Moments of Rapture Contest-2003

Quatre's a great friend and I just love him to death, but the guy is a hopeless damn optimist and sometimes… sometimes I let the things he says get inside my head and I start seeing things that aren't there. Without really meaning to, he makes me do things that I wouldn't normally imagine doing outside of my daydreams. He's a dyed in the wool romantic, and I let his notions fuel the spark of my own stupid ideas and the next thing you know, I've made a fool of myself. Again. Something I don't usually need assistance with, thank you very much.

It has crossed my mind a couple of times that the guy isn't the sweet innocent that he pretends to be, and that he actually has a rather twisted, sadistic sense of humor. I suppose I'll never really know.

It was Quatre's damn insinuations that had led me to hear one thing when a different thing had obviously been said. Otherwise, why was I standing on Heero's front porch wearing dress pants and a silk shirt, staring at Heero in his grungy jeans and grease smeared t-shirt, a half assembled carburetor in his hand and a puzzled look on his face?

Let's run things back a day or two and see if you can figure it out, shall we?

Wednesday afternoons I have lunch with Quatre. We always eat at the same restaurant and sometimes one of the other guys will find time to stop by and join us. We were still at the drinks and appetizer stage and so far it was just the two of us.

"I'm serious, Duo," Quatre said and I remember how he had leaned forward, fork stabbing the air in my direction, as if to add emphasize to his words. "He likes you… I can feel it."

I snorted and fought against the blush that wanted to take over my face. I swear to God, I'd never told Quatre about the damn torch I carried for Heero Yuy, but somehow the little sucker must have figured it out, how else could he know right where to hit me like this? "Give it up, Quatre," I growled. "We're friends… just friends. He isn't interested in anything but his job and that damn car of his."

Quatre grinned at me and I realized that comment had come out just a little… bitter. Ok, maybe I'd never actually come out and told him that I was pining away after my ex-partner, but I suppose it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. "Maxwell," he informed me between bites of his salad. "Who else does he let touch his 'damn car'?"

"That doesn't mean a thing," I told him flatly. "I'm a mechanic. A highly paid specialist, in fact. Who else would he let touch his precious car?"

He raised one of those pale eyebrows in a sardonic gesture that has been known to make me storm out of rooms before, and grinned almost maliciously. "Trowa, Wufei and I aren't exactly chopped liver, but I don't see him inviting any of us over to spend the day working on engines."

I decided to turn the conversation in a new direction and grinned back at him. "Maybe that's because you , Mr. Winner Industries Executive Hot-shot, haven't had any grease under those manicured fingernails of yours in a good number of years."

"You're in denial, Duo," he smirked at me, spearing a carrot and waving it under my nose, refusing to follow me off his conversational track. "He. Likes. You."

"In your dreams," I growled, resisting the urge to reach out and snatch the damn carrot right off his fork with my teeth.

He almost snickered. "You mean, in yours."

I was almost to that part of the conversation where I was ready to tell him to drop the topic or find somebody else to eat lunch with, something I threatened him with at least once every meal we shared, when his gaze told me someone had entered the restaurant.

I turned in my seat to see the subject matter of our heated debate striding across the room. Striding. God damn, can that man not just fucking walk anywhere? And in that cursed Preventers uniform. It's true what they say about men in uniform. Oh dear God, it is so true.

"Tongue back in your mouth, Duo," Quatre whispered through his teeth in that sweet little singsong way he has.

"Shut the fuck up, Quatre," I replied, just as sweet, and almost as singsong, and definitely through gritted teeth mimicking a smile.

He snickered softly and I wondered again if he wasn't some kind of closet sadist.

"Hey, Heero," I greeted, as the man in question reached the table and pulled out a chair to sit down.

"Duo," he replied, giving us both a nod. "Quatre."

"This is a surprise," Quatre said, smiling at our guest. "What's the occasion? You don't often make it for lunch."

He made it often enough that the waitress brought Heero's usual bottled water when she came to the table to get his order without being told. He waited until she was gone before replying to Quatre's question. "Well, I knew you guys would be here and I was kind of hoping to run into you."

Quatre gave me a look that was meant to be meaningful. I refused to acknowledge it, preferring to wrestle with a stubborn crouton instead. It skittered around the salad bowl, attempting to hide under various vegetables, but I had faith that I would be able to hunt that sucker down eventually.

"Why's that, Heero?" Quatre asked solicitously, ever the gracious host.

Heero had taken the seat next to me, being on the side of the table nearest the door, and suddenly leaned in to pluck the crouton out from under my questing fork. "Eat the thing, Duo," he smirked, popping it into his mouth. "Don't kill it."

Quatre's meaningful look heated up enough that I'm pretty sure the guy was attempting to burn a hole through the side of my head with it.

"Hey, Yuy!" I blurted, ignoring Quatre and his theories as best I could. "Wait until your own damn salad gets here!" He just grinned at me unrepentantly and reached back into my bowl to steal a tomato.

"Well, you're not eating it," he observed dryly, his eyes sparkling with mischief, and he ate my cherry tomato.

That… sense of humor is what got me in the end. While I'd spent a war and the in-between, and a second war thinking that Heero Yuy had the hottest damn body known to man and a voice so sexy it should have been outlawed, I'd managed not to fall head over heels. But then we'd come out the other side. We'd made peace happen and we'd started to live in that peace. We'd grown up a little bit. We'd taken those first steps into the real world. We'd gotten jobs. We'd gotten lives. And Heero Yuy had, somewhere along the lines, picked up a personality. And a damn nice one at that.

And then I had done that whole stupid head over heels thing. With my best friend in the whole damn Earth sphere. The best friend that I was ninety-nine point nine percent sure was as straight as an arrow. Sometimes… I wondered about God's sense of humor.

