What is going on? Two updates in two days? I know, right?

starless-ocean: Sorry about the typos. .

I will try to keep the men/boys thing more consistent. For reference, they are 19 in this story, so I feel they are kind of in the middle ground of adult and child, so it's hard to settle on one. So, I will try to not use those two words in the same paragraph at least. As far as the brunette thing, I will also try to work on that, need to find more describing words. XD

Thanks very much for the reviews, I appreciate them. ^.^

Cuzosu: Fast enough for you? I can't promise an update every day, but I will try to be quicker. ^.^

©Yakubi

A Home To Return To

Chapter 05

Dear God the house was boring. Duo sighed heavily as he reclined on the couch. It had been a month since he and Heero had started living together and things had gone much the way he expected. They cleaned the house every Thursday, mostly picking up snack wrappers from Duo's late night cravings. Friday was laundry day and Monday was grocery day. It was horribly ordinary and never off schedule.

Duo sighed again, he had no idea what Heero was doing, so he contented himself by watching TV or exercising. 250 channels and there was nothing good to watch, it was utterly ridicules. He needed to convince Heero to let him by a game console or something, anything to get his mind off of how boring life seemed to be. Duo knew a pet was out of the question, but asking for a play station or something couldn't hurt, right?

The door opened and Duo turned to see Heero coming in, wiping his grease covered hands off on a rag. "I finally got the truck running." Heero was referring to the old, beat-up red pick-up that had been decorating their lawn for over a week. Heero had bought it at dirt cheap figuring that if they were going to be here for a while they should have a steady mode of transportation. Of course, vehicles were now purely electric, it didn't mean they couldn't break down though.

"That's great, maybe now we can go somewhere other than the super market."

"What do you mean?"

Duo turned his body so that he was kneeling on the couch, his elbows over the back. "I mean somewhere fun." Heero continued to give him a blank stare. "Like an amusement park, or maybe we can visit Quatre, or something!"

"…are you saying you're bored?" Heero raised an eyebrow questioningly at his braided companion.

"Yes!" Duo nearly cried, his hands going up to fist in his hair. Over-exaggeration was one of the few entertainments left to him. "I'm going crazy here, it's the same thing every week, over and over and over again!"

"I guess I can find something for you to do."

"Please, no more cleaning. I smell like Lysol."

Heero felt his face soften. "Maybe I should buy you a game system."

"That. Would. Be. AWESOME. I was just thinking about that."

Heero smiled a little. Duo really was like a child, but at least he was mature enough not to throw temper tantrums.

"You know, I've also been thinking about getting a job."

Heero tuned back to look at Duo. "What for?"

Duo moved his hands in front of himself. "Don't get me wrong, I have everything I need. It's just I feel kinda guilty relying on you like this." Duo tried to put on his best puppy face. "I just want to know that I'm helping a bit."

"Alright, it's fine by me." Heero moved into the kitchen, getting himself a glass of water. "Any idea what you want to do?"

"Nope!" Duo smiled widely. "I'll just take a look around and see what I can find. Oh, and I was serious about visiting Quatre, it would be nice to see Trowa to."

"I'll see what I can do." Heero said again.

Duo smiled. "So… do you have any ideas about places that are hiring?"

Heero looked at Duo, so much for not relying on him for everything. "I have a laptop you can use to look for a job." Heero said plainly.

"You've got a laptop?" Heero said nothing. "Why didn't you tell me?" Duo tried to stare Heero down.

"You never asked." Really, the boy should have learned by now, if you want something you have to ask for it. Heero walked through the hallway and into the bedroom. After fishing around in his drawers he finally found the laptop. Heero walked back into the living room with the electronic device, he dropped the item into the braided boy's lap. "Happy job hunting." He said before he walked back outside, grabbing a clean cloth from the kitchen on his way out.

Duo pouted, before turning on the laptop. It took a little time, but after he finally figured out how to get the wireless internet to work he found a job he thought suited him.

-=-=-=-=-=-Time Skip-=-=-=-=-=-

Duo practically bounced into work, a smile stretching his lips across his teeth. He greeted his boss, a small woman with pale skin, short brown hair and green eyes whose name was Carrie. He was two inches taller than her, and loved reminding her of it.

She looked down her nose at him. "What do you want Maxwell?"

"Oh, nothing." Duo put his hands behind his back and rocked on his feet, his smile only widening. "Can't I just come in here and say hello?"

"We both know that that's not why you're here, so spit it out, what do you want?"

"I was wondering if I could have a week vacation? Heero and I are gonna go visit some old friends."

