PL: Confrérie (what’s next?), Quatre and Trowa art, SBA
Busy Week
Although I’m still on for the rest of my lengthy shifts until Christmas, I was fortunate enough not to have to work today. So I decided to finish that picture from yesterday!
I’m more than a little astonished at how nice this turned out. I should start more pictures at work. You hear that, EA customers? Just stop… well, no, I can’t curse my own job like that, for fear of another place I work at going out of business. Aaanyway. Then I decided some color was in order, and I like the color version even better (which is a little unusual for a piece designed in black and white):
It even looks kinda Christmassy, doesn’t it? That’ll have to do for my Christmas offering this year, since I’m sure as hell not going to finish anything else in time. So happy Christmas, everiun!
Incidentally, it became clear, specifically while coloring this, that Duo is wearing Heero’s scarf. I wonder why that is…
Getting paid for this
OK, so, this extremely busy work week has been extremely busy almost exclusively in the mornings. The last few days I’ve come in and mostly just cleaned up after everything else. Lots of dishes, not a lot of arrangements. And today, I have literally nothing to do. So I’ve decided to draw a picture with what materials I happen to have with me. I’ll put progress reports here, and we’ll see how it goes.
So there’s the beginning of a sketch. Man, I’ve used so many kiss refs from Getty Images, I’m starting to forget which ones I’ve already done.
Co-worker called from the other store and said he’s sending an order over here, but I’ve yet to see any sign of it. Onward, then, to the drawings!
So now Heero, like, is a robed faery and Duo is a sleeveless, high-booted jewelry aficionado. Or something. And there is mystic wind. This is what happens sometimes.
After some time wasted spent doing actual work, we are back with more defined lines and the beginnings of a border both on Heero’s rather inconvenient-looking (at least to fly in) robe and the picture as a whole.
Borders and some colors. Dammit, Heero, why do you look like Harry Potter all of a sudden.
OK, I got a little bit further than that, but then I had to wash, like, four dishes and mop the floor, and then drive home at 20 MPH in teh snows. So. I like this picture very much so far, but Poe only knows when I’ll have a chance to finish it.
His Own Humanity: Reciprocity
Things were gradually, miraculously getting better.
A brief look at how Heero and Duo are doing a month and a half after the end of the curse.
Author's Star Rating: 4 | Category: His Own Humanity | Contains: Established relationship for main couple(s) | Contains: Gay Duo | Contains: Gay Heero | Contains: Language (religious) | Contains: Sexuality/sexual references | Genre: Drama | Genre: Romance | Length: 4k-5k words | Pairing - Primary: Duo & Heero | POV: Duo | POV: Heero | Rating: 2 | Release/completion year: 2012 | Setting: Alternate universe | Setting: AU - Modern U.S. plus magic | Visual art collection: Gundam Wing | Visual art medium: Graphite
It wasn’t really possible for an object lacking voice or facial features to express emotions, but somehow, looking at it, Heero was reading annoyance and frustration pretty clearly without needing a human face to read them in. He couldn’t help smiling; hand-held can openers were a bit of a bother before you figured them out. The electric kind were so unreliable, though, that he’d sworn them off years ago. Duo was just going to have to get used to it.
He hadn’t heard a sound since he’d entered the apartment, but didn’t think it likely that Duo was out; so he recovered the can opener from where it had evidently been tossed down with some force into the corner at the far side of the counter, and started his search. Before he could even peek into any of the rooms down the hall, though, he caught sight of what he sought on the balcony at the end.
As he drew nearer, he observed that Duo, seated against the outside wall beside the glass door, was eating black olives from a can, so there was one mystery solved. The G.E.D. study guide he’d had for only a couple of weeks but that was already somewhat ragged-edged lay across his lap, and his new sparkly green iPod sat on top of that. His bare feet, down at the end of long, full-stretched legs, twitched rhythmically back and forth, presumably to the beat of whatever he was listening to — he’d been downloading anything and everything in the last few weeks — and as Heero was opening the door Duo added to this time-keeping operation by tapping out the rhythm on his book with the highlighter in his hand.
“Oh, hey!” Duo looked up with a surprised smile as Heero stepped onto the balcony. He pulled the headphones from his ears, and would have risen if Heero hadn’t dropped down beside him as he closed the door. “Is it that late?” Duo added, sounding pleased to find that it was, after which his mouth was busy and he couldn’t say anything more for several long moments. He tasted like olives.
Finally Heero sat back from the hello kiss and remarked, gesturing at the can, “You got them open eventually, I see.”
“With magic,” Duo replied belligerently. “That goddamned torture device was not cooperating.”
