Soldier Boys
Sequel to Operations
Sacrifices
"Where IS everyone?" Duo demanded.
Quatre blinked, pausing in the act of coming in through the back door. "I'm not sure. I was just outside checking our gas supply. We're supposed to get some cold weather in the next few days. We'll need a good supply to run that old furnace."
"Furnace?" Duo wondered.
Quatre smiled. "The thing that heats the house, Duo."
Duo scowled back. "Why doesn't this place have solar collectors like everywhere else?"
"It's old," Quatre replied as he closed the door and walked towards the living room. "I used to stay in cabins and I learned how to make wood fires and tend gas and wood furnaces."
Duo stared. "I... I thought you were rich... no, I KNOW you're rich."
"I did it for fun," Quatre explained. "Sometimes, it's nice to get away from technology and experience life in a simpler way."
"Most of my life was lived in a 'simpler way'," Duo growled. "I
didn't consider it 'fun'."
Quatre looked contrite as he turned to Duo. "I'm sorry. ... I wasn't thinking..."
Duo made a dismissive motion. "Don't worry about it." He came back to his original question. "So, do you know where everyone went?"
Quatre looked about them as if he could see through the walls. "Various places, probably. Isn't Heero supposed to brief us on the new mission?"
"Yeah, but...," Duo trailed off, his surge of courage suddenly losing
steam.
"What?" Quatre prompted in concern. "I something wrong, Duo?"
Duo's mouth quirked in a smile. "You're a real nice guy, you know that, Quatre?"
Quatre smiled back, but he still looked concerned. He also looked a little sweaty, his gold hair tousled about his face and his wide, blue eyes regarding Duo with an innocence that Duo knew was only on the surface. He had a sudden image of Quatre in Trowa's arms and Trowa devouring him with kisses and touching him...
Duo turned away abruptly, face flaming.
"Duo, if something is wrong, please let me help you with it," Quatre begged.
Duo felt hot and cold, his mind fighting with himself, finally, he firmed his resolve. He just couldn't live with something like that between them; an elephant in the closet that could come out to trample them all when they least expected it.
Duo said very quietly, hoping that Quatre heard it so that he wouldn't have to repeat it. "I'm gay."
There was silence and then a sigh. "I know."
Duo whipped around, not sure how to feel about that. "You do?"
Quatre nodded and gave a very gentle smile. "It's all right, Duo. Trowa and I are gay as well." He chuckled. "At least I have one other person, besides Trowa, who I don't have to hide it from now. I'm not sure that Heero and Wu Fei would understand, but you don't have anything-"
"Heero...." Duo felt awkward, not knowing where firm ground was, not sure what might be a secret and what might not be. "Uh, Heero told me that everyone, except for Wu Fei, was gay."
Quatre started. "Heero?" He gasped and then flushed. He looked as if he were reconsidering some things.
Duo felt a tinge of anxiousness. "Uh, you're... you and Trowa.... You're a couple right?"
Quatre blinked and then blushed. "We... we've only lately come to an... understanding." Quatre still seemed lost in thought, considering. "Heero..."
Something burned in Duo's gut. He said, more harshly than he intended, "I don't think Heero's... you and Heero aren't much alike."
Quatre blinked at him, coming back into focus, and then he suddenly seemed to realize something. He chuckled and then said apologetically. "I'm sorry, Duo, it's just a shock. I never would have suspected Heero."
"And me you knew about?" Duo snapped, irritated.
Quatre soothed, "Well, you have been rather attached to Heero and I don't think anyone could have missed that look in your eyes as anything other than-"
Quatre stopped talking when he saw Duo's pale color and his look of complete consternation. "We're FRIENDS!" Duo barked. "I never... I mean... I didn't even know until.... shit!" Duo clasped arms over his chest and hugged himself tight. "I don't want to think about that right now, okay? I-I haven't sorted it out yet. I just wanted you all to know about me. I don't like secrets. I don't like operating with stuff hanging over my head."
"No distractions," Quatre summed up.
"Yeah," Duo replied. "So, if you could tell everyone else that I'm gay for me, I'd appreciate it."
Quatre raised an eyebrow and looked behind Duo's shoulder.
Duo sighed. "They're all standing behind me now, aren't they?"
Quatre looked amused. "Yes, they are."
Duo took a deep breath and turned anxiously. Heero was looking embarrassed for him, a tightening of his face and an almost sympathetic look in his dark blue eyes. Trowa was smirking, leaning against the door jamb that led outside. Wu Fei... the man was looking uptight and displeased. Duo's eyes flicked from Heero to Trowa and then to Wu Fei. Wu Fei's opinion was the only real mystery.
Wu Fei stared and then said carefully, "When you fought with your Gundam, I saw a true warrior, fearless and skilled." He gave a small bow of his head. "That man I respect." He straightened and continued into the room to take a seat.
