It's been a while but all I wanted to write was some 1x2 domestic fluffness. With a small size of angst. And also about the comfort of growing older together. So here it is... Also note I don't have a beta anymore so all errors are my own.
It was a repetitive rhythmic sound, gentle at the edges of Heero's consciousness and he shifted in the bed, noting the other side was empty and cold. That meant one thing. Duo had been up for a long time.
Heero rolled out of the bed, padding softly along the carpeted floor, grabbing a hoodie to wear loosely over his bare chest and boxer briefs. It never used to be like this. Duo wouldn't have been able to sneak around the apartment, leave the bed without Heero waking but it was different - years had passed. Anxiety and paranoia was now a little less close to the surface. The safety of their secure apartment complex. The reflexes and reaction times slowing. Comfort.
As he walked, Heero could hear the incessant typing, the punching down of the keys and the accompanying "ding" that signified that a line had been completed, the push of the mechanics back to the start. The noise was loud, jarring in the early hours of the morning but Heero found comfort in it. In the rhythm. In the music it made. In the image of Duo sat, curled in on himself, the lamp light illuminating his silhouette as he typed on the ancient typewriter, each movement of his fingers a note.
Duo didn't look up, his brow knitted in concentration, the haze of his e-cigarette surrounding his head, the smell faintly acrid. He was wearing a tank top, plaid pyjama pants that were always too low on his hips, bought a size too big for "comfort". His hair, shorter now, was tied up haphazardly into what Dup referred to as a "man bun" and his tattoos traced over his arms and chest and neck, linking and connecting, a puzzle of black and the occasional shocks of colour, mixing with the scars and disfigurements of skin caused by a teenage war. He was relaxed and in a deep state of concentration and Heero didn't want to disturb that.
Or maybe he did. He felt a pang, deep in his gut, as Duo had found something post-war that gave him this level of peace - writing stories of children who were too young going to war and of colonies where it was a fight to eat and they were aimed at children but they shone like a beacon, a warning about repeating history. It was getting forgotten, Heero noticed, and they were forgotten. As was right. They were faces of a war long since gone. But still there needed to be some trace memory to ensure powerful men did not repeat the past. To remember that they had sent teenagers to die.
Heero had found nothing like the typewriter and the process of writing. That pre-colony typewriter that Duo treasured like a limb, like his braid, like the ink that laced over his muscles. Heero had asked, once, why the typewriter. It was noisy. It wasn't easy to correct mistakes. It was heavy and clunky.
And Duo had grinned, a pencil behind his ears and his hands behind his head.
"I used computers to kill people. I can't kill people with a typewriter."
"You could," Heero had retorted. "If you threw it hard enough."
And Duo had laughed and laughed and laughed until he'd attacked Heero with kisses. His dry sense of humour forever amused Duo - especially when it was a quick quip that Duo deemed "un-Heero" like.
But Heero understood - laptops, computers were used for missiles and explosions and pain. And Duo liked the care, the attention, the tinkering that the typewriter allowed him - the physicality and the touch. He used marker pens and notepads on the floor once his drafts were complete - sitting in the centre of a city of papers, connecting them with coloured dots and numbers, his tongue peeking out between his lips as his brows furrowed.
Heero had nothing like that - he had worked as essentially a boy soldier his entire life. Whether that was for Preventer or for Relena's protective detail or piloting a Gundam, he had never found anything that gave him peace like Duo had. There was a piece of a puzzle missing, something that needed rearranging inside him but he had never found the thing that would restore whatever was missing. It was only as he got older that he understood that there was always something missing.
They didn't need money, they never did, with war reparations and Preventer salaries but Heero needed something like the slow rhythmic beat of Duo's fingers.
"You're watching."
Heero smiled guiltily. "Admiring the view."
Duo chuckled and patted the spot on the couch next to him. "Being a creep, more like."
Heero shrugged and made his way over to the precarious work station Duo had created for himself at the end of the L-shaped couch that dominated the living area. Sitting beside him, Heero leaned his head against Duo's bare shoulder, looking at the paper that was halfway out of the typewriter.
