((It's been a while, my friends, hasn't it? Do forgive me. Life, as it often does, gets in the way of our more delicious hobbies. In any case, after a year (or more! Meep!) of absence, I finally made something worth posting again. Actually, this story is a VERY long overdue present to a friend who once asked it of me. I have never done a request before, so we'll see. She supported me through some rough spots, and she never asked for any guidelines or rules in this story, so bear with me as I tried to write something I thought she might enjoy. I hope the rest of you also like the ride.))
"Duo… Damn it."
Trowa's soft murmur was spoken into the now empty dining room, no one there to hear him or even see him, aside from the few large and unwieldy birds pecking along down by the green river banks. He lifted his eyes as he moved along the clean and recently reorganized tables, flipping over the delicate white porcelain tea cups, and then the more sleek crystal water glasses. Around him, the lazy rising sun lit the latter into fiery prisms. The red mock-fire dancing over the diner's worn wooden floors briefly drew his unpredictable emerald gaze, then he was looking out the large pane of glass before him again.
Judging by how well yesterday had gone, surprising for an opening day, Trowa thought their first guest would be here less than a handful of minutes after the opening hour. A quick glance at his watch told him he had just enough time to confront the villain who'd caused this extra work.
He found Duo in the kitchen, smirking to himself and just stepping back from the shelves to admire his work. All plates were perfectly aligned on the rustic looking shelves, their white shapes lined up in neat towers before him with just hints of their bronze-color edges showing. Above it, all of the glasses were stacked in much the same way. A picture of organization, surprising for Duo, and yet the grinning American still couldn't ever get the glasses right.
"Duo… I told you. I've been telling you-"
"The glasses right?" The cheeky redhead turned to him, looking perky and ready for a round of verbal sparring anytime Trowa wanted.
It was a fight that the brunette had to consider before stepping the ring, but finally he sighed and nodded. "Yes. They are supposed-"
"We're in the desert now, Tro." Duo cut him off again.
The taller boy frowned, eyes shifting to the large window pane the kitchen sported against one wall, just over the set up for the stove. Out there, the sand was god. It stretched like gold water, shifting with the wind and lit into glitter by the sun. It was infinite. Even seeing the distant spark of the Nile cutting through it's length couldn't shake the image Trowa had of it never ending. Of course, he knew the other side of the restaurant led right to a road. A well traveled one, at that, but… Looking out this window, it was hard not to believe what one immediately saw.
He looked back to Duo, one eyebrow cocked. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Sand."
"Sand?"
"Yeah." Duo smiled, and pointed to the cups on the shelves. Those were also facing down. Trowa wouldn't try to fix that, since Duo was the one that cleaned and stacked them, but the dining room was not the kitchen.
The redhead had stopped talking, and with a sigh, Trowa shifted his eyes back to the American and motioned with a hand for him to go on, catered to his ego.
"Well, if ya got the cups upright, in this place, sand'll get in them. Haven't ya noticed? Every night when we close up, there's a small pile of it in the corners, and under some of the tables? Whenever someone opens the door, it comes it. It swirls around in the air, and it lands places… Like cups. So I let the customers flip them, or I do it, when I come to pour their water."
Trowa blinked. Duo's logic was often half thoughts, or what the American himself would call 'scatter brained', but it was still just that. Logic. This time, loathe as he was to admit it, Trowa knew Duo had a point.
The sand had a way of taking over, and getting everywhere. He was careful each night when he went upstairs to their living area, taking off his shoes and changing clothing… And yet he'd woken up more than once, itching in bed as he felt the grains clinging to him. Duo, as expected, loved to tease him about it. Trowa who didn't care about anything hated the feel of some dirt.
He accepted the teasing. He felt silly about it himself. He'd agreed to move here, same as Heero and Wufei, when the American had made his pitch. The price was right, and they all wanted new turf, but sometimes he found himself regretting it now. The desert was an unforgiving and ugly place.
"Okay." Trowa turned and walked to the kitchen's door.
"Okay? That's it?" Duo gazed after him, surprised.
"Yes. I flipped them over today. I'll leave them tomorrow." And with that, the tall young man was gone, off to sweep the porch of the Lost Sun Café.
Slowly, the boy in the kitchen smiled and went back to his own preparations before the two cooks would come down. Trowa might have won the battles yesterday, but he won the war. By the time the other two came down, he was whistling and getting drinks ready to make his rounds.