“This one?” Heero held up the can opener.
“Yes!” Duo yelped. “Can I throw it?”
Heero laughed. “No. Here, let me show you…” He pulled the olives closer, then slowly demonstrated how the can opener worked — incompletely, of course, since this particular can was already open.
Duo watched with suspicious eyes, and eventually remarked dubiously, “It kinda crawls along there, doesn’t it? Sorta eats its way around the top of the can.” He sounded as if he wanted to give the device another chance, but had been too wounded by its betrayal to trust again so soon.
“Now you try,” Heero urged, reaching for one of Duo’s hands to place it on the rubber-coated handles of the can opener.
Grumbling and still suspicious, Duo nevertheless allowed Heero to guide his fingers through the process a couple of times. He seemed to develop some reluctant admiration for the object’s design, but obviously remained a little wary of it even when the tutoring session was over.
“I may keep opening stuff with magic for a while,” he said, and for a few tense moments he followed the can opener with his eyes as Heero set it aside next to the nearly-depleted olives. “Speaking of which…” Relaxing, Duo leaned to move the two items entirely out of the space between himself and his boyfriend — his touch on the can opener, the amused Heero noted, still gingerly — and gestured. “Now come here.” And he tugged at Heero’s arm.
Heero obeyed, and found himself, at Duo’s direction, leaning close against him. When Duo said, “I’ll show you something,” Heero could feel the vibrations of his speech through the hand that Duo had pulled to his chest.
“All right.” It came out in a murmur, which seemed somehow to fit the snugness of their new position.
Duo went on, but now he was no longer speaking English. “Let me say, everyone who’s got magical abilities has a magical or psychic center ’round about here.”
Heero had no problem at all understanding the magical language, and as Duo spoke he could sense something a little different than before through his palm and fingers. It was similar to the vibrations of Duo’s regular speech, but it was as if Heero was feeling them on another, deeper level.
“Let me say, if you can find that center in yourself and sorta talk through it, it’ll come out in the magical language, and anyone with magical abilities will be able to understand you.”
It made him shiver, and, as Duo continued, Heero couldn’t help feeling as if they two were connected on a new and deeper level as well. He remembered ascribing a certain intimacy to the idea that Duo had been the one to awaken his magical abilities; it looked as if he hadn’t been too far off the mark.
“Let me say, you have to speak through your magical center to cast spells, too, so finding it’s pretty important if you’re going to be doing magic.”
Heero dropped his head to rest against Duo’s shoulder and closed his eyes. He thought he could feel a faint resonance inside his own chest responding to that in Duo’s; it was interesting and exciting and disconcerting.
“Let me say, can you feel that?”
“Why do you keep starting all your sentences like that?” Heero wondered quietly, eyes still closed.
“Let me say, to make sure I don’t cast any actual spells by accident. Let me say, this way I’m structuring my sentences so they’re pretty much just a spell commanding me to say what I’m saying.”
Heero nodded minutely. “Why is the magical center in the chest?” he asked next. “Is it associated with a particular organ?”
In English this time, Duo answered, “You’d have to ask Trowa about that one…”
Heero raised his head again to look Duo in the eye with a slight smile. “I prefer learning from you,” he said, and kissed him.
Some time later, still in English, Duo echoed Heero’s earlier suggestion: “Now you try it.”
“Do what, exactly?” It didn’t sound in his voice, but Heero was a little nervous about this. He had, after all, recently witnessed the tail-end of a conspicuous example of magic gone very, very wrong. That Duo himself wasn’t more wary of amateur magic use at this point might have been a surprise if Heero hadn’t already become perfectly accustomed to his attitude.
“Just try to feel your magical center,” Duo was replying somewhat vaguely, “and see if you can talk through it.”
“All right…” Heero closed his eyes again and concentrated, simultaneously silently predicting that his nervousness would render him completely unable to pull this off. He thought he was still aware of the not-entirely-physical area of his chest that he’d felt vibrating in response to Duo’s earlier words, but he couldn’t quite get mental hold of what it would take to ‘talk through it.’ “Say something else,” he requested of Duo, who complied.
And as Duo started to “Let me say” through the lyrics of some absurd song that was popular at the moment, which sounded even more idiotic when chanted in the magical language, and placed a hand over Heero’s heart to mirror the one of Heero’s that lay atop his own, Heero found that nervousness was not the emotion likely to get in the way here. He tried to concentrate again on the resonance Duo’s speech was causing within him, but Duo’s voice and his warm hand were simply too distracting.
Finally Heero gave a faint, helpless laugh. “I don’t think this is going to work right now.”
