Chapter 7: the

My face smashed into a pointy elbow that almost stabbed my right eye before I even had the chance to grab Heero's attacker. Dazed and half-blinded, I was fumbling around in the darkness when uncannily efficient hands pushed me back into a strangling pair of arms that were very eager to choke me. Very rapidly, it was getting unnaturally dark... While Heero and the alley were floating from my consciousness and I contemplated mumbling my last prayers, something very fortunate happened though... A heavy boot was ruthlessly slammed on the toes of my non-flailing foot. "Ouuuuuuuuch," I wailed, completely forgetting my lightheadedness. Then a battering ram in the shape of a knee hit my cracking ribcage, hurling my body, and everything attached to it, to the ground. The pair of arms that had wrapped themselves so snugly around my throat dissolved as a piteous coughing fit erupted from right below me:

"Heero, you bastard *cough*! Why must you always resort to violence *cough* *cough*? That's *whimper* rude!"

"Hn. Duo, step away from him." Well, he actually meant "crawl down from him" and I hurried to comply. Sucking in a mouthful of crisp and humid night air, I quickly recovered from near-strangulation, shaking my head to get rid of the slightly unsettling double vision. Zechs was lying brokenly on the rubbish-strewn pavement.

"Get up," Heero growled. He had a very imposing growl. It gave me goose-flesh. And an erection. In my head, Heero was growling "Get it up, Duo!" in a huge bed with millions of fluffy pillows while the less scantily clothed and sadly un-aroused real him was getting ready to tear Zechs to pieces.

"I said get up!"

"I already am!"

Zechs and Heero turned to look at me oddly.

"Hehehehe... nevermind. Don't let me interrupt you."

"Ah, the same goes for me," Zechs offered from his sprawled position on the ground. "Unfortunately, I have to go now... while I can still use my feet... See you!" He scrambled to his feet and hurriedly limped away.

Heero made no move to follow him. Brushing microscopic particles of dust from his shirt-sleeve, he said the words that have been enshrined in my memory ever since: "Duo, I have a proposition for you. Let's go to your room."

Ok, so I only heard the words "proposition" and "your room", which were quickly transformed in my head to "proposition" and "bedroom" and then, miraculously, to "hot passionate sex on/in/against/next to your bed for hours and hours on end."

"Um... sure, Heero. Why don't you proposition me in my bedroom. Um... I mean, why don't we position you in my bedroom. Ahem... Let's just go."

Trowa, Quatre, Wufei and I lived in two shabby, largely unfurnished rooms on the inn's third floor. When the Atlantic sea winds were blowing a little more vigorously – which was almost always the case – the unfirm structure of the provisionally built inn was swaying and shaking along with their eastward movements.

"Well, there is not much in here," I tried to apologize to Heero when I let him through the creaking door into the gloomy room I shared with Wufei. "Save for the bed, I mean. There's a bed, of course, but it's pretty empty."

"It will suffice."

"The bed?"

"Hn."

"Hn-yes or Hn-no?"

"Duo."

"Yes?"

"It is time that we spoke about my mother."

"… Your mother?"

Heero nodded. As if a chat about one's mother was a generally accepted version of foreplay.

"Well, that's rather odd, you know. But... I mean if that's what you'd want to do. Tell me about your mother. You… hm... you never really talk about her." That was an understatement. He never really talked. Full stop.

Heero shrugged his slight shoulders in a way that suggested that my statement was highly inconsequential, and then he said: "She gave me directions for- for situations such as this."

Oh.

"Heero, it's pretty simple really. As a matter of fact, I know quite a few things about... um... situations such as this. I'm ... hehehe... quite good at it, you know."

"You are?" Here he looked slightly surprised.

"Hey, I'm doing it all the time..."

"Really?" On his face was a mildly startled expression.

"Ah, no no no! Not since I met you! I mean I couldn't do this with anyone else-"

Unexpectedly, Heero interrupted me. "Of course you couldn't."

Pretty self-confident, don't you think?

After a pause, he sat down on my comforter (which was in a very poor condition since a nightly rat had taken to nibble on it) and started to fidget a little. It was time that I soothed his fears and ravished him.

"Heero-"

"Duo-"

"Oh, I'm sorry. You go first," I offered politely, trying to dazzle him with gallantry.

Quite expectedly, Heero appeared unimpressed. "My mother adviced me that I should always be on my guard against strangers." His hands hurried up to his collar and back again to his lap.

"That's a very reasonable attitude, Heero."

"She said I should be especially wary with men that were interested in my body." He stated earnestly while his right hand was back at his shirt collar, playing around with it in an indescribably unsettling manner.

"Um. Yeah. That's even more reasonable." The first button of Heero's shirt had just slipped from its button hole under his insistent fumbling.

"Duo, you must understand that my body is very... valuable."

Swallowing thickly, I mumbled: "Oh, I believe you, no doubt about that."

Button number two joined button number one on the other side of their respective button holes and I stared at Heero's bare throat that slowly emerged from the gap between both shirt seams.

"'Be careful whom you show it to, Heero,' my mother told me."

"...croak..."

Button three and button four slipped free. A single tug on the right hem and Heero's shirt was now officially unclosed. Wow. Wow. How did that happen?

"'Choose your partner very wisely.'" My eyes were staring at Heero's fingers that had somehow insinuated themselves between the buttons of his trousers.

"You are making me nervous, Heero." One adventurous index finger was presently pushing at the waistband of Heero's trousers.

"'Mutual trust is crucial in this matter.'" Trousers were down.

Blushing furiously and trying to speak above the noise of blood rushing, torrent-like, passed my ears on its free fall from my brain to my... feet.

"Y-you can trust me, Heero. I never..." used to "lie..." before I met you.

He didn't even seem to listen to my stammering self, but rattled through his mother's list of requirements for having sexual intercourse with her son: "'If you can find one, choose an honourable man, Heero. Make sure you don't get duped.'"

"Oh, I'd never—" Heero was wearing the most horribly mended briefs I had ever seen on anyone, but love-struck as I was, I only found them very endearing... ahem... among other things. My voice was bailing out on me the moment he hooked his fingers around the waistband of said briefs and started to wiggle out of them.

God.

"'And what's most important...'"

God.

"'... make sure he has a SHIP.'"

"Huh?" Heero was naked. But he was talking absolute nonsense. And he was also naked... talking absolute nonsense... but definitely naked. My brain had trouble getting around to acknowledge those facts seeing that it was virtually drained of blood.

"A fast ship. As fast as possible," said Heero, naked as he was.

"Very reasonable," was all I could think of. I guess it still stuck around somewhere in my brain from before. In fact, it really was quite reasonable. Heero's mother would want her son provided for. A ship definitely was a sign of financial security – as were a whole lot of other things, such as mansions, titles, land and jewellery, but the poor woman was probably dying or in a similarly extreme situation when she had felt it necessary to give her son advice on whom to have sex with, her thoughts had a right to get a little muddled considering the circumstances... right?