I deflected Quatre's beaming smile with my patented quantum pain-in-the-ass shield, while defending the remains of my salad from Heero with a brandished fork. "Back off or get skewered," I warned and got to hear Heero laugh. I loved that laugh; it was a sound that hadn't existed a couple of years ago.

"So, Heero," Quatre interjected, grinning somewhat more than the by-play warranted. "You never said why you were looking for us?"

Heero leaned back and folded his arms across his chest, still chewing his bite of my salad, and smiled. "I was actually looking for Duo," he said and I glanced up at him.

"Oh?" Quatre prompted helpfully, his voice fairly dripping innocent interest.

I wanted to say something myself, but Quatre had already used the only line I could think of. I didn't want to sound like a damn parrot, so I just sat and tried to look expectant.

Now keep that Goddamn conversation with Quatre in mind when you hear this next part. Try to remember that I'd been poisoned by the little shit's overwhelming powers of suggestion. It's not my fault… it was all Quatre's.

"I was wondering if you were busy Friday night?" Heero asked and I was pretty damn sure my heart stopped in my chest. I just sat and stared at him, not trusting what I had just heard. It was a perfectly innocent line, had my mind not been tainted by Quatre's damn incessant hints. Wasn't it?

"Duo was just telling me that he didn't have a thing planned all weekend," Quatre supplied for me, quite helpfully, the little son of a bitch.

I tried to shoot Quatre a scathing glare, but had to keep it toned down to a mere pathetic meaningful glance with Heero looking right at me.

"Great," Heero was saying and then the waitress came with his salad and I used that bit of distraction to discreetly flip my blond pain in the butt off. "Ok?" Heero said, and I realized I'd missed something.

"What?" I said brightly, returning my attention to Heero.

"I said," he repeated as though speaking to someone with a somewhat slow wit, "is seven o'clock all right?"

"Uhmm… fine," I found myself saying, suddenly not sure just what was going on. Had Heero Yuy just…? Just asked me…? Nah.

"It's a date then! See you at my place at seven," Heero grinned and bent to eating his salad.

No fucking way. Absolutely no fucking way.

Quatre was trying so hard not to laugh at me, that he choked on his water. I barely managed not to wish he'd just go ahead and choke to death and save me the trouble.

I blame the entire damn mess on the little prick. If he hadn't been sitting there, already laughing his ass off at me, I'd have probably questioned Heero a little more and would not have left the restaurant with such a huge misinterpretation of what we were talking about. But to avoid providing Mr. Winner with any further entertainment, I kept my mouth shut and let the conversation turn to other, more mundane topics.

More's the pity. If I'd engaged my brain instead of my damn hormones, I would have asked for clarification and would not have ended up standing on Heero's porch at seven o'clock sharp on Friday night, wearing a brand new silk shirt that I had spent two hours in the store agonizing over. A silk shirt chosen specifically to 'bring out my eyes', a thing that I had never consciously done before in my life.

"Duo?" Heero queried, cocking his head and giving me a funny look. "That's not exactly something that I'd suggest you wear to rebuild an engine."

It's a bloody damn miracle that I didn't go up in the most spectacular case of spontaneous human combustion ever recorded by man. It's a wonder I didn't just die where I stood. But the bigger marvel is that I managed to get brain and mouth working in tandem, and pulled my sorry embarrassed butt out of the fire.

I flashed a cocky grin and launched into full duck and cover mode. "I just stopped off to tell you I was going to be late. Got stuck in a business meeting and I haven't managed to make it home yet."

His funny look grew a little rueful and his lips quirked up in a grin. "Why didn't you just call; my place is kind of out of the way, isn't it?"

"The meeting wasn't at my office," I lied, pretty damn smoothly if I do say so myself. "It was downtown at the client site and I had to come right by here anyway."

"Oh," he said, still looking a little puzzled and I started backpedaling before he had too much chance to question me further.

"I just need to run home and change," I told him as I stepped off the porch. "I can be back in under a half an hour, if that's not too late?"

"That's fine," he said, giving me a really weird up and down look. "If you're sure you still want to help me; you must be tired if you're just getting off work."

"I'm fine," I blurted cheerily, fishing my car keys out of my pocket and beating a hasty retreat. "I'll be right back."

"How about I order pizza?" he called after me. "It should get delivered about the time you get here."

"Great!" I hollered, and threw myself into my driver's seat completely convinced that my face had to be as red as the paint job on my car. I was rather proud of the fact that I pulled away from the curb without peeling rubber.

I waited until I was out of sight of Heero's house before pulling out my cell phone and calling Quatre's number. I got his damn voice mail, which wasn't going to be near as therapeutic, but I had to make do with what I had to work with. "You are a sick, sad little man Winner," I snapped. "If you don't stop these psycho head-games and get yourself into some therapy, I'm not ever eating lunch with you again. Ever." That just didn't seem strong enough for how I was feeling, so I threw in a scathing, "Eat shit and die," just for good measure, punched the disconnect button and threw the phone onto the floor of the car, where it bounced around enough to make me start feeling stupid. Yes, I have issues with loss of temper.

I could not fucking believe what an ass I'd just made of myself. Heero might not have realized, but damnit… I did. I had just wanted to melt through the boards on his front porch and disappear.

Now, you tell me… wasn't it all Quatre's fault?

I think so too.

I barely remember the drive back to my apartment; I spent most of it reliving the last few days, just to make sure I eked out every last bit of humiliation from the experience. Didn't want to miss anything.

I had spent every waking hour after lunch on Wednesday going over that damn conversation in my head. Looking back now, I could see that Heero's flippant 'It's a date, then' had just been an expression. Everybody says things like that. Hell; I'd probably said it myself before. I had let Quatre's damn comments fuel the stupid longings in my heart and had allowed myself to hear what I'd wanted to hear. What I'd been wanting to hear for ages now. What I was never going to hear.