"Oh man. What a day!" Duo flopped back on the couch, feet dropping into the lap of the person on the other end. Heero just grunted and shoved the appendages off of him, giving Duo a foreboding look.
"We more than covered expenses." Came the calm pointed comment from the upstairs apartment's hallway, drifting out to them as Wufei slipped into the bedroom he shared with Heero.
"Yeah, I bet we did. We were buuuusy." Groaning, Duo picked up his feet again, and flopped then right back onto the lap of the Japanese boy. "Hey, He-chan? Rub my feet for me? I'm pooped."
"Rub them yourself, Maxwell." There was a thump as they returned to the floor, then a streak as Heero quickly got up and stalked off the way Wufei had.
Duo paused for a second, then rose to his feet with a grin. "Aww, don't you love me? He-baby? Snookie?"
"I swear, if you're following me, I will kill you."
"Now there's the Heero I love! You know I get all hot and bothered when you talk dirty to me! Come on, describe your gun and I'll-"
It was about time he got to cut the other off, but Trowa did so with little glee as he emerged from the bathroom, swiping a hand across his damp forehead. "Speaking of hot and bothered. Where's the fan, Duo? It must be a hundred degrees up here."
"Huh?" The redhead answered, eyes still on the hall like a cat waiting for a mouse to emerge.
He resisted the urge to grit his teeth. "The fan. The one we keep in the bedroom."
"… Oh. Yeah. It got really bad in the kitchen today, with He-chan baking, so I went upstairs to get it for him."
"All right. So where is it?"
Duo finally looked over, grinning and scratching the back of his head. "In the kitchen."
Trowa stared at the redhead incredulously as he padded off down the hall after Heero and was greeting by a slamming door. " … I guess I'll get it myself. Thank you, Duo."
No response. Not to him anyway. He did hear Duo making little puppy-like noises and actually scratching the door though as he turned to head back down the stairs that would lead to the now empty hall along side the kitchen.
The hallow echo of his footsteps followed him down, but it was better than the flat sound that filled the first floor. Open area, broken by tables with the chairs on top, like reaching fingers. Shadows everywhere in a world turned the color of faded bones through the windows due to the full moon that rode over the dunes. The opening to the kitchen further down was a mouth in the white wall, black and morbidly inviting. Trowa took a breath, scolding himself for his half a second of pause at the eerie image, then proceeded.
He headed through the graveyard of chairs, mindful not to bump any of the rising legs with an absence grace that his friends upstairs might have been jealous of, and slipped into the dark door.
The kitchen, though eerie as all rooms become once the sun had set and no lights turned on, was less bothersome than the dining room. The dim shadows were easily recognizable. The silver of the stove and refrigerator most prominent, the big box shapes in the exact spots he'd helped to put them weeks ago. The cabinets darker, but familiar, enough that even the sheen from the plates was just a absence note made in his mind. There against one wall, their own private table, light shining on it's top and watery blackness beneath.
And sitting on it, the one unfamiliar piece he could immediately recognize within this room. The metal cage of the fan cast prison bars on the floor in front of him, stretching towards the door and his feet like it wanted to grip his bare ankles and haul him in. The shape of the blades cutting the bar-shadows like razors.
Trowa skirted the bars on the floor with absent distaste, coming to the side of the table to lean over it and hook his fingers into the steel grate. "Enough of this midnight jitters."
His own voice made him jump as it tore through the silence, then broke it again with a jagged chuckled. "This is ridiculous."
Trowa straightened up, lifting the fan from the table and turned to stride back to the door.
The jerk that came almost over powered his natural grace. It pulled his arm back with a snap and the fan right out of his hand, sending it clattering to the floor with a noisy metallic thud that rang in his ears. His body started to follow suit downwards and it was only by fast foot work that he stayed upright, looking down at the object with wide startled eyes.
The cord was still plugged in.
It crept from the back of the device like a tail, snaking along the floor in a loose wave now that the slack had returned to it and finally plunging into the darkness beneath the table.
Trowa stared at this in dull shock, before his mind took to mentally scolding him for acting like a dumb kid and while his heart took a chance to reestablish a regular pattern in his chest.
Enough really was enough, he thought with a faint growl under his breath. The other would have been laughing themselves sick to have watched him since he reached the bottom of the stairs. The brunette walked back to scoop up the fan by it's cage again, hauling it back to the table and setting it down with a thunk, then bent hands and knees to the floor to peer into the darkness for the plug.