Duo broke off his lyric recitation and wondered, “Oh?”
“Because it’s making me want you like mad,” Heero confessed.
“Justin Bieber?” wondered Duo skeptically. “I’ll have to remember that.”
Heero chuckled. “Let’s just say that even he couldn’t make me not want you.”
“Oh, well done!” Duo complimented this statement with a laugh. Then he asked slyly, “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing, at the moment,” Heero sighed. “We’ll have to try this again later when we have more time.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Duo recollected in disappointment: “suits.”
Heero nodded against Duo’s shoulder; then, because he simply couldn’t help it, he turned to mouth Duo’s neck.
Duo let out a pleased breath and said in a tone that was half serious, half silly, and all suggestive, “We’ll put off the magic ’til tonight, then.”
Relena’s wedding was less than a month away, and Heero and Duo had fittings scheduled today for the necessary attire. Tempting though it was to forget all about that and pursue, as Duo had said, magic of various types, Heero knew his mother would go into meltdown if she found out he’d put off reserving his tux.
“Consider yourself booked for tonight, then,” he said, withdrawing reluctantly from his comfortable position against his lover and moving to rise.
Duo groped him on the way up. “Consider it considered.” After which, thankfully, they managed to get Duo shod and the both of them out of the apartment without too much more Justin Bieber, though Heero had a sinking suspicion he hadn’t heard the last of that.
A preference for jewel tones had already been established on Duo’s part, and Heero was beginning to suspect him of a preference for the jewels themselves as well as Duo oohed and ahhed over a line of shirts with sparkly decorated collar points. Finished with his own fitting, which had been quick and easy, Heero watched Duo’s with a smile but without a word. He wasn’t going to try to talk Duo out of the blingy shirt he had his eye on (nor the tie and vest with glittery stripes to match), and in fact was ready to buy him whatever he wanted.
Duo looked so damn good in everything, and watching him try things on was a wonderful experience — and not just because Heero adored every detail of his body. Duo struck poses for the mirrors and quoted movie lines he thought were appropriate (though they usually weren’t) and generally made an adorable goof of himself. And the dawning realization displayed by the employee helping him that this was a gay couple he had in his dressing room was amusing too — in a different, tiresome sort of way.
Near the end of the process, oddly enough, Billy Joel’s My Life began playing from Heero’s pocket. In some confusion he fished out his phone while Duo tried for a straight face as he said, “That’s one of your parents.”
Heero did remember eventually that Duo had been playing with his phone the other night, and was impressed at what a quick learner his boyfriend was. Duo had once said he didn’t think he’d ever get used to cell phones, and now here he was assigning custom ringtones.
Despite its unexpected trappings, the call itself was no surprise. Mrs. Yuy considered all wedding preparations as being her immediate jurisdiction, and the acquisition of suits was no exception even though it technically had nothing to do with her. Naturally she would want to check to make sure this phase of the operation was proceeding according to plan.
“Hello, mama,” Heero greeted her, more or less amiably.
“Heero? Hello. How are you doing?”
“Great,” he replied truthfully. “How are you?”
“We’re well. Your father has decided to take up golfing. Are you getting your tuxedo today?”
Unfazed by her topic roulette, which was nothing atypical, Heero told her he was at the store right now.
“No problems getting the same style as your father’s?”
“No.” They’d only been over this a dozen times.
“And your friend is there too? Getting his suit?” She rarely used Duo’s name, and the term ‘boyfriend’ was absolutely beyond her, but that she was acknowledging his existence at all was something of a miracle.
“That’s right.”
“Good. You wrote down the colors to match?”
“Yes, mama. There won’t be any problems.”
“Good. And you two are coming to dinner on Sunday, aren’t you?”
There was an even bigger miracle. Heero marveled at how happily he was able to give an affirmative when just two months before it had made him cringe.
So far it turned out that the steady-boyfriend theory had been correct, and things had progressed very much as Relena had predicted: stiff and awkward, though not necessarily antagonistic, at first, and then (more quickly than he would have dared hope) increasingly easy.
Whether it was because his parents were charmed by Duo’s persistently ingratiating and entertaining ways, or because they saw how happy Heero was with him, or because they just didn’t have the energy to hold out in the face of Heero’s determination to live the way he thought appropriate (not to mention the support of those around him), or some combination of these, things were gradually, miraculously getting better. And now they’d even reached the point where Mrs. Yuy would declare it “Good” in her sharply friendly tone that he and Duo were coming to dinner.
Of course it would have been impossible for them not to like Duo himself, so that was nothing spectacular; and they still seemed to avoid thinking of him as Heero’s boyfriend as much as they could, treating him rather as if he were just a good friend of both their children, which was less than ideal… but there was no denying that things were getting better.
