved to stroke away the bruises marring skin that should never have been marred. Needle pierces and thread follows, pain pills are administered, an optometrist referred for the left eye which seems to have difficulty due to optical swelling. MRI's and CAT scans, x-rays and hushed conversations behind closed doors, and she keeps her fingers still because Duo Maxwell is a man who will leap ten feet sideways if he knew you were seeing him as anything more than a machine. He feels like a machine and it shows in every movement he makes.

Jill worries though and when the pain meds are finished and the antibiotic course has been thoroughly finished, the stitches are well on their way to being taken out and no sign of seepage or concerns on the broken ribs and cracked tibia, she sits Mr. Maxwell down for a talk about other types of medication.

He isn't so very certain that he needs Prozac or any of it's sisters, but he promises to take her opinion to bed with him to consider, he states with that half broken Texas drawl of his and the prescription is in his hand as he leaves.

Delia picks him up in his old VW bus and she touches him so carefully that it makes his skin crawl. He hasn't the heart to speak, afraid that he'll say something unreasonable and angry so he keeps his mouth shut on the drive home, pretending to fall asleep against the bumping window and his headache gets only worse. He's careful to wake when they arrive so she needn't touch him to wake him; the sudden jerk of her unfamiliar foot on the brake is reason enough for it not to seem too contrived, but he suspects she knows.

Duo won't look in the mirror in his bathroom, the marred, black and blue and red face mottled and broken by the line of stitches under his left eye yet to come out, still leave him feeling sick to his stomach when he turns, expecting to see and recognize himself and finds instead a distant monstrous face gazing back at him. Jill had told him that the scars might be there months, but the bruising was bound to be gone in a couple weeks. It had been a week already, and they were a light purple still, like plums too ripe so that they'd be squishy and dull to taste.

He leaves the prescription on top of the toilet's water tank and lays down to sleep. The blankets lay on him heavily so he leaves only his sheets, the lights off of the lamp have to shine in every dark corner, the door is wide open, his toe is numb. And the sheets hurt his face.

- - - - - - - -

The elevator opens on the TI floor and Mr. June taps his pen against his thumb, stepping out into the white and blue waxed tile hall. His offices are the last on the right, the lettering there stating it to be the offices of Mr. Matthew June in precise white print, words spaced apart by a one and three quarter inch. It is frosted glass, so thick that the only certain color to bleed through is the navy of the Turkish rug on the interior floor. The rest filters one into the other in a "miasma of rainbows", in Delia's often poetic words.

Mr. June is two minutes early, close enough to on time to count in his book, and Mr. Maxwell waits for him, speaking softly to Mrs. Burnside, a conversation that he halts when Mr. June closes the door behind him.

"Ah, Duo.." Mr. June holds out his hand. Mr. June has managed to come to know Duo fairly well on a social scale, now that Ms. June has left him and filed for divorce based on irreconcilable differences, and after his friendship has taken a more firm hold with Ms. Utherwood. Still, the light haired young man seems to always be about nine degrees off of real and the golden blue eye that meet his own muddy brown has about as much friendliness in them that a visiting cat's might.

Duo's handshake is perfect, as much of the rest of the young man is. Dressed to the nines in a silk suit of dark navy and a magenta power tie, he moves as gracefully as a dancer, using each iota of space he takes up. His light chestnut hair which had been to his shoulder blades a year before, is now to the middle of his back, yet newly formed bangs are allowed to fall in his eyes and to cover the black patch that rests over his right eye. It was, Duo had explained to him, because of the surgery they'd had to do on his left. There simply was too much damage and for the next few months, he'd be required to force his left eye to take on much of the work to prevent a forever straying eye, to strengthen the muscle there. At night, Duo took off the patch and for a few hours, he read with both, stopping only when his headaches grew too great and he was tired of seeing double.

