Sequel to Dreams of You
a bit angsty...
Hearth and Home
1x2
"You stink," Duo snorted as he waved a hand in front of his nose. Stretched out on the couch, with a sports magazine opened up on his bare chest, he'd dozed off and come awake again to Heero's hungry kiss.
Heero smiled as he straightened. "Couldn't help it," he said as he dropped his sports bag and then pulled off his sweaty tshirt. "You look damned sexy when you're asleep."
Duo watched the play of Heero's muscles with an appreciative grin, but then his grin faltered, as a sudden wash of memory and sadness came over him. Heero's scars were many, some of them wider than a finger and ragged. Duo hadn't needed Relena's visit to remind him what Heero had been, of what he had gone through before living a life with him.
"What?" Heero asked worriedly, pausing in the act of tugging off a tennis shoe.
"Huh?" Duo replied, blinking stupidly as he suddenly came out of the past.
"That look," Heero said as he sat down on the couch and cocked his head at Duo."What are you thinking about?"
Duo let the magazine slide off onto the floor and sat up. He worried at his cross. "I was just thinking... about how many things had to go right for us to be sitting here, together."
Heero considered that as he picked up Duo's braid and held on to it. "You mean wrong, don't you?"
Duo grimaced, his damaged hand flexing self consciously. "Depends on your point of view, I guess. I lost my trigger finger in a fire fight, decided that Preventers wasn't going to bury me, quit, and found you."
Heero rubbed the end of Duo's braid between his fingers, looking down at it with a frown. "It wasn't that easy. It took years."
Duo nodded, sighing and running both hands through his bangs as he leaned into Heero. "Years of looking for the wrong things," he agreed. "Wasted time, not getting that I needed you in my life."
"You didn't think that I cared," Heero reminded him softly, "and I was too damned busy saving the Earthsphere to care about what I needed."
Duo managed a smile. "You really can't blame us. I mean, who thinks that all they need in life is a dinky apartment, a job at a gym and vidphone company, and cat with one eye, to make them happy?" The cat in question murred as if insulted, and waved her tail insolently at Duo, as she haughtily went in search of her play mouse.
"You did," Heero said as he reached out and drew Duo tight against him,"and then you convinced me."
Duo worried at his gold ring. Heero wore a matching one, just as worn. "Wasn't easy," Duo chuckled.
"Yes, it was," Heero admitted as he clasped their hands together tightly. "You told me what I knew already. I just had to hear it."
"Shouted," Duo laughed outright, grinning, "In front of half your fellow agents."
They were quiet, remembering, and then Heero said more seriously, "Don't doubt that I'm happy."
Duo grew serious as well, looking into Heero's eyes and saying, "I don't. I just get afraid, sometimes, that someone will come and try to take that away from you, that someone will convince you to give up your life, again, for others."
"I did give up my life," Heero told him, cupping his face and bringing Duo close, his passion a fire in his blue eyes. "I gave it to you."
Duo smiled, kissed him, and then wrinkled his nose. "Well, since I own it, I'd like it a little sweeter smelling, okay? Shower, Yuy."
Heero chuckled, knocked their foreheads together gently, and then let Duo go as he stood and headed for the shower.
Duo stared after Heero with a smile, kissed his cross, then his gold ring, in an unconscious habit, and then promised the empty room, "and you own my life... forever, because I'll give it to keep you safe, and happy, from Relena, and anyone else, who can't see what you are, and tries to use you again."
END