Duo could tell, too. When Heero hung up from the conversation with his mother, he found him grinning, and clearly not just because of the sneakily altered ringtone. As usual, Duo had been able to pick up the mood of the discussion despite its being in Japanese and only half audible, and approved of what he’d heard.
Heero smiled back. He was extremely grateful to Duo for this circumstance, which just added another item to a growing list of reasons he was ecstatic to have Duo in his life. It wasn’t exactly a favor Duo had done for him — except as far as Duo went out of his way to be even more likeable than usual around the Yuy parents — but that fact did not lessen Heero’s gratitude. He would share all of this with Duo one of these days, but not yet — at least not in these terms — since he feared it would correspond undesirably with an unfortunate attitude he already thought he perceived in Duo.
That perception was only strengthened when he paid the bill at the outfitters. Heero was renting his tux, since he didn’t exactly have a routine need for it; but a nice suit was something useful to own, so he was buying one for Duo… and Duo was making the same face he always did when Heero spent money on him or assisted him in some aspect of human life — be it as significant as helping him get registered as a patient at a doctor’s office or as small as demonstrating proper handling of a can opener.
The expression was one of displeasure, almost disapproval, that overrode Duo’s simultaneous gratitude and fondness and seemed to be immediately calculating how to shift the balance of the situation. And if the setting had been right he would have tried: shown Heero something magical or volunteered for some household chore… actions not at all objectionable in themselves, but the motives behind which Heero was beginning to question.
It was time they did something about this.
*
Heero was onto him.
Even after a month and a half, Duo had not yet readjusted to humanity and having facial expressions and all that, and he hadn’t been able to hide it, and Heero had noticed. That was his impression, anyway, based on the look Heero gave him on the way out of the store. But instead of commenting, at least for the moment, Heero just paused outside and glanced around.
“You’ve never had bubble tea,” he declared. He didn’t have to ask; to a certain extent — particularly when it came to food — he was familiar with Duo’s entire range of human experiences.
“Nope. Never heard of it.”
Heero pointed to the strip mall’s next business over, which was, indeed, labeled ‘Bubble Tea’ in puffy colorful lettering. “Want to try it?”
“Yes,” replied Duo at once. “What is it?”
Heero began walking in the direction of the adjacent shop. “It’s weird,” he said unhelpfully. “I think you’ll like it.”
The little store was decorated in an eclectic style that Duo associated with Chinese restaurants, and featured a complicated list of flavors that occupied him for several minutes. Though he wasn’t entirely sure, yet, what he was ordering, he eventually chose strawberry-banana, and the lady behind the counter set to work making some kind of smoothie for him in addition to the avocado-vanilla one Heero had already requested. He and Heero were discussing weddings, not terribly intensively, while the woman worked, until Duo suddenly broke off what he was saying to hiss, wide-eyed, at his boyfriend, “What is she putting in there? What is that stuff?”
Heero just smiled enigmatically.
The cup he eventually received had a thin sheet of plastic sealed across the top, which made it possible for Duo to turn it all around, peering suspiciously inside, without worrying about spilling. This didn’t prevent him from pouting a bit (for all he tried not to) as he watched Heero pay for the drinks, but soon he returned his attention to the mysterious objects at the bottom of the smoothie. They looked like black marbles.
After offering Duo a hugely wide, green-striped straw, Heero headed out the door into the warm June dusk once again. Duo nearly tripped on the mat and ran into someone as he followed, so riveted was he on the drink in his hand. Once outside (and out of the path of other customers), they paused so Heero could demonstrate how to puncture the plastic covering with the pointed end of the straw. Then he stood still sipping his own drink and watching Duo expectantly.
It tasted like strawberry… strawberry-banana… banana… and then…! Duo choked, trying to drink, chew, and laugh through his surprise at the same time. This only made him laugh (and choke) more, which induced a nearly similar reaction in Heero as the latter handed over a couple of napkins he’d had the prescience to obtain inside.
“They’re… squishy… what the hell…” Without looking, Duo was mopping up what he’d spewed down his front, still laughing and coughing.
“You missed some,” Heero grinned, pointing.
It was a good thing they’d already gotten the fitting-room portion of the day out of the way. As he entered a second round of napkin application to his newly-spotted shirt, Duo finally managed a complete sentence. “What are those?”
“It’s tapioca.”
“Like in pudding?” Duo laughed. “Whose idea was it to put that in a drink?” And he looked askance down his straw; now he realized why it was so big.