Duo had changed. He was even more famous if such a thing were possible, due to his changes. Many heard of his mysterious disappearance that evening over a year before. But the exact details were lost, Delia proving to be as tightlipped as the police and Dr. Jill Norris. Yet the eye patch served to make him all the more a mystery and his shift without being a shift, was much of a buzz when touched upon over drinks at the water cooler. "Tex" had not been a man for much but home bodying the first few months. That was to be expected due to his needing to recuperate. But it hadn't lasted. Quickly he'd made his way back into his old, comfortable social circles. And he'd managed to remain just as wild if but a bit desperate in his grasping for society. He remained perfect upon his job, yet the nights got longer, mornings more difficult, and the young man was known to show wear now and then, more often on Friday mornings and Mondays. He'd become human - most simply accepted that Duo was no longer a party machine, but a man who loved the party. But one smile and memories flooded back in and the fey like qualities that made him magic, mix with the now tragic component that undulates within his hidden need for something that everyone wanted desperately to fulfill, to discover.

- - - - - - - -

Delia leaves her bedroom door open and leans back in her office chair, staring at the numbers which refuse to crunch. Far behind her are the things that happen to other people, she is immersed again in her work, her exercise regimen at the local health club (Gaylord's Spa - a local joke. But G. Kinning was an old friend of hers and she loved the air of the place; its eighties music, the quiet grunting of men in tight spandex as they lift before mirrors, and the fact that the vast majority of them won't look at her twice - too busy looking at one another), and the day to day work of living.

The fan alongside her spins in a soft whirring and lifts the hairs at the nape of her neck, those few tendrils that have managed to stay free of the clip holding all the rest upon the top of her head. A soft Handel piece plays on her CD drive, swinging violins followed close behind by the heavier, bumbling cello lovers. It was enough to engage but not enough to draw her attention away from the spreadsheet she now wrestled with.

"Whoever made spread sheets should be drawn and quartered," the mild rolling voice interrupts her thoughts.

She leans back and cracks her neck, resting her right palm on the side of her neck with a groan, rewarded a moment after by warm fingers kneading the soreness in her shoulders. "I think they have been.." she grins.

"Well, we'll have to reanimate them and kill them again," Duo asserts behind her and when she leans her head back, she can feel his chuckle wrinkle the granite like plane of his abdomen and nudge her own skull with the humorless laugh.

"Mmm... you think?" she stretches her arms above her head, tucking them through the holes between his elbows and his body and looks back and up at him. He's staring at the screen and his face is hard. She realizes now, as she has again and again, how Duo changed when he returned from wherever he'd been lost in during that week. For the most part, it's easy to forget the horrors of what placed that scar on his left eye, just to the corner. Dr. Norris had done a fabulous job and the scar is almost unnoticeable anymore. You have to know it's there. But like Jill has said time and time again, it's the internal scarring that they'd have to watch out for.

Delia holds to his arms and he gives a look of brief annoyance, a flash of something that had never been there before, then lapses into a small grin, though the smile never reaches his eyes anymore. She lets her hands slide, knowing she's pushing again. Duo doesn't want anyone hanging on him. He never had before, but it was more like a child hating being told what to do, where now it seemed almost feral in a way, anger ready to lash out on anyone holding him too close. She guesses at this; not having seen Duo ever angry, only those brief lapses in his usual happy demeanor.

"I suppose," he murmurs and then leans down, his side brushing her shoulder as he taps a few buttons, changes a sequence and nods. "There."

Shifting her focus to the spreadsheet, she arches a brow in surprise. "Thanks."

"No problem. You going out t'night?" He straightens and rubs his upper arm.

"How did you do that?" She laughs.

"Do what? Oh, just common mistake. I do it all the time. Now, you wanna go out t'night or are you gonna stay home? Is Junie-baby coming over?" he locks his slender legs one over the other and leans on her desktop, a mischievous smile turning him from smoldering volcanic god to Puck, complete with how his brown hair is tangled over his ears and encircles his crown, careening to the side in a braid which catches at his shoulder before bursting down his back in a long shiny line of autumnal beauty.

"He hates it when you call him that," but she has the grace to blush and does so, with aplomb. "And yes, Matthew will be coming over. He and I are going to, er, you know I haven't talked to you about this yet." She creases her brow as is her wont.

He jerks with the smirk that erupts from him on the tails of the brief choked laugh. "Yeah?"

Her blush deepens. "Oh no!" eyes wide with shock, she laughs in both shock and embarrassment. "Not that. I mean, we're waiting and all. He's old fashioned and I guess so am I. No, I mean - damn, I'd wanted to -"

"Never is the right time to break it off, Delia," his long slow drawl lingering a bit longer on his laconic grin as he smoothly interrupts her.