I swear to God, every time I managed to get my heart convinced to give up on these ridiculous notions, Quatre would start the hell in on me, and get it all stirred up again. This was the last straw though. The next time I saw him, we were going to come to an understanding or he really could kiss our friendship goodbye. He could laugh his lily-white ass off if he wanted to, I didn't find this funny at all. I found this… this whole thing was just… It was just damned…

Painful.

Ok? Yuck it up all you want. Laugh at poor little ol' embarrassed Duo Maxwell all you want. I wasn't laughing. I was hurting.

I knew Heero didn't think of me that way. I was very well aware of that fact. I had come to grips with it more times than I could count. Quatre was going to come to grips with it too and stop feeding my delusions. If I wasn't careful, I was going to screw up what I did have with Heero and I wasn't about to let that happen just to appease Quatre Winner's strange malicious new hobby.

So I went home to change, carefully hanging up the silk shirt that I had spent hours picking out. Equally carefully hanging up the tailored black slacks, also brand new, also deliberated over for a long time at the most expensive clothing store the city had to offer. I did ok until I got myself stripped down to the just as new, black silk underwear. The utter and complete humiliation welled up in my chest then, and I'm afraid those got balled up and thrown into the corner of the bedroom. God, I was such as ass.

I had to take a couple of minutes then, to sit on the side of my bed with my head in my hands and practice my new catechism.

"Heero is my friend. Heero is not interested in me romantically. Heero is not even interested in me sexually. Quatre is a bastard." Ok, how the hell had that gotten in there? "Heero is my friend. Heero is not…"

After about ten minutes I was able to get up, dry-eyed, and get dressed. Old, stained jeans and a t-shirt. My oldest pair of sneakers, and plain damn normal cotton underwear.

I was about fifteen minutes late getting back to Heero's place, but by the time I got there, I felt almost normal again. Maybe… maybe Heero really hadn't noticed anything too odd. Maybe nobody would ever know what a fool I'd made of myself. Except Quatre, but then I suppose given enough time I could think up an excuse for why I had told him to eat shit and die on his voice mail. I'd burn the damn silk boxers and I still had the receipts for the shirt and pants. I could pretty much erase this whole fiasco like it had never happened.

The pizza had beaten me to the house, and I found Heero in the kitchen putting out napkins and paper plates, setting out a bottle of beer for each of us.

"There you are," he greeted me with a warm smile. "Get lost?"

"Traffic," I mumbled and took my seat at the table.

Heero sat down across from me, opening the pizza box and we each took a slice. I reached for my beer and caught him looking at me with an odd expression.

"What?" I asked. "I can't have pizza sauce on my face already, I haven't taken the first bite."

He snorted, picking his own slice up. "I was just wondering if you felt up to this. You seem… distracted."

"Sorry," I muttered, embarrassed that he had noticed. "It was just… a long day."

"You want to talk about it?" he prompted, cocking his head off to the side in that way he has.

I almost laughed. No, I most decidedly did not want to talk about it. "Nah," I told him, dredging up a bright grin. "Rather just forget about it. So… tell me what's on the agenda?"

So he did. Told me what he'd gotten done on the car since the last time I'd been over, outlining what he had left to do. I started to relax a little; Heero can get so… animated when he starts in talking about engines, that it's hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm. Looked like he was hoping to have the thing done before the weekend was out.

We finished our dinner, took our beer and made our way out to the garage. I only had to work at it for a little while before the awkwardness began to bleed away and I lost myself in the familiar banter, before the task consumed all my attention and I forgot how the day had started out.

This was what had made the two of us good partners during the war, the way we could work together. Sometimes, in my more poetic moments, I thought of it as a dance. I don't have to tell him which tool I need him to hand me… he just knows. He doesn't have to ask me to hold something steady… I just know when he needs an extra hand. Not that I'm saying we work in stony silence, we talk, but we don't need to talk about the job. Our hands just go on about their business, and our minds go off on tangents. We talk about the old days sometimes, but we can talk about the future too. We talk about some of the nightmares that we all seem to have, but we can talk about our dreams as well. We bitch to each other. Sometimes we even gossip a little bit. The thing is… it doesn't really matter. On nights like this, we can damn near finish each other's sentences. It's just so… comfortable.

You understand why I won't risk screwing this up? No matter what the hell Quatre imagines? No matter… what I might wish?

It was damn near midnight when Heero finally called it quits, tugging on my sleeve like a little kid, laughing at my reluctance to give it up.

"Duo," he chuckled, squatting down beside where I was lying on the floor. "Sometimes I think you're more obsessed with my car than I am."

I pushed the rest of the way out from under the frame and quirked an eyebrow, grinning up at him. "How do you ever expect to get the thing finished if you keep quitting?"

He laughed and reached a hand out to rub a smear of grease off the bridge of my nose. "It's not going anywhere. Come on… it's almost midnight."

"Midnight?" I asked, a little incredulous, and let him pull me to my feet. "I didn't realize."

He shook his head, moving off to find us a couple of rags to wipe the worst of the grime off our hands with. "You do seem to lose track of time when you're hip deep in axle grease."

"It's not my fault I happen to like mechanical… things," I informed him in a haughty tone.

"Things?" he chuckled, leading us back into the house. "Would that be the technical term?"

I started to dredge up a witty retort, but found myself yawning hugely instead. "Damn," I muttered. "Sorry about that."

He gave me a rueful little smile, moving to the kitchen sink and turning on the hot water so we could do a proper job of washing up. "My fault for keeping you so late; you told me you'd had a hard day."

I watched him lather his hands, waiting for my turn with the bar of soap. "It wasn't so awful," I appeased with a shrug. "And this evening kind of made up for it."

He handed the soap over and rinsed while I lathered. "You did have a crappy day if busting your knuckles all evening was an improvement."