Carrie sighed. She was the owner of a small fix-it business, basically, if anything broke they would fix it or find someone who could. Though he had only been working for her for three weeks Duo was already one of her best workers, he seemed to be able to fix anything mechanical. Carrie looked at him, he was practically begging…. and he did deserve a little vacation… the woman sighed again. "Alright, you can have your week."

"Yay!" Duo grabbed the woman and twirled her around before setting her back on the ground. "Thank you so much!"

The woman looked slightly disheveled, but otherwise alright. "Just get out of here already, and tell Heero I said hello."

"I will!" The boy hurried out of the shop, the little bell over the door ringing almost to tell him good bye as he left.

-=-=-=-=-=-Time Skip-=-=-=-=-=-

The windows were rolled down to half mast and the radio mumbled some old song that neither of the car's occupants knew, and yet Duo still tried to hum along. Heero expression never changed as they drove miles and miles in their beat-up red pick-up. Duo stared out the window and Heero stared at the road. Part of Duo wanted to pull the "are we there yet?" routine, but he thought better of it. All of the driving games Duo had tried had turned out to be failures, Heero was too good at the license plate game and playing slug-bug with him was torture.

Duo sighed. "How far away are we from Quatre's?"

"97 miles." Heero answered quickly.

"Oh God…" Duo tossed his head back. "This is going to take forever!"

"Only a few more hours, I'm sure you'll be fine."

Though there was nothing innately wrong with the statement, Duo somehow got the vibe that Heero was tired and feeling a little grumpy. Considering how much time he had spent with the man it was no surprise that he was getting better at reading his moods. Duo felt slightly depressed that while he could now read that man much better than he had before, he still didn't really know anything about Heero. He really wanted to ask, but he also figured that Heero wouldn't tell him. Duo reached over and rolled up the window, the wind was starting to bother him, it made the little hairs that avoided his braid tickle his face and irritate his eyes. "So… do you think we can come up with something to talk about this time?" Heero said nothing. "I like to talk on long trips, I think it helps to pass the time."

"…I can't think of anything to talk about."

Duo looked at Heero, that statement seemed rather out of character for him. "Um… hey, what is your favorite color?"

Heero looked at him for a second, his eyebrows slightly pulled together. "Why does that matter?"

Screw it, Duo thought, there was no better time than now to try and learn something about his mysterious companion. "I want to know more about you Heero. We have been living together for a couple months and I still don't really know anything about you."

"It's green."

"What?"

"My favorite color is green."

Duo smiled. "Mine's blue."

"Why is it important for you to know things about me?"

"Well, I suppose it's just curiosity, but I want to know you better."

"I think you can know a lot about a person by what they do, rather than what they've done."

Heero was being uncharacteristically talkative, and there was no way Duo was going to pass it up. "Well, I agree with you, but at the same time knowing someone else's past can help you understand what made them who they are today. Yes, you can get along with someone perfectly fine without knowing anything specific about them, but I think that when you do know those kind of things you can truly understand that person, as well as their motivations."

"You are being strangely well-spoken today Duo."

Duo blushed a little at the comment. "There's nothing wrong with speaking your mind." The braided boy said with a small pout.

"Where are you from?"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"I want to know more about you to." Heero kept his eyes on the road. Something about Duo was really changing him, just a few years ago he could have cared less what would happen to the other boy, and now he was actually asking him about his personal life.

Duo looked up at the ceiling of the vehicle. Maybe if he shared than Heero would reciprocate? "I'm from the L2 colony." Duo paused, he didn't think this was important, he didn't even really feel like talking about it. But then again Heero probably felt even left like talking about his past than Duo did. "I grew up on the streets with no name, until I met a boy, he was a couple years older than me, he just started calling me Duo." Duo laughed a little at the memory. "Then I ended up at the Maxwell Church." Duo looked at Heero again, the boy was still eyeballing the road. "That's where I got my last name. After a while I ended up leaving there. I got caught as a stowaway on Professor G's ship and the rest is history." Alright, so he wasn't telling Heero everything, maybe later? Okay he was being a bit hypocritical… whatever.

"I was an orphan as well. I lived on the streets and mostly stole what I needed. After a while I got taken in as an apprentice to an assassin, his name was Odin Lowe. He taught me how to live. He abandoned me three years after he picked me up when he died attempting an assassination."

Duo looked at Heero. The boy's expression hadn't changed once while he told his story. For some reason, it made sense, but the way Heero had said it made it seem like it didn't even matter. It was strange that someone could be so unattached to their own past. Duo was also pretty sure that while Heero hadn't used the greatest amount of detail he hadn't really left anything out. Duo felt guilty, seeing as he had admitted much of his story. "Heero-"

"Don't worry about it." Heero cut the other boy off. "You get emotional easily, it's alright if you don't tell me everything about yourself. I already told you that I don't think it's important."