Heero shrugged. “Do you not like it?”
Thoughtfully Duo took another drink, at the same moment tossing the napkins into a trash can by the door. And after a very intense and serious assessment, he laughed again, less disastrously this time, and commented, “Yes, I like it! It’s hilarious! But I think ‘weird’ wasn’t quite strong enough, before.”
“Good,” Heero said with a smile. Then he gestured to stop Duo from taking a seat at the little table just outside the shop. “Let’s go sit in the car.”
Duo tried not to wince as he agreed. The only reason Mr. Privacy would want to go sit in the car was for the sake of a personal conversation. Which meant he really had noticed. And Duo wasn’t going to try to keep anything from him; he probably shouldn’t have kept it to himself to begin with — they’d had enough of that back in April.
Despite bracing himself, as they crossed the parking lot, for a discussion in which he would probably have to disclose feelings that might bother or even hurt his boyfriend, Duo simply could not help laughing every time he got another of the tapioca balls in his mouth. Severely amusing beverage additives did not balance quite equally against potentially uncomfortable conversation — though, admittedly, for someone that only a couple of months before had been unable to enjoy any kind of beverage, it came closer than it might for anyone else — but the tapioca was very present, while the conversation was only pending as yet. So it was in an oddly mixed frame of mind that he slid into the passenger seat and closed the door behind him.
And as Heero did the same on the driver’s side, Duo asked, mostly facetiously, “Am I in trouble?”
Heero smiled briefly and took Duo’s free hand. “No,” was his serious answer. “I’ve just noticed something you’ve been doing more and more since the curse was broken, and I wanted to talk to you about it.”
“I am in trouble,” Duo grimaced.
Squeezing the hand he held, Heero said, “I promise you’re not. It’s just that…” He took a deep breath. “I love you.”
Duo knew by now that Heero was neither accustomed to nor terribly expert at saying this phrase aloud; if you counted as a single instance the repetitions Duo had dragged out of him the night after the first time, this was only the second time he’d managed it in this relationship.
“And I’m happy having you around,” Heero went on, blushing faintly. “Having you living with me. But I can see that you feel bad about me supporting you. I want you to know that you don’t have to. You don’t need to feel like it’s inconvenient for me, or that you have to try to pay me back.”
This might be a little awkward no matter how it went, and therefore Duo didn’t feel at all bad starting out his end of it by waggling an eyebrow and asking in a exaggerated suggestive tone, “Not even with sex?”
Heero grinned slightly. “Sex with you is wonderful,” he said sincerely, “but if I thought you were actually doing it because you thought you had to to pay me back for anything, I would be extremely uncomfortable.”
Duo returned the grin. “Well, don’t be, ’cause I’m not.” Then he sobered entirely as he faced down the explanation he needed to give. “The thing is… I still don’t feel much like a real person yet. I mean, physically I do — and it’s great — but socially, I guess, not so much. It’s not something I ever expected; I thought once the curse was broken and I could feel and smell and taste, I’d be able to consider myself a human being again… but I don’t, really. And a big part of that is the fact that you’re still taking care of me so completely.
“Don’t think I resent that or anything! Because I totally love you too, and I love living with you… but it’s not like I would have much of a choice at this point even if I didn’t. I might as well still be a doll, because you’re still practically carrying me around.”
Swiveling his cup at an oblique angle in his hands, Duo watched the remainder of the tapioca balls at the bottom swish through the melting smoothie as he continued. “And I know I got excited about you buying me things right at first, because I could own things and use things again; and having them meant a lot, because it was so different from before and they were such a strong proof that I’m human again. I don’t want you to think I don’t like you buying me things. It’s just that if you didn’t, I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to buy them for myself.
“And you do a lot of things for me that I can’t do for myself, either because I don’t know how yet or because it’s something that takes money that I don’t have yet. It’s like I’m a little kid; I’m having to totally rely on you for everything.”
At the sight of Heero’s expression of perturbation and concern, Duo hastened on. “Don’t look like that! I really don’t want you to feel bad about this. It’s nobody’s fault; it’s just the way things have to be after the curse. Just… if I do act like I’m trying to pay you back a little for everything you do for me, it’s not so much because I feel like I owe you as because it makes me feel more like a real person who has a choice about what he does and where his life is going.”
Heero was silent for several moments, and looked as if he was turning this over thoroughly in his head. Finally he nodded. “I see what you’re saying,” was his serious assurance. “At least I think I do. And of course I want you to do whatever you need to to feel better, about everything and yourself. Don’t let me make you feel like you can’t… tell me if I ever do, OK?”
Now it was Duo’s turn to squeeze Heero’s hand.
