This is just something pretty short... from Sept, 2001. But if you haven't read it, it's new to you! Please enjoy.
Title: Bridge of Spring
Author: Ileana (babygray)
Pairing: 1+2
Disclaimer: GW is not mine. This is pure jest.
Notes: Plot influenced by Banana Yoshimoto's Moonlight Sonata (printed in 'Kitchen'). A bit rough and un-beta'ed.
There's a bite in the air today. It's cold... colder than an April morning should be, but they don't mind. They huddle together in the chilly morning, side by side as the river courses underneath them. The waters are dark, murky and unknown, even as the skyscrapers around them catch specks of pre-dawn light. Somewhere in the distance a bird prematurely announces the arrival of the sun.
He smiles as he looks down at the water. Here and there, a fish will appear from the cold darkness, only to submerge once more out of sight.
His partner sips from his thermos of tea. Earl Grey.
"Say, Heero?"
A wind blows pass them and into their jackets.
"Hn?"
He shivers slightly as his partner pours another serving of tea into the thermos' cup and hands him the hot offering. He takes the cup with the reverence it deserves and blows on its steaming surface. "In the summer..."
His partner leans against the bridge's railing. He holds the open thermos with both hands and closes his eyes. He exhales.
"... Maybe, you and I could go to the beach," he continues before taking a sip of the tea. A faint rememberance of the sun's rays warms his face minutely. Dawn is approaching.
"The beach?" His partner's voice is soft, a bedroom whisper on the quiet bridge. There is no one for miles. There will be no one for another hour... perhaps two...
"Yeah," he continues, his voice matching his partner's. "Why not..." He takes another sip of tea and smiles.
A fish jumps out of the water for a brief instant.
His partner tilts his head to the side and looks at him from the corner of his eye. "Why not..."
He takes another sip of the Earl Grey. The hot tea ran down his throat and into his stomach, quickly losing its warmth on the way down. "Perhaps next time, I'll make the tea, Heero."
His partner nods in acknowledgement as he takes a sip from the thermos. The Earl Grey came out rather well that morning, so it is not a question of Heero's ability, but returning one gesture with another, equal gesture.
The water's surface breaks as a fish jumps up once more from the dark fluid.
"Duo," Heero whispers softly into the thermos. His partner lifts his head up from the cup.
"Yeah?"
Heero lowers his head and suddenly finds the tea's steam more interesting than his partner's face. "Thank you..."
Duo blinks, uncertain. "What do you mean?" He takes another sip of the Earl Grey, yet his eyes never leave Heero's face.
"For meeting me here..." The sun grows warmer as the sky gains a bright yellow tint. "Especially since you live..."
Duo nods, knowing what Heero refers to. It is a strange idea to most that these two men, strangers in every sense away from this time and place, who spend much of their days in separate homes and separate lives, had forged an odd friendship on the very bridge that separates their individual wards. Every morning, before the sun rose, the pair start their jogs from their different points in the city and meet, either through fate or coincidence, on this bridge, just as the sun begins to flash on the windows of the skyscrapers.
They share few words and a thermos of hot tea that one of the two had brought that morning as they patiently wait for their hearts to slow down and the sun to rise. It is always when the sun finally lightened the color of the river underneath them that one or the other will start heading back home.
They will share no words of goodbye, just as they do not acknowledge each other with a 'hello'. It became an unspoken rule to just savor the company of this other, and to never question the return that may never come.
Duo swallows the rest of the tea he had and gratefully returns the cup to its owner. Heero nods in response as Duo, without preamble or each a bit of stretching, begins jogging home.
Heero stands on the bridge and watches Duo go. In that early-morning silence, he wonders for only a moment about his jogging 'partner's' life. Sometimes, it is the not-knowing of this twilight friend that bothers him, but he has learned long ago that it doesn't matter.
Still...
"Perhaps, I will go," he whispers to himself as he drinks some more of the cooling Earl Grey.
Perhaps, there should be more out there for the two of them than this bridge, this superficial tie connecting them to each other. He smiles lightly as he closes the thermos and looks at the surface of the dark river. In the distance, a bird cries out in a futile attempt to wake the city.
Heero hears its call...