Duo suddenly felt like being quiet. He wanted to talk, but he couldn't think of anything else to say. Heero was right, it shouldn't matter. And yet, it bothered him that while he had only told half truths, Heero had told him everything. He trusted him, and Duo had instinctively doubted him.

Heero, in his own way, was telling Duo that he trusted him. Duo felt like he should apologize. He and Heero were friends, they had trusted each other with their lives, and yet he had had trouble telling Heero about the life he had saved. "Heero I'm-"

"We're here." Heero stopped the car and pulled out the keys opening the truck door. "Come on." He said as he got out, shutting the door roughly behind him.

"What do you mean?" Duo tried to say, but Heero was already walking away from the vehicle. All Duo could see out of his window was country side. He got out of the car anyways. "Heero…" Duo stopped speaking. Just off the side of the road, down a bit of a hill, was an enormous graveyard. Row after row of clean white tombstones stretched on for what seemed like forever. "Heero, what is this?"

"It's one of the Eve Wars Memorial Graveyards."

Duo had read about the memorial graveyards. In nearly every country, there was a graveyard so that all the soldiers that had fought and died for their beliefs in the war could be left to rest in peace in their homes. It seemed as though billions of people had died, hundreds of graves dotted the world, all of those lives lost in mere days. "Why are we here?"

Heero continued to look across the graveyard. "We are responsible for most of the people here Duo, I figured it would be proper if we stopped and paid our respects."

This sort of sentimentality was something Duo had never expected to see from Heero. Being the soldier he was, Duo felt almost no guilt for his actions during the war, when you hold a weapon and run towards your enemy you should be prepared to die, that's just how things are. Yes, he had taken lives, yes he felt sad over it, but he didn't really let himself get sucked into the guilt. Still, here was Heero, as stoic as ever, taking the time to stop by the graves of soldiers that hadn't even been on the same side as he was. It was a strange touch of humanity from the usually alienating man.

Duo stepped up to Heero's side, he looked at the graves, his eyes stopping for a moment on many of them, he couldn't see any of the names carved on the stones, but he remembered some of the voices he had heard over the radio in his gundam. He remembered the arrogance of some, and the panic of others. Duo felt like his skin was shrinking, for the first time he truly realized just how small he was, just how small everyone else was. They had been fighting for what they had believed was right, and all of them had taken lives. Though the moral dilemma would never go away, Duo couldn't help but feel that, while they hadn't done the right thing, they hadn't done the wrong thing either. "We really did change things, didn't we?"

Heero thought about the question. In the grand scheme of things, not much had truly changed, yes the governments were different and people seemed happier, but in the end there would always be some small discontent. Eventually the corrupt would come into power again and the weak would look on in fear as they desperately looked for a way to fight back without risking their lives. In the end, there was no way to avoid that there would be another war, another time where murder was hated, and yet considered normal. In the long run, they had changed nothing, but right now, things seemed better. Heero didn't look at Duo. "Yeah." He felt like he was lying in some way, and yet he didn't want to tell Duo how he really felt, something told him it would hurt Duo to learn that this war had been like every other one, eventually meaningless.

Duo's eyes continued to look out over the graves at the sun set, the golden light seemed to set the stones ablaze. A red outline that reminded Duo of the blood that had been spilt outlined every grave, and the purple forming in the sky reminded him of the rot. It was beautiful, in a way. Like watching something grow and fall to ruin.

Finally the two boys turned away from the graves and moved back to the car, each taking in physical cues from the other. Fastening their seatbelts, Heero turned the key in the ignition and waited for the car to come to life, the small vibrations of the engine echoing through the whole frame of the vehicle. Slowly, they began to move, the wheels gaining traction on the road and propelling them forward.

-=-=-=-=-=-Time Skip-=-=-=-=-=-

The sun had set hours ago, the radio was now the only thing keeping Heero company as he drove through the night. Duo leaned against the window of the car in sleep. The lines on the road disappeared beneath the tires on Heero's truck, he pressed on the gas pedal a little harder than necessary. He was speeding, and he knew it, but Heero figured that out here, it's didn't really matter.

Heero glanced at Duo. The braded boy's head nodded back and forth against the window, his mouth was slightly parted and his chest rose and fell evenly. Heeo had always been a little puzzled by Duo's behavior. The boy called himself the God of Death, he had killed just as many people as he had, and yet Duo still seemed to have some sort of innocence. He laughed and joked easily, getting on with nearly everyone, that was something Heero just couldn't do. Though in general he didn't want to be that sort of person, some small part of him wondered, if he hadn't been raised to be a murderer, could he have been that way to? Could he have laughed and smiled at everything, cracking jokes at every turn? It didn't seem right to him, it didn't seem to fit him at all, and yet sometimes he thought about what he could have been if he hadn't been an assassin.