It wasn't that she didn't want him around any more. Or it was. Maybe they both knew it. Having Duo as a roommate was just not what others thought it to be. He was rarely home, and when he did manage to stay home for more than a half hour, he stalked from room to room in silence, pacing like a cat caught in a hot tin box, aware that it was going to suffocate and waiting for the top to open so it can scrabble out. He rarely sat to read like he'd been accustomed to doing; he slept, ate on the run, and sometimes didn't come home at night at all. There was some talk, and being his roommate Delia had been privy to it, that he was starting to sleep his way through the women, trying to find the right one. In a way, she believed it. And she'd checked with him that last October, rubbing her fingers on her neck because it was where Mr. June had put his first kiss beyond her mouth just two days before.

"You've been out a lot, lately," she'd asked, not wanting to pry, because he was southern and she thought that the southern gentlemen might not like prying so much as the more brash northerners.

"Hm?" his hands were moving all the time nowadays, and this time they'd been strangling a small necklace that he'd been playing with on his wrist, gold with intimate links so small and close that they seemed to be one single strand.

She tried again, "I mean, that I'm wondering if we should have the talk, you know. The one roomies have when they're starting to have ... girlfriends and stuff?" there, that hadn't been too prying, but she was definitely fishing.

His laughter was a surprise, short, quick, and overwhelming as if she'd said something almost too funny. "Delia, honey.." he'd rarely called her honey since he returned, but it made her feel happy to hear it again - as if maybe he was beginning to heal inside, even though the prescription still sat on the toilet tank cover with neither of them willing to move it, "you know that if I get any girl besides you, you'll be the first to know, okay?" his warm hand with the gold chain feeling the same temperature as his skin, covered her hand and his cat's eye studied her, too far away inside to be there, as if he was always seeing more than what was placed before him.

She hadn't asked much more, and the rumors continued. Plenty of women want to have slept with Duo Maxwell, so the possibilities are fairly endless as to whether they are real or not, even. But in the way of rumor mills when it comes to a man as engaging and mysterious as Duo, things just have their own life. And while he's far too good looking and more than friendly enough to offset anything negative, a reputation is begun to fit his heel to toe, hip rolled walk through the building. Simply stated, girls are best with their hearts tucked under their seats where they can't be found, touched, or broken by the indomitable Duo Maxwell's loving touch.

And that kind of reputation is going to almost rub off on his roomie. She was getting tired of the questions about him, his habits, how available, if they were together or not. Things were hard enough on Matthew with the divorce without having to deal with his girlfriend being Duo Maxwell's personal sex slave.

It really was amazing how one sided folks could be. It didn't change how Duo was utilized in the company. If anything, it made him more known and because his work was impeccable, his manners a joy, and his looks enough to make most human libidos to go crazy, he was in more demand than before. It was, he said, something he enjoyed.

"So he's gonna move in?" Duo's words interrupt her thoughts.

"Hmm? Oh yes, yes, I'm sorry. He is. Or, we're, ah, we're talking about it." Her smile feels forced.

Duo purses his lips tightly together and nods in deep thought, staring down at the wastebasket by his foot. After a moment or two of her watching him, he flicks his eyes back to hers and gives a half grin, "Well, you know what they say about three being a crowd and all. When're you guys talking about it?"

"Oh, we don't want you to move out. Not - "she balks.

"...yet," he finishes for her. "Yeah, that's okay. We'll take it one step at a time, okay? I'll help him move in when he gets here, but I'll keep an eye scoped out for a new place. Sound fair?" And he's so calm that she visibly relaxes. What had she expected? For him to go berserk, angry that she was leaving him? Because she wasn't leaving him. Things had simply come to an end.

She nods and closes her eyes when he leans down, kissing her temple. "I'm going to make some calls. I'll come back and tell you where I'm going and if you and Junie-baby wanna come, you're welcome to." He checks in now before going anywhere; a small safeguard for himself, something he'd adopted all on his own. She acts like an anchor or a parent for him to hide behind, though he did it subtly and it had been months before she'd realized what he was doing.