I started to tell him it was the company. I started to tell him I'd bust every knuckle I owned as long as it bought me an evening with him. I started to say a whole bunch of shit that was all pretty much in the category of 'not appropriate', but caught myself in time, and didn't say anything at all. Heero's elbow found it's way into my ribs.

"Hey," he said softly. "You are tired; you going to be all right to drive home?"

I snorted, taking the hand towel from him. "I'm fine," I said and we headed for the front door.

"You want me to come back tomorrow?" I offered, thinking about how close we were to being done. I reached for the doorknob and apparently Heero did too. I jumped when his hand closed over mine. I turned my head to look at him when he didn't immediately let go.

There was the strangest damn look on his face, something between amused and nervous. Kind of a bastard mix of excited and anxious. I couldn't seem to manage to say anything; just staring at him, trying to fathom what was going through his head. "Don't I get… a goodnight kiss?" he suddenly said, and my mouth went dry so damn fast I thought my tongue permanently glued itself to the roof of my mouth.

"W… what?" I finally managed to stammer out, and was only relieved that the adhesive in my mouth kept me from gaping like a carp.

"Isn't that the traditional way to finish a date?" he asked, and the amusement seemed to be winning over the nervousness.

"You call this a date?" I blurted before I had much chance to think through what I should say to a remark like that.

His hand let go of mine and he crossed his arms over his chest, cocking his head to the side and smiling at me gently. "Well, isn't that what dates are all about? Two people doing something they enjoy together?"

My own hand just sort of fell off the doorknob, completely nerveless. "I… I…" was about all I could manage. Later, about the only coherent thought I could remember forming was, Quatre was right.

Heero seemed to draw encouragement from my state of speechlessness, and uncrossed his arms to rest his hands on my hips, turning me around to face him completely.

My God, I thought I'd been struck by lightening. There was a spark that flared to life in my hips where his fingers were resting against me, that shot like fire down my legs and up into my chest. It kicked my heart into high gear so suddenly that my throat constricted and my knees felt weak. All I could think was… that's through two layers of cloth! Oh sweet Jesus, what would it feel like if he were actually touching my skin?

Heero had shifted somehow, without my noticing it, and was suddenly very close to me. Damn close. And leaning closer. With a somewhat self-satisfied look on his face. The asshole.

My own hands were still dangling at my sides, completely undecided on just what they should do. Wrap themselves around his shoulders? Settle on his own hips? Thread through that damn unruly hair?

"Now about that goodnight kiss…" he fairly whispered and leaned in to claim it.

My right hand, damn near trembling, rose almost of it's own volition and… planted itself in the middle of his face. I pushed gently and grinned at the wide-eyed look I received from between my splayed fingers.

"I don't kiss on the first date, Yuy," I informed him and turned away with a flip of my braid to reach for that doorknob again.

I was actually out the door before his bright laughter burst forth, following after me. I turned on the steps to look back and found him leaning in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest again, grinning at me ruefully.

"Good night, Heero," I called, grinning back, and finished the climb down to the sidewalk.

His laughter had faded to a soft chuckle and just before I climbed in my car he called, "Hey."

I stopped with my door open and leaned with my folded arms on the roof of the car. "Yeah?"

He moved on out of the house, taking the few steps to the edge of the porch and gave me that cocked-head appraising look. "Do you kiss on the second date?" he asked, voice a silken damn thing.

I looked at him for a minute, giving him my own once over, before replying, "Sometimes."

His smile widened. "Then what are you doing tomorrow night?"

It was my turn to laugh and he waited patiently. "What time should I be here?" I finally asked, and it won me a brilliant smile. He took another pace forward, coming down a couple of steps so that he didn't have to raise his voice quite so much.

"I don't want to work on the car tomorrow night," he told me firmly. "How about I pick you up at six and we'll go out?"

It surprised the hell out of me and I could only nod, not sure I trusted my voice. He inclined his head in answer and then turned to start back into the house. I straightened, almost ready to climb into the car, when he stopped and threw me a rather wicked grin over his shoulder. "And how about you wear that outfit you had on this afternoon?"

He didn't wait for a response, but went on into the house. I was just as glad, I wasn't sure whether to try to match my complexion to the color of my car again, or laugh out loud. I settled on getting in and driving away.

A block from Heero's place, I stopped at a stop sign and put the car in park long enough to retrieve my cell phone from the floor of the car. I punched in Quatre's number and sat expecting to get his voice mail again. I was a little surprised when Trowa picked up.

"Should I be afraid to talk to you?" he greeted drolly, obviously having checked the caller id.

I snorted. "Why should you be afraid to talk to me… unless you're in on Quatre's little head-games?"

"Well, your last message was less than… genial," he replied and I could hear the asshole grinning at me. Maybe he was in on Quatre's little… hobby.

"But it was directed to your sick partner," I informed him. "Where is he, by the way? I want to talk to the little jerk."

Trowa chuckled, enjoying himself just a little too much and told me, "In the shower… shall I take a message?"

I sighed, thwarted again, and thought about it for a moment. "Tell him… tell him that being right doesn't make him any less of a bastard."

There was a moment while he contained a snicker. "Ok… got it."

"Tell him just that way, ok?" I persisted.

There was a disdainful little pause before he told me, just a touch haughtily; "Duo, I understand yours and Quatre's… strange communication system. You are the only human being on Earth that can leave an 'eat shit and die' message on his answering machine… that makes him grin like a loon. I'll tell him just what you said."

"Just checking," I groused. "There's a subtle undertone that has to be just…"

He cut me off with an audible smirk, a damn tricky thing to do well, and said, "I have it Duo… I'll tell him. Duo says that 'being right doesn't make him any less of a bastard' and Heero says that 'if he gloats about being right, he'll get beat senseless'. I've got it… goodnight, Duo."

It was just as well he hung up; he didn't have to listen to me squawk like an indignant parrot.