“But also,” Heero added with a solemn smile, “don’t get into the habit of trying to find some way to pay me back for every little thing, or thinking you have a debt piling up. I take care of you because I love you, not because you’re then obligated to do something in return. We’re not business partners.”
That was two I love you‘s in one conversation; Duo wondered how he’d so lucked out. Actually, on a larger scale, he wondered (and definitely not for the first time) how he’d so lucked out as to find someone like Heero — someone that could, after only what Duo considered a very imperfect explanation of his feelings under these circumstances, comprehend what he was going through, or at least act as if he did, and someone he loved so very much.
He felt he did owe Heero, more than he could ever repay, for what Heero had done to break his curse. He knew perfectly well that Heero hadn’t done it in the expectation of a reward of any kind, but he didn’t think his own resulting desire to give Heero everything, do everything he could for Heero — not because he had to but because he wanted to, out of gratitude and love — was at all unhealthy or inappropriate. But he certainly wasn’t about to say that now, since it would undoubtedly be counterproductive in this discussion.
Instead he said, “You’re the best, you know that?” He took another drink of the hilarious smoothie and added, “And so is this stuff.”
Heero smiled.
Duo wasn’t quite finished with the previous topic, though, much as he would like to be. “Of course the real next step toward being a real person is to get that test taken so I can get a job. I think I’m about ready… hopefully the grammar parts won’t kill me…”
“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Heero reassured. “Even on the grammar parts. You’ve been studying that book until it’s falling apart, and highlighting half of every page.”
“That,” Duo admitted sheepishly, “may be just because I like the highlighter colors.”
“I knew that.” Fondly Heero grinned at him. “Why do you think I bought them for you?” At Duo’s faint wince his smile turned rueful, but his follow-up statement was added more or less smoothly: “And once you have a job, you can buy your own highlighters, in every color you can think of. But for now, do you want to go practice driving?”
Heero really was the best; his suggesting they work on something that furthered the cause of Duo’s autonomy (not to mention something Duo thoroughly enjoyed in itself) indicated both that he really did understand and that he wasn’t hurt by what Duo had told him. “Yes, please!” Duo said heartily.
As Heero navigated toward the large, usually empty parking lot where he’d been teaching Duo to drive in spare moments, Duo concentrated on finishing his drink so as to have both hands free. At the bottom, he had to suck up the weird little squishy balls deliberately one at a time, which was extremely entertaining. Once again, Heero had treated him to a marvelous experience, and Duo was cheerfully grateful.
By the time he’d fished out the last of the tapioca from the floor of the cup, they were parked and idling at their destination. And after a quick but very sincere kiss that constituted a strange blending of flavors after their respective smoothies, they left their seats in order to switch places and give Duo a turn at the wheel.
His Own Humanity is an AU series set in modern-day America (plus magic) featuring characters from Rurouni Kenshin (primarily Saitou and Sano) and Gundam Wing (primarily Heero, Duo, Trowa, and Quatre). In chronological order (generally), the stories currently available are:
Sano enlists the help of exorcist Hajime in discovering the nature of the unusual angry shade that's haunting him.
Best friends Heero and Quatre have their work cut out for them assisting longtime curse victims Duo and Trowa.
During Plastic (part 80), Cairo thinks about thinking and other recent changes in his life.
A look at how Hajime and Sano are doing.
A look at how Trowa and Quatre are doing.
A look at how Heero and Duo are doing.
Couple analysis among Heero, Duo, Trowa, and Quatre.
Quatre undergoes an unpleasant magical change; Heero, Duo, and Trowa are forced to face unpleasant truths; and Hajime and Sano may get involved.
During La Confrérie de la Lune Révéré (parts 33-35), Sano's 178-day wait is over as what Hajime has been fearing comes to pass.
During Guest Room Soap Opera (part 3), Cathy learns a lot of interesting facts and Trowa is not happy.
A few days before the epilogue of La Confrérie de la Lune Révéré, Duo and Sano get together to watch football and discuss relationships and magical experiences; Heero listens in on multiple levels.
I’ve rated this story 
. What do you think of it?
This story is included in the His Own Humanity: Through July ebook.
Eloquent
I guess that’s what we are… just kids who don’t know what we’re doing. But at least we have each other. I think.
The ambiguous comfort two confused soldiers can offer each other may be precisely enough.