She'd have to wait to talk to him about the other stuff. It wasn't time yet. "Thanks, Tex."

"Your welcome, ma'am." She can hear him shuffling off and a short time later, the rocking joyful voice that hides the desperation she thinks only she can hear, calling out, "Hey man! What's up for t'night, huh?"

- - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - -

It wasn't until October when he left, got himself an apartment down on the south side of town, complete with jet tub and an island in the kitchen. Southside places went for enough but weren't so expensive that he'd be strapped for the place, having to put in any extra hours. Not like he wasn't already putting in a damned sixty hour week as it is. Between weekends and holidays, he was making sure that the company couldn't work without him.

He knew everyone by name now except for the newest members and he was getting calls from the higher ups surrounding Delia's position, which meant that in order to keep up with the demands, he had to work at home as well. It was severely cramping his night life, actually.

But then, he didn't mind the loss of the nightlife. That wasn't leading him anywhere but down. He still went out three, four nights a week, just not every night and he was back to coming home at the better, earlier hours. He knew that Delia was happy for that. He'd even taken on a roomie about five months before, a guy by the name of Burnside. Tate Burnside, and Duo called him Burnie for lack of a better name, because he hated the name Tate. The man was tall, content in his own skin, kinda like an old hippy sorta guy, and he was too busy working as well to be interested in much else. All of which makes life a lot easier on Duo because that way the directions his life has been taking can go fairly unnoticed.

It's not like he has time to develop a fucking drinking problem or anything. Not like he's got days to sit around scratching his ass with a swizzle stick. But if he didn't know any better, he'd say he was on a definite path to something that was taking him into some kind of personal hell. It wasn't the times when he was out, nor the times when he was working. It didn't bother him when Burnie was around or when the girls were over, or guys for that matter. Not that he ever slept with any one of them. But he'd managed a good necking session now and again, enough to stave off the hunger that had no respect for what he really needed.

Instead, it was the times when he was walking to his car, before he can slip inside and slam his fist against the stereo controls and fill his brain with a tsunami of sound from his sound system. It's the times when he is just about to fall asleep and the darkness is filled with something mildly menacing, hovering over him and pressing him deep down into sleep and nightmares.

The nightmares are the worst of course. He has them at least twice, maybe more, times a week. But he had been careful to get an apartment with rooms at opposite sides of the place from one another. And then, add to that the habit he has of locking his door. Everything is locked when he goes to sleep, no bright, fresh air in his house. It's battened down, ready for the next storm that might buffet against the sails of his tortured soul. And he's damn good at hiding his sobbing breaths into the pillow that he bites every night when he wakes, a muffled scream and his body convulsing, sometimes even coming on his sheets. Seriously flaming freaky shit wet dreams, things that leave him only more and more tarnished as the time goes on.

Still, he drinks enough and there's often times a bottle by the bedside. See, when he goes to bed drunk, he doesn't wake up when the nightmares come. They still do arrive, if you go by the state of his bed in the morning every now and then. And the alcohol is better than sleeping pills. You just wake with a treacherous headache in the morning and this way, he isn't having to stuff some more shit down his gullet just to fucking wake up.

So yeah, he needs a drink now and then, but he doesn't go out drinking himself into oblivion and it's only after a really bad night that he wakes up with cotton mouth and feeling like shit. Usually it's nothing that a few aspirin can't handle.

He doesn't see Delia so much anymore and when, three months later, Burnie plays the shit-for-friend and turns him in, she's not so surprised and she goes to see him.

- - - - - - - -

The center is painted blue and white and it has fake plants at the corners of each light sky blue couch. Magazines litter the waiting room and she stands, with the Vogue clutched in a roll in her hands as he enters, his face wane and his eyes shadowed, even though he smiles at her. He's in a ragged old robe, a worn-out midnight black and something she knew he loved, old and ugly as it is. It was one of those things, he said, that you just wore so long that your skin didn't know what to do when it didn't have the thing around itself. You had to indulge skin sometimes. And maybe because his skin wasn't indulged in any other way. Or maybe because his skin was the only thing that could be indulged. His feet shuffle in slippers that look new and she knows that Burnie had picked them up for him.

She smiles uncertainly. "Hey.." and kisses his cheek, leaning in, her hand on his forearm.