Those God damn, conniving, sneaky, wonderful jerks.

After I got over the squawking, I started to chuckle and ended up sitting there laughing like some sort of demented idiot until somebody pulled up behind me and blew their horn. I hastily put the car in drive and got the hell out of the way, still wiping tears of mirth from my eyes.

Those little scheming devils. I couldn't quite make up my mind whether I wanted to kiss Quatre Winner or kick his ass, but it somehow made me feel better to know that Heero hadn't been a player in Quatre's little head game.

A very great deal better.

And I no longer had any doubts at all about whether I kissed on the second date or not.

The End

 

Doubts

Warnings : Yaoi, fluff, sap, OOC, Heero POV, limey overtones.

Thanks to Christy for beta reading at the drop of a hat!

This little work of gooey fluff is the total responsibility of Lev of Lev’s Lair. Challenge MY ass will you! HA, I say! I can write short… you never said it had to be GOOD!

Feed-back…? I’m not sure I want to hear about this little sucker. Fluff… I wrote fluff.

I thought I owned Gundam Wing. But I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find the paper work. So I guess they aren’t mine after all.

I suppose you could say I noticed it before I actually thought about it enough to realize something was odd.

I work with the Preventers, and my hours are sometimes long. Duo works in construction and is usually home before me. We’ve lived together since the end of the war. It took us a while to settle into the life we have now, I resisted the lure of the Preventers at first, before facing up to the fact that it truly was the place for me. Duo bounced from job to job, trying a little bit of everything before settling on construction. He found the hard physical labor helped him deal with the sudden changes in – shall we call it… lifestyle?

It had rather surprised us both, I think, when the war had ended and our previous… physical relationship had blossomed and taken root. He had shocked the hell out of me one night by moaning his love for me in the throes of passion. It had been an odd… relief to suddenly understand that we were going to stay together. That the future was not something either of us was going to have to face alone.

We got jobs. We bought a house. We shared the mundane chores that I had expected to hate and instead found that I loved. We were building a life, it made those things… wondrous instead of tedious. Who the hell would have thought?

Duo did most of the cooking because he was usually home first. I did most of the laundry because it balanced. We shared everything else, because we loved this strange, new domesticity… but scrubbing toilets still sucked.

We developed routines and I thrived on that. Order and regulation; that’s what makes the world go round. Duo had chaffed a little at first, during those early months, but his new job was so physically taxing that I found he had calmed and was finally settling down. His massive amounts of excess energy had found an outlet and he had mellowed into a wonderfully comfortable partner.

As I was saying, I noticed something was… odd, before I really noticed it.

Duo usually has supper on the table when I get home at night. I call him when I leave the office so he knows what time to expect me, since it’s seldom the same time two nights in a row. The first night that I can look back and truly say I noticed a slight change in the routine, I arrived home to find Duo on the computer and no supper on the table.

‘Shit!’ he blurted as I walked through the front door and he shut down whatever he’d been working on, dashing for the kitchen. ‘Man… I totally lost track of time! Sorry about that, I’ll have something thrown together here in a few minutes. Why don’t you go ahead and shower, I should have something ready by the time…’

I had been trailing along behind him and finally managed to catch up when he stopped to open the refrigerator. ‘Would you stop babbling long enough to kiss me hello?’ I teased.

He laughed and I kissed him. He drew away after a moment to look at me critically, eyes roaming over me, taking inventory.

‘All in one piece?’ he smiled. This was part of his routine. He had asked me the same question every night since I’d taken the job with the Preventers. He hadn’t been altogether thrilled when I had accepted the position. They had pursued him too, but he had flat out refused, telling Sally Po and Commander Une in no uncertain terms that he was done with fighting, done with all of it. I think he would have been happier if I’d been done with it too. He asked this question every night in the same light, bantering tone, but the concern was plain in his eyes.

‘You worry too much,’ I informed him, the same response I made every night.

He kissed me lightly, just as he always did, and sent me off to the shower.

So, I noticed… but I didn’t.

Supper was on time the next night, but Duo was on the computer again when I got home. It was becoming part of the routine. But I still didn’t think much of it until I finally realized that he never used the system after I got home, and whatever he was doing was shut down the minute I walked through the door.

Call it Preventer agent instincts, but as soon as I noticed… I became curious.

So a week or so later, after supper, while he was in the shower, I sat down at the computer and proceeded to look through the system logs and found… nothing. Nothing to account for any on-line time. No new files on the system. Nothing. How… odd.

I made a point the next night of coming home a bit early, but he must have finished when he heard the car in the drive and, as usual, was just getting up from the computer desk when I walked in. Again there was nothing. At all. It wasn’t possible that there would be no trace of any activity; it meant that he was editing the logs.

I felt… strange. We’d never had secrets from each other before. But… I wasn’t sure this actually constituted a secret. My curiosity was more than just peaked, it was on fire.

We made love that night and I found myself watching for signs of some distance. For signs that there was something wrong between us. It seemed a stupid concern as he was writhing beneath me, as he was shouting my name and rising to meet my thrusts, but I couldn’t quite banish the nagging feeling that he was deliberately hiding something.

I tried to forget about it, but the seed had been planted and I had to know. I tried the direct approach.

‘You on the computer again?’ I teased as I came through the door. ‘Not spending our life savings on Ebay?’

His smile seemed open enough, but I noticed his hands never hesitated in closing down whatever was on the screen. ‘Hey!’ he laughed. ‘I only overbid that one time, and it wasn’t that damn much!’

He came to greet me with a kiss before heading off for the kitchen. ‘If you weren’t done,’ I ventured, ‘dinner can wait.’

He seemed a little flustered, and I swear there was a faint flush to his cheeks as he glanced over his shoulder at me, before disappearing into the kitchen. ‘No… all done.’