He stared into the inky darkness, hated himself for the pause it brought, then just closed his eyes and thrust his hand into it. He hit the back wall with a half curled fist, knuckles knocking there, and let his fingers spider along the flat surface in search of the outlet.
Yes, he was going to unplug the fan. He was going to pick it up. Go upstairs. Plug it in. Lie in bed. Read. Sleep. All fine. Trowa's mantra was simple, ignoring all childish thoughts of a hand closing over his in the darkness, of gaping maws with sharp teeth and glittering eyes. He wasn't five any more. There was no things out there. Unnamed and hateful. There was no anything here.
But there were footsteps. There was the sound , someone quietly running, coming from under him. Trowa's body stiffened as his mind recognized that fact and entered it into his mental scolding smooth as a knife parting butter. Just another note put into his nonsensical string of information.
Someone was in the building. In the basement. Trowa's flesh crawled as he knelt, hand still thrust into the darkness and head tipped up to better listen, the moon from the windows filling his eyes.
The steps below, pattering and soft as a mouse, were still feet. No denying it. Slapping something hard as they went from somewhere near where he was guessing the bathroom stalls they'd added were, towards the circuit boxes.
Ice crept down his spin as Trowa sat up, then back on his heel. His head still tipped like a dog listening to high frequency as the footsteps below turned and moved back. Too light to be one of the others, and he would have heard them on the stairs. He KNEW he would have. Some kid maybe? He tried to suggest to himself, something rational and less from the terror of the mind. Some kid broke in and was down in the basement.
That was it, had to be. Trowa slowly stood up, bracing himself on the table and looking towards the kitchen door. He was co-owner here, wasn't he? It was his job to deal with these things. They couldn't have some stranger running around down there, in the dark of a locked shop, and causing trouble.
Nodding, Trowa made his way to the kitchen door. He peered out into the dining room, and the across the hall, to the door that announced (when the light was good enough to read the letters) that bathrooms were on the second floor. It was closed as it always was, and did he really mean to change that?
Apparently he did, since it seemed he blinked and his hand was on the knob, twisting it until the little block of metal that kept it shut within gave a pop and the resistance was gone. A crack of black first appeared, then widened as he eased the door open, the flight of stairs within appearing like magic.
He refused to flounder in the dark again. Not this time, he was heading down those stairs and going to flick the light switch the first chance he got. Trowa counted the stairs as his feet struck them, and hen he got to the bottom, he pushed his hand out to the right wall to feel for the switch he'd already dealt with a hundred times.
The footsteps were still sounding, off to his left now and still so quiet. And there was the switch, in his fingers. He trained his eyes on the darkness where he heard the sound, tensed, and then throw the switch.
Light exploded around him, casting into sharp relief the shapes of stalls to the left. Five of them. Clean, white and with the doors nicely closed. Stone walls. A few posters on one Duo had set up, waterfalls, which he claimed helped get the natural things flowing. Sink on one wall, mirrors reflecting his own pale and unsure face.
No person.
Not yet anyway. Trowa looked around carefully, then moved forward to the stalls. "Come on out, whoever you are. This restaurant in closed. You're not supposed to be here."
To him, he sounded sure enough of himself. No one answered, but then again, that didn't surprise him too much. He moved to the first stall door, and gave it a soft push with his hand. It swung with only a soft creak, and revealed nothing more than expected. White toilet. Paper on a roll. Stone floor.
He moved to the next one, feeling a little of his inner calm return. "I'm not mad. I'll just take you upstairs and let you out."
He pushed this one open as well, but barely heard it's hinges as the running started up again. It was right near him, behind him, and then… In front of him. Trowa turned around, then felt the cold sweep him again. Not near him… Under him. It was coming from under the basement.
He stared at the floor as the footsteps passed and ran, to the wall of the sinks and then beyond it, and when he heard the soft sob that flowed back from wherever the feet were running, it felt like something brushed his heart with ice cubes.
They faded to silence, somewhere under the heavy stones Trowa stood on now, but he stood still for nearly a minute just staring blindly at the horrified expression his reflection bore.
Then he was upstairs. He was shivering and closing the 'front door' their apartment. Feeling goose bumps on his arms and legs, painful and large, as he turned and made his way stiffly to his room.
"Hey! Tro? Where's the fan?" Duo, back on the couch after being denied entry to the bedroom, looked up from his magazine as he pushed popcorn between his lips. "Buddy?"
Through numb lips, his brain supplied an answer as he slipped into his bedroom and started to rub his arms through his shirt. It drifted back to the American on the couch. "I'm not hot any more."