Duo blinked, not sure whether he had just been insulted or not. He looked back at Trowa and Heero. Trowa shrugged, just as mystified, straightened, and went to stretch out on the couch. Heero smiled very slightly.
Duo found himself grinning in embarrassment. "I guess that went well."
Heero was holding his laptop in his hands. He tightened his grip on it and said, "Wu Fei is right. What we are doesn't matter as long as we can fight and fight well."
"Is that what he meant?" Duo wondered.
Heero nodded. "So it seemed to me."
Duo thought about it for a moment and then sighed. "I guess I'm not any different, just more honest with myself. What I am, what I want, isn't going to keep me from kicking Oz butt. It's just..." He rubbed at the back of his neck and shrugged. "Forget it. No use in even thinking about personal stuff. Everything's out in the open. Everyone is good with it. Let's get on with why we're here in the first place. Show me the mission."
Heero opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed it and nodded. He went into the living room and placed his laptop on the coffee table. As Duo settled on the floor next to it, he turned it so that everyone could see the screen.
Duo drew his knees up to his chest and still felt his cheeks burning. The embarrassment of the moment, he felt, wasn't going to go away as quickly as he would have liked. As Heero began to talk, and he was certain that he wasn't going to be included on the mission, he let his thoughts and eyes wander over to Trowa and Quatre. Quatre had settled next to Trowa on the couch, sitting on the edge of the cushion while Trowa stretched out his long legs the length of the couch behind him. Duo looked at them just as Trowa lifted a finger and ran it a little along Quatre's back. It was such an intimate, gentle motion; Trowa letting a lover know that he was thinking about him. Quatre's cheeks pinked slightly and Duo saw him suppress a smile.
Duo had only experienced the relationships that desperate people needed to form to survive. Love, tenderness, and real caring hadn't been much a part of that. Duo found it hard to tear his eyes away, but, when he did, he knotted his fingers in his lap and stared down at them as if he found them fascinating.
Duo suddenly became acutely aware of Heero's bare leg very close to his shoulder. Heero was wearing his spandex shorts. They left a great deal of bare leg. If Duo looked out of the corner of his eye he could make out a scar, fine hairs, and smooth skin sliding over hard muscle. Duo had wanted Heero to be his friend, had wanted that more than he had wanted friendship from any of the others. With his new self knowledge, and the way that Heero's proximity was making him suddenly hot and very aware of him, he felt a new wave of uncertainty and embarrassment. He was being forced to reevaluate his need to have Heero accept and like him. Knowing that Heero was gay too, that the young man COULD respond to that interest, could take it further than friendship into the place where Trowa and Quatre were now...
"Any questions?" Heero finished.
Quatre began to ask some, but Duo stood like an uncoiled spring and began striding for the stairs, unable to cope with his new found insight. "Nope! Gotta go! Later guys!"
The others looked after him. Wu Fei sighed. "I still cannot believe that he is the same fighter who battled so fiercely with me."
Heero gave him a level look. "Do not be misled into underestimating his skill. He becomes very focused during battles."
"He does," Quatre agreed, but looked troubled too. "He never retreats or gives quarter no matter what the odds."
"He is brave," Trowa said, almost unwillingly, "and extremely clever when dealing with every aspect of machinery, electronics, and explosives. His personality can be puzzling, but there are not many other men that I would want beside me in a fight."
"How all of you fight will determine whether I remain with your group," Wu Fei said as he stood up and looked at them all as if it were a challenge. "I fight for Justice and for the colonies. Those are my only purposes in life. I do not care who you or what you think about anything outside of helping me complete my missions successfully."
Duo, standing near the top of the stairs in shadows, and leaning against a wall, had heard the entire conversation. He had felt rush of pleasure at Heero's defense of his skills and he was finding it hard to clamp down on it. His heart felt as if it were beating hard in his chest and he couldn't even bite his bottom lip enough to keep from smiling.
Shit! Shit! Duo moaned silently to himself. Not good, Maxwell. Not good at all. How are you going to hide this? How are you going to keep Heero from knowing that you want to... God! I still can't think about it, admit to it.... but... I know I do...
Duo ducked into his bedroom, flung himself onto his bed stomach down, and pulled his pillow firmly over his head. Why did he have to figure himself out now? Why not earlier? Why not with other men? Why not before every man woman and child on the colonies was depending on him to fight for them and give his life if necessary? He had lived for a long while on a sweeper ship full of men and some of them had not bad looking. Why couldn't that have been a time for discovery?
