When Duo woke up, Heero wasn't in the apartment. Which he figured. Heero had seemed particularly angsty last night and had joined him on the couch while he typed. Duo knew he'd be running off his bad mood and didn't worry. It was years since he'd worried, like he really worried, about Heero's disappearing acts. There had been times, years and years ago, when Heero not being there when he woke would've induced a panic that would involve Duo running through the streets to ensure that Heero wasn't at the edge of some literal or figurative precipice. Now it was different. Duo knew Heero needed space, needed his morning run and the quietness of a colony in the early morning. So he padded out of the bed in search of the coffee pot, re-tying his hair at the top of his head as he walked, it having escaped its confines during the night.

Duo saw the paper trail of his work across the floor. It needed editing, refining, changing but there was a first draft appearing among the pages on the floor and he felt that satisfaction as he gazed on his mess. Least Heero accepted his somewhat scattergun creative process. Damn was he lucky that Heero got it.

Sometimes Duo barely got it. As a kid, books had hardly been a feature of his life until the Church and then it had been the Bible and pretty much nothing else. Then there was a war. He was hardly reading Tolstoy in a Gundam cockpit. He was too busy killing or nearly being killed. It was after, in the upheaval years and the Prev years and the figuring out who the hell he was years, that Duo started to read. It was Relena's well stocked library and a boring protective detail hosted in Sanc that had introduced him to a different world. Then it led to him telling his own stories.

At first, his stories were just his own form of therapy - trying to re-piece the parts of his past into some form of coherent narrative. Then they morphed, formed into stories of kids at war and violence and how war and death changed everything…

That's when he bought the typewriter. That's when it really started.

It calmed him. Duo knew he'd been a dick at times when he was trying to figure out his own head. And in the beginning, his relationship with Heero had been volatile. Yet they always came back to one another even if a kiss was preceded by a harsh word or a shove. It was hard in those days.

Duo busied himself with the coffee, his bare feet on the cold tiles beneath his feet and he thought about how writing his books had given him a sense of self, a sense of place and a sense of worth. He just wished he could find Heero the same damn thing.

They could play the game of the most fucked up childhood - they had, once, a drinking game, or a parody of one and the other guys had been there and when Duo felt something in his eye, it maybe had been something to do with Heero's childhood. Least Duo had been loved at one point. Cared for. Brief as it damn well was.

Heero had never found something that gave him the same level of peace and satisfaction that Duo had. He had tried to throw himself into Preventer, into security detail for Relena, in computer defence systems but all these things were too closely aligned with violence that it seemed like Heero would never become anything more than that boy soldier.

Frowning, Duo wondered why the hell he couldn't smell coffee only to realise the machine was unplugged.

"Damn idiot," he muttered to himself and was about to rectify the situation when the door opened and with it the smell of coffee.

"I got coffee. Donuts. Pastries."

Duo grinned as Heero approached, placing the tasty smelling treats on the counter. "Have I told you lately how you are the most amazing, sexiest badass guy in the whole fucking Earth Sphere?"

In his running gear, his hair mussed and reaching into one of the bags for a blueberry muffin, Heero looked like absolute perfection to Duo. Like he always had been. They fitted together perfectly, even if everyone thought they were ill-suited, even if they'd had their trickier times. Loud idiot. Emotionless asshole. Or something like that. That's what people thought, Duo was damn sure of that.

But they didn't see the little smirk on Heero's face. "No, you haven't told me I'm a sexy badass for a while."

"Then I've been a dick... especially when said sexy badass brings me coffee and pastries."

Duo grabbed Heero then, pulling him in for a lingering kiss, the saltiness of Heero's sweat filling his senses. Heero backed away, taking a bite of his muffin and smirking in a self-satisfied way. It was as though he could predict Duo's response. He was getting too damn predictable in his old age.

"I need a shower. Eat. Drink coffee. Meet me in bed."

Duo playfully smacked at Heero's ass. "You bet."

Idly, Duo reached for a pastry and was about to take a bite when he noticed something stuck to it. His brows knitted as he looked at the flyer, clearly ripped from a noticeboard, the rip from where it had been pinned showing as much.

He took a bite and took a swill of his Americano and his brain worked overdrive. He left the flyer in the kitchen, walked towards the bedroom, cherry Danish being consumed and coffee being drunk as he went.

The sound of the shower ended swiftly and Duo finished his last bite of sweet stickiness and abandoned his coffee on the bedside table as Heero emerged, naked and dripping wet, drying his hair with his towel so that there was nothing left to Duo's imagination.

"You need to be naked for this," Heero commented wryly, his gaze on the low hung plaid pajamas and the tank top.

Duo snickered. "Come over here and make me, babe."

Heero didn't need anymore encouragement as the coffee, pastries and the flyer were forgotten in the tangle of limbs, in the press of the hard planes of Heero's body against Duo's, the feel of his hands against Duo's hips. They fitted together perfectly, bodies aligned, rutting and rocking together, Heero's damp skin underneath Duo's fingertips and fuck, Duo didn't know if there was anything more perfect that the press of the lips, the bruising kisses and the feel of Heero hot, hard and heavy against him.

Yet in the moments afterwards, in the cooling of skin and the taste of cold coffee, Duo remembered the flyer. He wandered to the kitchen, bringing the rest of the food to the bedroom and he could feel Heero's piercing gaze on his ass, on his back, on the tattoos that trailed over his skin. He had also grabbed the flyer.

Duo held it out as he returned to the bedroom and he saw Heero blink, an expression that looked vulnerable, a sort of confusion that only Duo saw.

"I think it's a good idea...though I ain't dealing with the mess."

"You're sure?"

"Hell yeah… would give a you a jogging partner too and a buddy when I'm in a manic writing phase."

Heero grabbed for him, pulling Duo down to the bed and into a searing kiss. Disentangling himself, Duo threw a bag with the muffins at Heero.

"Give me 5, 'Ro… I need food and caffeine before another round. We ain't sixteen anymore."

It felt good. He was damn near on fire. Duo was barely breathing lest he lose the inspiration he currently was surfing the crest of. He just hoped the damn typewriter wouldn't jam or he got distracted before he finished his chapter…

Then he heard it. The barking. The commotion. The knowledge that he was about to get disturbed.

"Type like the fucking wind," he mumbled under his breath even though he knew it was pointless. As a second later, the door opened and in bounded a ball of fur and excitement, a Golden Retriever suddenly attempting to lick his face and currently scampering around in his ordered chaos.

Duo only sighed and started scratching behind the ears of Buddy, the Golden Retriever they had adopted three months ago. "Good run, Buddy? Did you have a good run, boy? Was it fun? Did you see other doggies…?"

"Are you going to ask me?"

Duo looked up to see Heero, smirking at the way he'd been talking to Buddy. "How was your run, babe?"

"Not going to ask me if I saw other doggies?"

Childishly, Duo did the only thing he could do. Which was to throw a pillow in Heero's direction which Buddy thought was a game and barked louder. Knowing his writing time was thoroughly disturbed, Duo walked to the kitchen abandoning his work in progress. "I'm making coffee. And you boys better think of all the ways you can apologise to me for disturbing my work."

Heero didn't realise that Duo was watching, he thought he was making coffee but as Heero knelt down and talked softly to Buddy, Duo saw Heero at peace in a way that he had never seen before.

Looking after Buddy gave him something else. Something that Duo didn't quite get but he didn't care. It was another piece of the puzzle that made up their unconventional lives and that was all that mattered.