"Junie-baby know about this?" he frowns, but leans forward to take her kiss.

"Of course, I can't keep this secret from him," she winces at the look of hardness that covers his face. "Look, he is just as worried and Burnie and me. We didn't know that it was getting so bad, Duo.."

"Yeah, well, things just get out of hand sometimes, don't they?" he mutters, running his hand through his hair in a restless gesture, unbound down his back. "So, you brought me the ho's?" his grin is infectious. She ignores the way the joke covers other sins.

After producing the ho-hos in their silver wrappings from her coat pocket, the two of them walk out of the recovery center and wander onto the lawn outside, trying to find a place where there aren't others visiting their loved ones or just steeping themselves in their own misery. He looks around as he takes a cake from her, half unwrapped, the silver wrapping brandishing sunlight like a sword, "I hate this place. Look at all these fucking bastards. Pity party galore. You should hear the shit they talk about. It's all fucking hug me and be there for me shit." But he doesn't sound angry, only worn terribly down. "They want me to talk about what happened, Delia." He grimaces. "You know I can't do that. They say it's the only way I'll learn why I'm drinking so fucking much. But I told them, or I told him - you know my shrink's a guy? His name is John Thomas." He grins and she laughs. "John Fucking Thomas.. I asked him if he wanked more than most of us or if his parents just got off after naming him after his fucking dad."

Delia rubs her arms, and he watches her, knowing she's uncomfortable with the pain he's throwing out over her, like some glittering net. He sighs, "Anyway... thanks for these," and he lifts up the cake and takes a bite out of it, lapsing into the depths of the uncomfortable silence she brings with her.

"We're getting the junior Mr. Yuy in from Japan," she mentions casually, wanting the conversation to turn. "He's been working for a few years in their offshore company. I don't think you've met him, yet."

"Nah.." he shrugs, using his index finger to scoop out the filling and sucking it off with what cannot be called relish in any way. More of an automatic gesture than anything.

"Well" she endeavors to continue, "He's got some new ideas about what to do. I think it'll be good to have him there. I already told him that you were on sick leave and that he should contact you when you get back. I said you have some good ideas in the field of computers and the design department has been after you for months to get your input on things. He's intrigued because you are sort of an ambiguous figure in his company. You know how you don't really have a job title. It makes you famous, there really aren't many men who can do what you do - "she finds herself dying off as her friend doesn't make a sound. "Anyway, he - uh, has said that he'll see you when you get back."

He turns his head, looking sidelong at her, his hair falling into his eyes and his face looking far too young to be going through a thirty day program, surrounded by aging accountants and middle aged housewives on various banks of green or flower seats scattered around them in the park like lawn. His smile is soft, but distant. He shrugs. "Sounds good," he sighs and she knows he doesn't believe her, knows that his reputation is shot at the business, and that maybe he doesn't even care about that.

- - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - -

The full spectrum lighting and the water's clear bell like sound across his skin makes him want to turn around and crawl back out of the foyer. He blinks for a moment, staring at the guard station, at the man standing behind it. Is he even ready for this?

"Duo? Or, Mr. Maxwell!" the guard beams and walks around from behind his desk. "It's sure nice to see you again sir. You look like hell." The greeting isn't customary but it gives Duo a bit of a jolt and he laughs.

"Fucking right, feel like it too, Joe," he nods to the big man and takes the large hand held out to him. "Nice to be back. You held up that wall back there all this time? Strong man, strong man. The whole place would go down without you."

"Yessir, I suspect it would. Would you like me to get your elevator for you sir? I hear you're meeting with Mr. June today."

"I've heard the same, Joe. Hope neither of us is wrong or I'm up Shit Creek without m'paddle ya know?" he grins and accepts the offer for the elevator.

'Junie Baby' manages to act almost normal, considering that he knows the guy standing in front of him just came back from a thirty day rehab and some change. If you consider the week he used in getting in, and the week it took to get adjusted to being out.

Yeah, Duo's got his fuck buddy.. or rather, the guy he has to call when he gets those urges, and the guy doesn't like him much. Hates him, more like. So Duo hasn't called him once, but has used Burnie until the poor hippy kid is all but worn out from the emotional strain. Still, the guy keeps trucking on. You gotta love guys like Burnie, all wanting to do the right thing and shit.