Duo felt his heart skip a beat. He had noticed. He had looked. He had .... a parade of instances marched through Duo's head and he burrowed deeper under his pillow. He had just told himself that it was something else because he had never felt anything as strongly as he was feeling for Heero Yuy. And why should that be? Duo remembered Heero's hard belly pressed against his own, the half revealed hip, and the slide of skin over steel muscled shoulders.... His mind tried frantic excuses: sudden maturity... the moment of being closer to a male than he had ever been before... Heero's innate sexual appeal... Duo squirmed as he felt himself go hard just imagining Heero's warm scent and his magnetic blue eyes.
Duo shifted again, angry at himself for having thoughts that were making everything worse, and suddenly felt his cross dig into the skin of his chest hard. That made him go cold, that reminder of why he fought, why he was sacrificing so much.
"I don't get to have a life," Duo said softly to the darkness under his pillow. "I'm Shinigami. I'm death. Death doesn't get to love anybody."
It did more than anything else to make Duo's desire go cold and to bring him out of hiding from beneath his pillow. He blinked, feeling a tear, and then scowled as he wiped hard at it. He didn't need to go crazy over anything. He didn't need to worry about whether he liked men or women, or just Heero. He was going to kill and die and never have a life.
"You told me differently, at the mall in the town," Heero suddenly said.
Duo started as he became aware of Heero sitting across from him on his own bed.
"Were you lying to me?" Heero wondered, looking very serious.
"I don't lie!" Duo said strongly and then swallowed hard. "I just.... That was different... There is a difference between fooling around and having a good time between missions and trying to...have... a real life," he ended lamely, unable to elaborate, unable to confess to Heero what he was feeling for him.
Heero stood up and very slowly, as if he were afraid of startling Duo, walked over to Duo's bed and sat down next to him. His blue eyes looked into Duo's eyes and his serious expression didn't leave him as he said, "As I was telling Wu Fei about your ability to focus during a mission, and thought about my own abilities, I came to a conclusion."
"And what would that be?" Duo wondered, not sure where Heero was going with the conversation.
"That we are both very capable of setting aside any personal difficulties to fight and fight well," Heero replied. "That, like Trowa and Quatre, we can experience more than killing in our lives, and still be ready to sacrifice, to give everything that we are for what we believe in."
"I always thought..." Duo said and then had to look down and swallow hard before continuing. "I always thought that caring about someone would give you too much of a reason to live."
"Wouldn't that make you fight better?" Heero wondered and Duo looked up again startled as Heero reasoned. "It's easy to die, to waste yourself against impossible odds, when you know that there is nothing else in your life worth saving yourself for. If you are happy, if you want to live, if- If there is someone you care about, I believe that a person would make better military decisions, would fight more wisely, would care more about winning than simply killing and being killed."
Duo looked confused and skeptical. "That's not what you told me the first few times we were together. You seemed hell bent on not caring about anything, but doing your mission and dying at the end of it. I remember you telling me that you had been taught that there should be nothing outside of fighting because that caused distractions and that personal friendships ran an operative the risk of being detected."
Heero nodded, not denying it. "I knew a long time ago that thinking like that was wrong, but I forgot that. My dedication to my teachers and the cause blinded me to a wisdom a man taught me when I was very young. You reminded me of it. You made me see, once again, what makes a good soldier and... a good man."
Duo said self deprecatingly. "How did I do that? I can't get my own shit together. I don't even know what I think anymore. How can you be so damned sure of everything?"
"I was told by that man, to follow my instincts, my emotions, and that they would guide me." Heero reached up suddenly and put a calloused hand along Duo's cheek. Duo shivered under that touch, purple eyes going wide with shock. "I'm done pretending." Heero pulled Duo towards him as he moved forward and their lips pressed together.
It was a hard, awkward kiss, but the heat of it scalded Duo inside and out. He hung limply, as If Heero's gentle hand was all that was holding him up. His mind felt as if it had short circuited; as if Heero's lips had given him a large jolt of electricity. Duo couldn't move, couldn't speak, and couldn't pull away. In fact, he didn't want to do any of those things. His entire being was wishing that the kiss would never stop.
It did stop, Heero dropping his hand and suddenly turning and sitting sideways. His eyes were nervous, staring at nothing very hard as he waited for Duo's reaction.
Duo reached up and touched his lips with a trembling hand. He wanted to run. He wanted to scream. He wanted to shout for joy. He wanted to-to... "Heero..."
Heero dared to look at him then. He didn't offer an explanation. The explanation was in his eyes.
"I think... I'm pretty sure I liked that," Duo said softly, "but... but I don't know what to do... What I should do."
"Perhaps, if we talked...," Heero suggested and his voice quavered
a little. That fascinated Duo, made him suddenly see an entirely different side
of Heero, one that he was certain no one else had ever seen before.
"Yeah," Duo finally replied and reached out tentatively and took hold
of Heero's strong hand. "Let's... Let's talk..."