He glanced at the words before Duo nudged him playfully in the ribs.
"No previews."
"I only read the word 'the'," he responded as he laid himself on the couch, his head close to Duo's thigh. He reached for the blanket, covering himself, a slight chill creeping into his limbs. The things he felt now… now that the drugs and toxins and experiments had had years to leach out of his body. He remembered never feeling the cold but now it was different. Everything was different.
"It was an important 'the'" Duo retorted, "the most important of all the the's."
Heero snorted and closed his eyes as he attempted to fall back to sleep beside Duo, the rhythmic sound of the typewriter and the gentle feel of Duo's fingers in his hair lulling him to a dreamless sleep.
There was nothing that brought Heero peace like his daily run, the methodical route, the steady pace, the same time and the same early morning stillness. Colonies felt still on a morning. No breeze like Earth. No loud obnoxious birds. It felt calm. At peace. And awash with the vestiges of the morning rain cycle that had only just finished when Heero departed from the apartment complex.
He liked this time. He only ever saw a few people and it felt like everyone else in the colony was still asleep. Duo was asleep. Heero had left Duo where he was as he had commandeered the entire bed, his legs and arms making a reasonable attempt at covering the surface so there had been no room for Heero even if he had ever woken up on the couch and wanted to sleep in his own damn bed. It had made him smile, the soft snort from Duo's lips as he slept, the way his hair had escaped most of the "man bun" and the way he looked utterly relaxed.
The evidence of a successful evening of creativity was scattered over the floor - the pages numbered haphazardly and landing wherever they landed. Heero had ignored them and left for his run, knowing that Duo would sort when he awoke. He knew better than to disturb Duo's work.
The fake sky was grey, the day cycle starting gently as to imitate a sunrise on earth. Heero liked the grey light and he began to jog, slowly picking up his speed as he followed his usual route through the streets and to the large park that dominated the centre of their neighbourhood. His sneakers hit puddles, little splashes coming up to his shins and he enjoyed the feel on his skin.
Duo had tried to join him on these runs but Duo talked. And Heero didn't want to talk - he wanted the silence of an early morning, the light shimmering on the puddles, the few early morning dog walkers he nodded to every morning. It was quiet and familiar. Peaceful.
It just didn't fill the missing part. Whatever it was. It quietened the storm but didn't sate it.
There was a restlessness that he had felt since the war. He hadn't been intended to survive - either by himself or by Dr J. So he had spent the years since adapting, finding purpose in throwing himself into Preventer, protecting Relena, living and growing older with Duo. It just didn't give him the same level of satisfaction as Duo had with that damn typewriter. But it was something.
He ran harder, further, faster - taking a longer route until he stopped in the park, realising it was getting busier and it was no longer the quiet early morning he so craved. There were more dog walkers and kids going to school and people going to work and it was alive and people were talking and it was all so social. And not where he belonged. He paused, took a few deep breaths and then started to walk back slowly, no longer feeling the need to run.
The ground was no longer damp under foot as he walked, taking in his surroundings and the amount of people who had crawled out from their homes while he had been stuck inside his own head, thinking too much as he ran. He decided since the world was awake, he would take advantage of the open stores and entered a coffee shop to buy a morning treat for Duo.
A small smirk crossed his face as he purchased pastries and donuts knowing the response he would get. Duo would smile in that big honest way only Heero got to see and he would probably be dragged into the bed he hadn't slept in, kisses and bodies moving in tandem, the smell of shampoo, e-cigarettes and Duo's skin filling his senses. Yet it was as he was paying he saw the notice board and the flyer that had been printed when someone was running out of ink and he knew that he had to do something.
He didn't usually run this way. They didn't frequent this coffee shop. Yet here he was. And there it was. Maybe his detour had helped him find something missing. Heero ripped the flyer off the noticeboard and left, coffee and pastries warm in his fingertips.