But Matthew smiles and holds out his hand and he only watches Duo worriedly when he's not sure Duo can see him. So he manages only to get caught a time or two. Only Duo waves and smiles like he doesn't care or doesn't know. It's the brave face thing that he's good at. He's smiling for everyone and after a few more weeks, he is even smiling for Burnie. So that Burnie doesn't know that he's getting those urges back.

No, not those urges. The other ones. The ones that got him into this shit to begin with. In with Jimmy and ... and ...

So! Fuck that. He mentally shrugs himself to life. Listening to the elevator close behind him, he slumps to the side.

He leans his head against the hallway wall and closes his eyes, taking deep breaths. "Don't fuck this up, Maxwell," he mutters to himself. Snapping his lids open, he stares at the expanse of white so close and wonders that if he stares at it long enough, will it become real and he'll just fall into emptiness. Because the last thing he wants to do is walk into that fifty-fourth story office and confront his new boss.

Mr. Yuy must know everything. Of course Delia has told everyone. He can tell from the way they look.

And so yeah. This is where he has to suck up and smile again and act like he's got all his shit together again, when he's barely holding it together. But his mask isn't slipping so that's good. He's got a will of steel, not one to move mountains, but pretty fucking close.

Of course, she's not told anyone and really, she's moved mountains herself, keeping it out of his employee records. He's logged in as health issues which covers the problem with the bags under his eyes some days or his sudden fits of odd temper that he's now becoming a different sort of famous for. Like the day last week he had walked into an advertising meeting with a black shirt, skin tight, emblazoned with the words "Atomic Beaver In Tow" in silver lettering, under a black blazer opened so all could see it. They had gotten the contract and while there had been some serious frowning at his suddenly very unconventional means of making himself known and remembered, no one had been able to say a word against him, because he'd succeeded. It was in those times when he'd shown himself to really shine.

He walked in jeans now, everywhere, defying the dress code and he still got the jobs, still managed to make things work for whomever asked him to work for them. And he smiles and flirts more than he ever had before. Or if not more, than certainly deeper. A day meeting Duo in the elevator is a day filled with a permanent blush. The man was, by all reports, insatiable, unspeakable, and completely without decorum.

It was wonderful. For most of the pretty faces around anyway. Some frowned, but most simply swooned.

And here he is, Mr. Cool, Mr. I-got-it-covered, Mr. Fuckem'all, staring at the white wall and hoping that he'll get through this in one piece.

He straightens, finds his mask, fits it firmly onto his face where his smile can be like a mega watt light bulb, all readiness to work, and his eyes dancing, and pushes the door handle, entering into the outer office. Shit, even the secretary has a window!

Checked in and comfortable on the two seater leather couch, he makes idle and comfortable chitchat with the secretary, seeming not to notice her blush and the way she looks him over because he just looks so ... nice... in those jeans and that silk suit coat, white linen shirt with the dark blue tie. Good enough to eat. But that's Duo for ya. He puts in a lot of effort to keep up those damned appearances.

The buzzer rings on her desk and she gives an apologetic smile to the handsome young man leaning on his elbow. Picking up the phone she goes about talking to the person on the other line. All the while, watching the man from, behind, as he stands and wanders the room, taking stock of the pictures, his file folder held firmly in one long, artist's hand and his long golden chocolate braid swaying at his back.

He's simply waiting. A few minutes early, cool as a cucumber, for his meeting with the new Mr. Yuy from Japan, to meet with him.

- - - - - - -

((Hello everyone! Time for another. Other than warnings for individual chapters, I think I shall keep author's comments to the end of fics (feel free to kick me if I do otherwise) on these next ones.

Disclaimer 2:

This fic is not likely to be a high priority in the updating department. Please be patient with me!

Disclaimer 3:

Yaoi/Slash. This means male-male relations/romance. Please do not read if this offends you or you think it may offend you.

Public Thank-You:

To Trace, for all of her hard work and her amazingly swift grammatical mind, so unlike my own. Thank you thank you thank you!

Feel free to let me know what you think about it! Constructive criticism is welcome. Actually, any criticism is welcome.))