He was so ill at ease, in fact, that he forgot to ask me if I was in one piece. I was, oddly… hurt.

I poured over the logs while he finished dinner and again, frustratingly, found nothing.

It began to nag at me. Nothing really seemed amiss… but I couldn’t help conjecturing about just what he was doing that he felt compelled to hide from me. There weren’t a lot of things I could think of that would keep him occupied day after day that he would need to conceal from me. If he were shopping for a gift for me, it certainly wouldn’t take him weeks to do it, and there was no occasion that we observed coming up for months yet anyway.

The next night I parked the car on the street instead of pulling into the driveway and managed to surprise him. There was a rather shocked look on his face as he stuttered, ‘Heero! I didn’t hear you pull up!’ He quickly deleted and closed as I came across the room. I thought he was going to knock the chair over standing up.

‘The neighbor’s cat was laying in the driveway,’ I lied, wondering at the possibilities of moving the computer desk closer to the front door. Though he tried to seem nonchalant, it was fairly obvious that he was disconcerted and off-balance. I set the dinner table while he finished cooking and then I slipped back to the computer.

He had managed to wipe his tracks even in the bare time he’d had, but he’d been a little sloppy in his haste and I found an indication that he’d been using a web cam. A small enough clue… but all I had.

A web cam. What in the hell? My curiosity turned to trepidation. For the first time, I was… a little afraid of what was going on here.

Things seemed fine at dinner; we ate and told each other about our separate days, continuing telling our tales while we cleaned up together. Things seemed very… normal. We watched a little television and went to bed. Nothing out of the ordinary from most of our evenings.

Later, while he was still regaining his breath, while I was still lying between his thighs, I whispered, ‘Are you… happy?’

He blinked up at me, the question catching him completely by surprise. ‘Of course…’ Then something dark flickered behind his eyes. ‘As… as long as we’re together. Are… are you happy, Heero?’

I saw what my words had implied and smiled for him. ‘Very happy,’ I assured him and was rewarded with a beautiful smile.

We cleaned ourselves up and lay down to sleep, me on my side of the bed and he on his. I heard a small sigh as he settled there, a sigh that I realized I heard every night and I found myself wondering about it.

I need my space at night. I’ve never been able to sleep with someone too close. I think sometimes that this bothers Duo, but he’s never said anything and I know he understands.

I watched him sleep that night and wondered. I thought about those tiny sighs. I thought about the look of doubt that clouded his eyes sometimes. I thought about the feel of his body, wrapped around mine and the way his striving sometimes seemed almost… frantic.

I ordered the monitoring software the very next day. I had found in the small hours of the night that there was a large part of me that would be crippled beyond healing if Duo wasn’t there with me. And I suddenly was having doubts… fears about just what was going on in the afternoons on our computer.

I paid for the expedited shipping but it would still take two days. I took half a vacation day the afternoon I placed the order, surprising Duo when he came home from work. He seemed genuinely delighted, even more so when I told him we were ordering pizza, that he wasn’t cooking.

He grinned at me like a little kid on Christmas morning. ‘What’s the occasion, Heero?’

‘I just realized how much I’ve been neglecting you,’ I told him warmly and went to take him in my arms.

The statement brought a flush of warmth to his cheeks, but he raised his hands to fend me off. ‘I just spent nine hours on the roof of a house, lover,’ he chuckled lightly. ‘You don’t want within a yard of me.’

‘I don’t care,’ I told him and swept him into my arms anyway, muffling his surprised gasp with my kisses.

I took him to the shower and washed his hair for him, combing it afterward. I made him stretch out on the bed while I ordered the pizza, coming back from using the kitchen phone to massage his sore back while we waited for it to arrive.

‘You’ve been carrying double loads up the damn ladder again, haven’t you?’ I accused, feeling the tightness under my hands.

All I got was a whimpering little sound that might have been an affirmative or might have been something in Mongolian. I couldn’t tell.

When the pizza came, I brought it to the bedroom and we ate in bed. He was positively speechless, watching me with eyes as wide as saucers.

When we were done, I cleared the mess away and slipped into bed with him, propping up against the headboard and pulling him into my arms to rest with his head pillowed on my chest. There was a strange little silence and he suddenly blurted, ‘Ok… who the hell are you and what have you done with Heero Yuy?’

I snorted, though the remark made me feel… faintly guilty. ‘I just feel like you haven’t been getting much of my attention lately. I’ve been working late so much.’

He raised his head a little to look up at me and there was something in his eyes that tugged at my heart. ‘You’re spoiling me… I could get very used to this,’ he murmured softly.

‘Maybe you deserve to get used to this,’ I told him tenderly.

Something washed over his face then, some unnamable emotion that spoke to me of need and fear, hope and wonder. ‘God… I love you,’ he whispered and I bent to claim his lips with my own. I made love to him that night with gentle patience, not letting him do much but lie back and enjoy. When I finally brought him to completion, he came with such intensity that I thought for a moment he had passed out. He was so spent, he couldn’t even make his way to the bathroom to clean himself up. I fetched a washcloth and did it for him, wiping up the mess while he whimpered under my hands.

When I climbed back into bed, he managed a shaky, ‘Damn, Heero!’

I chuckled at him and kissed the end of his nose. ‘Go to sleep.’ Then I rolled over to do just that.

I was… somewhat disappointed to find him on the computer again the next night. I didn’t bother to check the logs; my software was due the next day anyway.

Things seemed so… normal. I watched him, looking for signs of what I suspected was going on, but everything followed our routine. Nothing seemed amiss. We ate, we cleaned up, I did a couple loads of laundry while Duo vacuumed, we watched some television and went to bed.

I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. I couldn’t figure out what had changed. I lay awake for quite awhile that night, staring at his back and wishing I understood what was going on. Wondering about what I was going to find when I loaded that software… and not sure I wanted to know.

