Title: The Ribbon and the Ring 9?
Author: Seraphim Grace
Archive: http/ if you want it ask, I'll probably say yes. http/ http/ Always appreciated and replied to.
Rating: 18 (This is an open rating so I don't have to worry).
Pairings: 1x2
Warnings: Angst. Some gore.
Notes: AU, and features necromancy, very very very slight lemon this chapter.

The suite that Kail had given them was designed originally for travelling dignitaries from all over Aatoria and as such had several different levels of accommodation. There was what was obviously the master bedroom which had a vast feather bed with curtains and was heaped high with blankets and had a thick rich carpet on the floor. There was a room that was intended for higher levels of servants with two sturdy wide beds with a few less blankets and was far less comfortable, Quatre suggested that they were stuffed with straw. The third room was obviously for people you didn't like. The single bed was a cot with a lattice of leather straps and there were a few incredibly scratchy horse blankets. Surprisingly, despite being offered to share the middle room with Quatre and Trowa Wufei had refused and accepted the soldier's cot. Trowa and Wufei had, enjoying the turn of events that saw Duo at the butt of their jokes, had given the master bedroom to Heero and Duo.

Duo had never been so grateful. The bed was wide and comfortable and the heavy velvet curtains gave them a lot of privacy. Although Heero was by his very nature taciturn when they were alone he would speak with Duo at length. It made it harder for Duo to babble at him, as he might with the other pilots. There was something cleansing about being the focus of Heero's whole attention. It burned away the impurities. Duo liked the person Heero made him.

There was a small mirror in the room they had been given, it was nothing special, just a sheet of copper polished over and over until it reflected the room. Duo sat down in front of it and began to tug out the twists of his braid as he watched Heero get ready for bed. More than anything he wanted to cry, but he didn't. Boys don't cry, Sister Helen had told him that and he stuck by it. Boys don't cry.

As Heero pulled the simple smock over his head, not even bothering to undo the buttons and pull it on properly he looked over at Duo watching his reflection and smiled for him. It wasn't a grin, or even a smile that dominated his face, but his eyes lifted slightly, and the corners of his mouth. It was a private smile, and it was for him alone. None of the other pilots saw Heero like this, like he was when they were alone, he was soft and shy and protective. He made Duo feel special, which was something no one had ever really managed before.

When Heero turned all that perfect soldier attention towards him Duo felt special and he would destroy the world to keep that feeling forever. He just wasn't sure that he deserved it.

Heero came up behind him still wearing that perfect slight smile that made Duo's heart beat that little bit faster. "Here," he said in a way that he would never use in front of the other pilots, he lifted the brush that Duo had found in the tomb, "let me."

Duo remembered being very young, when his hair was worn loose and wild and kicking and screaming at Sister Helen when she tried to brush it. His hair was his and his alone. He had put more than one sweeper in the hospital for trying to cut it. He had given in to Primaverra in Halcyon simply because she had promised him she only wanted to style it, and she had known what she was doing. He wondered why he let Heero play with his hair at all. Heero had told him that the hair was a risk, but still seemed to get a strange amount of pleasure out of brushing it and running his fingers through it.

It was soothing for Duo as well, Heero always took such care never to pull on the inevitable tangles, and although he didn't' realise it, he hummed as he did it. Sister Helen had pinned him in place with her knees with hair pins in her mouth as she forced the brush through his hair, complaining about what he did to get so much rubbish in his hair.(1) He knew Heero would have just plucked it out and continued on his way.

Rather than pulling it into a braid he tugged it back into a pony tail at the back of his neck. Then looked at Duo in the mirror, pressing his cheek against Duo's and matching his breathing. "I am sorry, about earlier." He said quietly. Heero didn't waste words. "It was not my intention to upset you."

"S'alright," Duo said shrugging off the apology. "The mission is everything to you. I should appreciate that."

Heero lowered his eyes before he turned Duo around on his stool to face him, then he lifted the coal grey ribbon and the ring that hung from it. "I married you, didn't I," then laying a soft kiss on his head, the kind of kiss people never would have believed Heero capable of, Heero pulled back and smiled that sweet small smile again, "baka." He said.

"Ro," Duo said, still grasping for that feeling of being special, "what do you mean when you call me baka? I need to know. I need you to tell me."