Author's Star Rating: 3.5 | Category: Duo and Heero one-shots | Contains: Ambiguous relationship status for main couple(s) | Contains: Angst | Contains: Established relationship for main couple(s) | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Language (religious) | Contains: Queer Duo | Contains: Queer Heero | Contains: Sexuality/sexual references | Genre: Drama | Genre: Introspection | Genre: Romance | Length: 1k-2k words | Pairing - Primary: Duo & Heero | POV: Duo | Rating: 3 | Release/completion year: 2011 | Setting: Canon | Visual art collection: Gundam Wing | Visual art medium: Graphite
I would get naked for Heero Yuy anytime, anywhere, no matter what was going on. Back alley? Sure. Open street? Why not? Fire fight? Bring it on. Space battle? Well, you get the picture.
OK, I may be exaggerating just a little. I might have to give him an I.O.U. if I was on a mission at the time. But you’d better believe that when he comes in, dirty, ragged, sweaty, tired, to the motel room we just happen to be sharing (absolute coincidence, I swear) and gives me that look, I’m not about to hold back.
Just because I’ve finally managed to get him to open up to me in certain ways doesn’t mean I can usually get him to talk about whatever this is that we’ve got going here, and it’s a little frustrating not knowing whether or not there’s actually an us in this situation because he always avoids the subject. He’s very good at avoiding subjects. But then sometimes he gives me that look, and there’s no need for words.
I hustle him out of his clothes and equipment and into the shower, mostly just because I don’t know what he’s been crawling through, but I can’t even wait for him to half get started cleaning up before I join him. It’s probably a good idea anyway; the hot water available in this place is limited, so it’s better for us both to get clean at the same time before it runs out. Not that I’ve really got anything ‘clean’ in mind at this point. This braid can last without attention for another couple of days.
Despite the fact that he gave me that look, really the only way I can tell he doesn’t mind what I’m doing is the lack of any actual objection. If he didn’t want me putting my hands all over him, if he didn’t want me pushing him up against the plasticky shower wall and sucking on his neck, if he didn’t want my fingers wandering quite so far down his body, he’d tell me, undoubtedly by means of a bullet or two.
I haven’t been able to decide whether I like it better when he tops or when I do. I know that what I like best is both in a row, but that’s not a frequent occurrence. We just don’t have that kind of time, even when we do happen to, absolutely coincidentally, be sharing a motel room because we’ve both got missions in the area. We need sleep — actually, I should have been in bed hours ago, but I was waiting around for him — so there’s no opportunity for doing things the way I’d really prefer.
I don’t have the faintest clue which he likes better either, but usually when he gives me that look, it means that he wants to take it from me. OK, I don’t really know that it does mean that; just that’s how things end up, and he doesn’t complain.
In fact I never get any feedback on this from him. Slower? Faster? Harder? Softer? Different angle? Different position entirely, maybe? It seems like it’s all the same to him, and if I ask, he just turns red and mumbles something I can’t understand; if I insist, he gets angry. But I must be doing something right, since he spreads his legs a little wider and shifts his hips with just the faintest groan of pleasure, and over my hand that’s braced against the wall he puts his own, his fingers pressing at mine as if he wishes they could be interlocked.
If only I knew, though, whether he really likes it like this or if there’s something else I could be doing. I’d do anything he asked, if he’d just ask. I mean, I’m noisy as Hell when he’s the one taking the lead, and he tends to do whatever I ask… I’d love to return the favor… But maybe he really is OK with it like this. I just wish I knew.
He doesn’t seem to have any problems orgasming, anyway.
And, God, neither do I, when he tightens up around me like that.
So afterwards there actually does turn out to be some real getting cleaned up. I just can’t help lavishing attention on my beautiful Heero, even if it is only with this crappy little hotel soap and a tiny travel bottle of shampoo that I could have used on myself but would rather use on him.
And sometimes… sometimes… I even get the feeling that he likes it. That’s probably wishful thinking on my part, though, since I don’t really know how I ever manage to get that impression. Not that Heero isn’t extremely good at subtle cues; I just never thought I was all that good at picking up on them.
I still don’t bother with any washing of myself beyond just the basic standing under the spray, since I’ve spent my entire allowance of hot-water-time on Heero; anyway, since I’ll be the one crawling through mud and God-knows-what-else in the morning, it doesn’t really matter. And I’d much rather get to the toweling-Heero-off phase quicker anyway.
Even when he’s tired out and obviously not terribly happy, there’s only so much coddling a guy like Heero can take before he pushes my hands away with a grumble and does the rest on his own. I don’t mind; actually, I think I would seriously worry if he let me do too much for him. But he doesn’t object to me checking the bed for parasites, turning off the lights, and half tucking him in before I lie down beside him. And then we sort of sink into each other in this nice kind of melty way where our breathing is almost synchronized and we are, if not totally relaxed, at least fairly comfortable together.