The next day, when my package arrived, I found I couldn’t wait. I took a long lunch, went home and loaded it up. It ran in complete stealth mode, didn’t even show up in the task list. Duo would never know it was there. I went back to work feeling both anticipation and trepidation. Feeling… guilty. Feeling justified. Feeling damn strange.

I called home after I knew he’d be there, to tell him I would be a little late. Wanting to give him ample time to… do whatever the hell it was he did on the computer.

I was both elated and disappointed to see him get up from the computer chair when I walked through the door that night. I forced myself to stay away from the PC through supper and through showers. I didn’t want to risk getting caught spying on him, though there was some small part of me that felt warranted in what I had done, I would be mortified if he caught me.

I made myself wait until I knew that he was well and truly asleep before I slipped out of bed and crept downstairs. When I finally sat down in front of the system and opened the monitoring software, I found myself hesitating to enter the password. Found myself realizing how much what I found out might change things. What if he really were carrying on some sort of on-line affair? What if he was e-mailing or chatting with another lover? Could I ignore it? Could I live with it? I didn’t think so. But a confrontation might lead to… something else I couldn’t live with.

It was age-old habit that made me begin typing. A soldier, or an agent, should always have all the pertinent information. Anything less was to be unprepared. I pulled up the afternoon’s screen capture logs and hit play.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or whether to cry. At first I was amused. Then I was hurt. Then I was… consumed with remorse. I think it’s called an epiphany, what I experienced in front of that stark monitor. I closed the program, uninstalled the software and went back to bed. I had another night of watching Duo sleep. I thought a lot about… us. About our relationship. About the things he did for me that I’d never bothered to notice before. I thought about all the things he’d given up for me. I thought about that ache I saw in his eyes sometimes. I fell asleep remembering his breathy, hopeful voice sighing, ‘I love you.’ And trying to remember how many times I’d said it in return.

It’s probably a good thing that the Preventers had all but fallen over themselves to get me to join, if I’d had a regular job, I’m sure the hours I kept that week would have gotten me fired. I took off for the afternoon again, but I didn’t go home. I spent the hours running around making my preparations, with one eye on the clock waiting for the time that I knew that Duo would be home. Knew that Duo would be logging onto the computer… logging onto the Internet.

When five o’clock arrived, my errands were all run and I was in position, my cell phone in hand waiting for it to ring. I suppose I was wearing something of a smug little smile, but it was only for a mission successfully executed.

I stood squarely behind the puppy pen at the dog pound, ignoring the sidelong glances I was getting from the workers, ignoring the yapping, writhing bundle of puppies clamoring to get my attention, staring straight into the lens of the ‘puppy cam’. My cell phone rang at exactly five fifteen.

‘Hey,’ I breathed into the thing, imagining that I was looking into Duo’s eyes through that impersonal lens. Tried hard not to imagine who else I might be staring at.

‘Heero?’ he asked, his voice hesitant… almost shaky. ‘What… what are you doing?’

‘Did you honestly think that I could ignore something that took so much of my lover’s attention?’ I teased him lightly, almost able to see the drop-jawed expression of shock on his face at finding me here.

‘I… I’m sorry, Heero,’ he murmured and I could tell how off balance he was even over the cell phone.

I cut him off. ‘Baka,’ I smiled, ‘stop apologizing and pick one.’

‘What?’ he blurted and I listened to several seconds of incoherent noise before he managed, ‘I can’t ask…’

‘You’re not asking, now are you?’ I told him. ‘I’m telling. Now are you going to pick one…or am I going to have to do it for you?’

There was a moment of just listening to him breathe and I understood from the sounds that there was a small struggle going on for control back at home in front of our computer. ‘Heero… you don’t want a dog… I can’t…’

‘Hush,’ I commanded. ‘It isn’t always about what I want. What you want is just as important. Now tell me which one, lover.’

I heard a gulping little noise and when his voice came again, it was thick and unwieldy, ‘The… the brown one in the corner… with the gangly legs and the ragged ear.’

I looked down into the pen to meet the soulful eyes of the puppy Duo had described. He was easily the ugliest damn dog in the pen.

‘Are you… sure?’ I had to ask, looking at the feet on the thing and understanding that he was going to end up being a very large dog.

‘His… his time’s almost up…’ I heard over the phone, surprised by the depth of pain I heard there.

‘Then we’ll grant him a reprieve,’ I soothed and felt compelled to turn my eyes back to the camera. Things were very quiet for a minute and I knew that the phone had been set aside.

I glanced back down and found the ugly puppy looking up at me rather expectantly, as though he had understood my words somehow, understood it was him we were talking about. He sat patiently in his corner, while his pen-mates yapped and scrambled around him. Experimentally I reached to scratch his head and watched him flinch for a moment before allowing the touch. I scratched behind the ragged ear and saw a hint of movement in the feathered tail. Big brown, mournful eyes looked up at me and I knew I was lost. I scooped the creature up and tucked him under one arm. With a shake of my head and a sigh, I looked back at the camera and waved the cell phone at it, before placing the phone back to my ear. It took another moment before Duo’s voice came back.

‘Yeah?’ he whispered, his voice wobbly and unbelievably over-wrought.

‘We’ll be home in about a half an hour,’ I told him warmly. ‘Why don’t you just call out for supper, ok?’

‘O… ok,’ he agreed and we hung up.

There was a lot more paperwork than I had anticipated and a stop at the pet store with a list that the animal shelter clerk had given me. I ended up having to use the credit card by the time I had accumulated the food, food dish, carrier, collar, leash, chew toy, water dispenser and dog bed that the girl had recommended. It ended up being closer to an hour.

I was a little surprised when I finally got home, to walk into the house and not immediately see Duo. I went into the kitchen and found him standing in the middle of the room with his hands full of Chinese take-out cartons, looking as though he’d never seen the like before. As though he needed someone to tell him what to do with them.