Heero took both of Duo's hands within his own, "it is all the words I cannot say any other way." He said, "and it has the virtue that I can say it in front of the others and tell you how I feel without revealing myself to them. It is a word just for us. I did not even realise that I was not calling you an idiot until it was pointed out to me." He then pulled Duo into a tight embrace. "You are my baka," he said firmly into Duo's ear, "mine, my mission, mine."

Duo pulled back slowly and then pressed his mouth to Heero's hoping that in that way he could hide his tears. Boys don't cry, he repeated to himself, boys don't cry.

Normally when they kissed it was with the chastity of two small children, quickly pressing their lips against each other and pulling back with furtive blushes. Once Heero had dared to put his hand on Duo's arm. They were slowly learning to be intimate when their whole lives had demanded that they keep others away. Duo had made an effort to be tactile so that he could control what has happening within his personal space, but there was something about Heero's touch that didn't work like that. It affected him.

In swallowing back a sob Duo's mouth opened slightly pulling across Heero's lips, and without thinking Heero moved his mouth to take them back. Before he had time to react Heero's hands were on his shoulders pulling him closer. Heero smelt of all the good things in the world, like sunshine and musk and the sweet tang of cordite that lingered in his hair, which was coarser that Duo's own, and rough against the fingertips that hadn't realised that they had crept up to the back of his neck as Heero's mouth moved over his own. Heero smelt like the first rain on the fourth of July, and spring and he tasted of warmth and salt and fire. Before when they had kissed they had never tasted each other when they kissed, it was furtive and quick but this one lingered. This was how, Duo supposed, people kissed in the stories.

He made his decision then. His hand moved to the collar of the shirt Heero had been sleeping in and found the soft cotton covered button and quickly slipped it open.

"You don't have to do this," Eluneth said quietly.

"But I do." Duo answered. "It's all I have to give him."

"Fool." She said, "you already give him everything, this can wait." Duo clung to Heero more fiercely.

Heero seemed to sense his desperation because he pulled back panting. Then he looked at Duo and smiled, his fingers touching his lips where they were swollen from kissing. Then he leant forward and kissed him again.

"Leave us, Leney." Duo said trying to look at her over Heero's shoulder. "Please."

"Don't do this, Duo, it's too soon." She looked genuinely pained, "you don't want this yet." He had managed to undo three of Heero's buttons. He wished he could tell her that she was wrong, that he did want this, he did, he just didn't know what it was or what it meant. It had taken weeks to get this far with Heero, so that he'd kiss him without shame or remorse. "He'll wait for you." His hand slipped into the open collar of Heero's shirt and felt the hot skin against his palm. (2)

Heero jerked back from the unexpected touch like he had been shot. Then he smiled. "Come to bed, Duo." He said softly. "I do not want you to ever question how I feel about you." He took Duo's hand within in his own, marvelling at how small and frail it felt in comparison to his hand. It was like the porcelain hand of a doll nestled in a catcher's mitt. It wasn't that Duo's hands were necessarily small, they just were in comparison to his own. "We can discuss this on the way to Dathyl in the morning. Just stay with me."

Behind him Eluneth looked sombre and tired, "Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems," she said, Duo knew she was quoting, it had been one of Father Maxwell's favourite references and Duo knew it well. He just didn't know why she had chosen it, except maybe to remind him that he had very nearly gone too far. "You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. (3)"

Lying next to Heero in the soft feather bed Duo ran over the words that Eluneth had quoted, tasting their cadence in the places that still kept Heero's taste. He didn't expect to sleep and was surprised that he did.

Author's Note

I don't want Sister Helen to come across as mean but I went to Catholic schools until I went to university and I had really long (Duo length) hair and I swear the first hint of a problem with my braid one of them had me pinned to brush my hair. Nuns on the whole take no nonsense and can seem really cold, but they're like mean mums, you love them but you're scared witless and I think Sister Helen would be like that, domineering and demanding but kind, and a goodly force to have on your side, but that doesn't mean that she wouldn't have delivered a swift slap with the back of the hairbrush to make him stand still long enough to have his hair brushed.

I'm prepared to defend this chapter to the death, it would so easily have become a complete shagathon, we have two boys who are probably a writhing mess of hormones but who really would have no idea how to go about it. Duo is trying to seduce Heero to give him something back for all that he thinks that he is taking and Heero is just amazed that someone would do something so good to him. (Heero's physical interactions before this time haven't been good.)

From Walt Whitman's Song of Myself.