"Nnnn…" Duo groaned on the seat next to him.

Heero glanced at the boy again, keeping one eye on the road. He looked like he was dreaming, then again Duo also seemed to have a predisposition to sleep talking. The boy's eyebrows pinched slightly, his mouth coming closed to form a sort of grimace. He must be waking up, though he didn't seem to like to idea.

Heero pulled over to the side of the road. With his foot on the brake he reached over and pulled Duo's seatbelt so it was behind him, before gently pulling the boy's body towards him, laying the brunette's head on his lap. He moved his foot back to the gas and started driving again.

Duo slept peacefully at that point, his legs curling up on the seat.

Heero didn't know why he did was he did. It didn't make any sense. Maybe if Duo stayed asleep he could save himself from the endless chatter, and yet he knew that wasn't the reason he had done it. It went against everything he had learned, and yet… Heero couldn't ignore that fact that he was starting to actually care about the other boy. Sure, he hadn't wanted him to die during the war, he was an asset at that point, but right now, Duo had nothing to offer him but company. It didn't make any sense, and yet he couldn't ignore what he was feeling. Heero was generally starting to care about Duo, from what he was doing to how he was doing. It worried him.

-=-=-=-=-=-Time Skip-=-=-=-=-=-

Duo felt very comfortable, and even to his sleep drunken mind it seemed odd, seeing as he knew that he was sleeping in the truck. Slowly, he realized he was sleeping on his side and that his head was on something somewhat soft, but also… boney? Duo opened his eyes, the light outside brightening the entire cab of the truck. Right in front of him was the steering wheel, which meant he was sleeping on Heero's lap. Duo looked up, Heero was still driving. "Heero?"

Heero glanced down quickly. "Yes?"

"Have you been driving all night?"

"Yes."

Duo moved to get up, we was a little sore, but he managed. It was a little bit strange, he and Heero had slept in the same bed but something about this situation seemed somehow to be more intimate. "Do you want me to take over?" Seeing as Heero had been driving for over twelve hours, the other boy had to be tired.

"Sure, but I think that would be a waste of time."

Duo felt himself get a bit angry. "Why?" He halfway snapped the word.

"Because we're here." Heero pressed down the gas pedal slightly as he turned the car down the large entrance way leading to Quatre's current residence.

"Oh…" Duo felt a bit stupid, he hadn't even realized that they had been in town, his mind was too busy thinking about the way Heero had reacted to take in his surroundings.

The pathway leading up to the house/mansion was paved with a white and grey stone and lined with trees, the bright greenery seemed to fit Quatre. The building was too big to be a house, but too small to be a mansion, but it managed to look regal none the less. It was a brick house with white pillars, the different colors brightening one another.

Heero pulled around to the back of the house, a few cars were there already so he just pulled in next to one. He pulled the keys out and shoved them in his pocket before unbuckling his seatbelt and getting out of the truck. He glanced at Duo again, the boy almost looked like he was pouting, before he too got out of the truck. The two boys reached into the back of the truck and grabbed their bags. They were planning to stay a few days, but they didn't really have much, both of them tended to pack on the light side. Making their way back around to the front of the house, Heero knocked on the door.

"Hello?" A voice sounded that both of the boy's knew as Trowa slowly opened the door.

"Hey!" Duo said cheerfully. "Long time no see buddy!"

Trowa opened the door fully to let the two boys in, each of them maneuvering their bags so as not to hit one another.

A painting and a vase of flowers brightened the room. There was a door on either side as well as two stair ways that led up to the second floor, a double door at the top of the stairs. The room was very symmetrical.

"I'll show you your rooms before I go get Quatre. He'll want to talk to you for quite a while." Trowa said, before he started making his way up the right set of stairs, the two boys on his heels. At the top, he took a right into a hallway, after a few feet he stopped and pointed to two of the doors in the hallway. "These will be your rooms, please let Quatre and I know if you need anything." He pointed to another door. "That's the bathroom."

Heero walked to the farther door while Duo took the close one. Duo walked inside his room. There was a small desk in the room along with a dresser, end table, and a king sized bed. Over all, it was better than a hotel. Duo dropped his bag on the floor before walking back out into the hallway to meet both Heero and Trowa.

-=-=-=-=-=-Author's Note-=-=-=-=-=-

Yay~.

You didn't think I'd leave out the other pilots, now did you? XP

Please leave a review. ^.^