The puppy was safely tucked against my side again, dangling over my arm with all the patience of a saint, bright eyes taking in everything. I went to Duo, and using my free hand, deftly plucked the cartons from him, setting them on the table. Then I plopped the puppy into his arms, leaving him no choice but to hold the beast.

When my hands were free, I cupped Duo’s face and forced him to meet my eyes. I couldn’t half name what I saw going on there. He blinked red-rimmed eyes at me and whispered brokenly, ‘You… you really do love me?’

Our new puppy sat quietly in Duo’s arms and looked up at us, first at me and then at Duo, just as though he were following the conversation.

I smiled softly and leaned in to kiss him. ‘Yes,’ I told him firmly. ‘I do… I love you very much.’

It was… painful to see the relief wash over him. Painful to understand how long he’d been living with his doubts and fears because I had problems expressing my affections. Because I had trouble saying those three little words that he gifted me with every day.

His eyes were shimmering brightly and he seemed unable to speak, just staring at me unblinking and I understood that there was a small struggle going on against tears.

I slipped my arms around his waist and pulled him as near as I could without crushing the gangly animal in his arms. ‘You’ve given me my world,’ I whispered softly. ‘And I took. Took without giving in return.’ I stroked gentle fingers over his face and watched him catch his lower lip in his teeth. ‘That’s going to end. We’re partners… equal partners. What you want is just as important as what I want.’

He settled his head on my shoulder and said, his voice thick, ‘I love you so much…’

‘I know you do,’ I told him. ‘You’ve never let me doubt that. I intend to see that you never have reason to doubt me again.’

Our bodies, twined close as we could manage, made a warm cocoon around our ugly little puppy and all of a sudden he seemed to come to life. He’d been very quiet and subdued on the drive home and I’d wondered more than once what the little guy had endured in his short life. I like to imagine that Duo’s and my love had granted him a little of the security he’d obviously never had. He was suddenly a bundle of squirming, wagging… puppy, licking enthusiastically at Duo’s face and making odd little snuffling sounds. I watched them together for a moment before leaving them to get acquainted while I unloaded the rest of the stuff from the car.

I came back to the kitchen to find Duo on his hands and knees, following the little dog around as he explored the kitchen floor. They didn’t seem to notice me as I moved about, filling the water dispenser and setting it out, placing the dog bed in the corner of the kitchen, setting out the food dish. I got the puppy’s attention with the rattle of the food sack though, and he abandoned Duo to galumph across the floor to see what was being offered. I took the opportunity to pull Duo to his feet and nudge him toward our own dinner. He went, and he sat, but eating didn’t seem to be on his agenda. His eyes couldn’t quite decide whether to look at me or the dog. Finally, he seemed to steel himself and blurted, ‘Heero, are you sure about this? It’s kind of a big change…’

‘Positive,’ I told him firmly and tapped his plate with my chopsticks. ‘Now eat.’

He flushed, seeming to notice the food in front of him for the first time, and took a bite. ‘He’s going to be a big dog,’ he ventured. ‘You know that… right?’

‘No,’ I said blandly. ‘He’s going to be a stinking monster. The lady at the pound says she thinks he’s got a little mastiff blood along with about a half a dozen other things.’

I was pleased to see him suitably taken aback, but he didn’t say anything right away and we ate in a comfortable silence, the puppy finishing with his dinner and wandering around the kitchen sniffing everything.

‘I just… always wanted a dog,’ Duo suddenly said, voice soft, staring down and seeming to talk to his plate. ‘It’s what nice, normal people do. I just want to be normal, Heero. I want walks in the park… and… and… popcorn on Sunday nights… and the movies sometimes…’

I put down my chopsticks and pushed my chair back, going around the table to him. He looked up at me, his eyes showing a bit of surprise and I nudged him until he pushed his own chair away from the table, giving me the room to straddle his legs and sit on his lap, facing him. He blinked up at me, his eyes full of a dozen questions, but he didn’t speak, waiting for me. I brought my hands to the back of his neck, kissing him gently. When I drew away, I held his cross in my hand. I saw a touch of shock and a hint of trepidation cross his face, I don’t know that the thing has left his neck in all the time I’ve known him. Wordless, I slipped my fingers into my pocket and pulled out the gold ring that had been tucked there all afternoon. I dropped it onto the chain with his cross and fastened it back around his neck, giving the two pieces of metal a gentle touch before dropping my hands to his waist.

He just sat and looked at me for a moment, before his fingers lifted the ring to look at it. I watched his eyes widen and then squeeze tight shut, but he was unable to stop the spill of bright tears.

I love you – forever and always.

It had taken a bit of work to find a jeweler who both had rings I liked, and would do the engraving on the spot.

Duo wrapped his arms tight around me and buried his face in my shirt. I held him close until he’d calmed himself enough to look up at me again. He wiped roughly at his eyes, his cheeks turning pink, and murmured, ‘I’m sorry…’

I slipped my fingers into my other pocket, pulling out the matching ring on its gold chain. ‘Does it… go both ways, love?’ I asked gently, holding it out to him.

‘Yes,’ he breathed, eyes glimmering dangerously again. ‘Oh God, yes. Forever and ever and always.’ I bent my head and let him clasp the chain around my neck and then I sealed the vow with a kiss.

Drawing away, while his was face still tilted up to meet mine, his eyes just beginning to reopen… I thought he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Joy was a palpable thing that hung in the air around him. I bent to brush the end of his nose with my own. ‘Duo?’ I whispered softly.

‘What, love?’ he replied, his voice that slightly husky one he gets when he’s feeling… amorous.

‘Your dog just peed on the floor.’

His laugh was bright and unfettered, and I reflected that this new addition to our household might not be such a bad thing… if it brought with it these kinds of happy outbursts.

End

 

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