I love this more than anything, and it’s not just that the sex is incredible — though it definitely is. For a few hours in a cheap motel that thinks we’re a couple of illegal immigrants trying to keep our heads down and find work and a more permanent place to stay, before we have to go separate ways that are pretty much guaranteed to lead to gunshots and explosions and mobile suits battles, I can pretend to forget about the rest of the sphere.
I can pretend to forget that I have no idea who’s going to suffer because of what I’m doing, and the fact that nothing’s going to change that; Hell, they might be suffering already as I’m doing it; innocents might be hurting right now, and I can’t even offer them a quick death, because I have no idea who or where they might be. And at the same time, the fighting is so often invigorating and fun, and maybe it really shouldn’t be; maybe I’m turning into someone who enjoys hurting other people; maybe I’m not doing any of this because I think it’s going to help, but how the Hell can I even tell? Is the specific destruction I cause going to do any good, short-term or long-term? Maybe this whole damn plot is just an insane and pointless string of terrorism that’s actually just making everything worse… and maybe I don’t care. I don’t even know anymore.
But in here, things are different. Here, I can be with someone I definitely do care about, and concentrate on the good feelings between us. Here I know for a fact that I’m fulfilling a need of someone I maybe kinda sorta love. The simplicity and positivity are so totally opposite everything else I have to deal with in this shitty Hell of a war, it’s like we’ve shifted into another dimension entirely.
He’s clinging a little tonight, and I cling right back; we huddle together in the bed more like a couple of kids protecting each other from the dark than a couple of soldiers who happen to be ambiguous lovers taking a momentary break from a war. And, really, I guess that’s what we are… just kids who don’t know what we’re doing. But at least we have each other. I think.
“So what brought this on?” I wonder eventually, so quietly that he probably feels my words through his skin more clearly than he hears them. “Not that I’m complaining or anything.”
Heero takes an almost inaudible deep breath and actually answers the question, which is a bit of a surprise. In that forced tone he sometimes uses when (I’m fairly sure) what he has to say isn’t something he’s reluctant about, necessarily, but something he’s not entirely certain how to articulate, he murmurs, “Out there, everything is… twisted. Here, with you, it’s right.”
I wonder if he can feel my increase in heart-rate as he says it. Miserable as the sentiment itself is, at least in part, it’s fucking glorious to realize that he was thinking the same thing I was, even if he took about two hundred fewer words to express it.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “You’re absolutely right.” And I hold him tighter.
It’s funny how just a short little phrase like that can make me feel so much better about everything. I still may not be entirely sure about the degree of us I’ve got to work with here, I still definitely have to go back out and play Death God tomorrow, and, really, nothing in the world has changed… but somehow this kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing is suddenly a little less afraid of the dark. And I fall asleep relatively content, thinking that, for all I complain about the amount of effort it sometimes takes to get things out of him, at other times Heero really is every bit as eloquent as he needs to be.
Holy Tolkien, did I write something in the canon setting? It looks like I did. It’s a fairly generic soldiers-comforting-each-other-with-romance-or-the-next-best-thing kind of plot, but everyone has to write at least one of those, right? I think I’d read one of those in the GW world before I’d even ever seen the series XD
I’ve rated this story 
. What do you think of it?
This story is included in the Gundam Wing Collection ebook.
His Own Humanity: Plastic 76-80
Plastic
“A curse affects both the victim and the caster. A skilled curse-caster can bend this effect so that their share in the curse is something they don’t mind, something that doesn’t inhibit them… but even if they manage that, repeatedly having a share in any curse leaves a mark eventually.”
When Heero rescues an abandoned doll from the gutter, he hardly thinks it’s going to change his life; but now he and his best friend Quatre find themselves involved in the breaking of a curse from almost a hundred years ago, and perhaps in falling for exactly the wrong people.
Author's Star Rating: 5 | Category: His Own Humanity | Contains: Angst | Contains: Gay Duo | Contains: Gay Heero | Contains: Gay Quatre | Contains: Gay Trowa | Contains: Get-together story for main couple(s) | Contains: Language (gendered) | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Language (religious) | Contains: Misunderstanding/lack of communication | Contains: Pining | Contains: Psychological torment | Contains: Sex (explicit) | Contains: Straight Relena | Contains: Surprise/forced kissing | Contains: Unique | Friendship: Duo & Trowa | Friendship: Heero & Quatre | Genre: Adventure | Genre: Drama | Genre: Humor | Genre: Introspection | Genre: Romance | Length: 150k-200k words | Navigation | Pairing - Primary: Duo & Heero | Pairing - Primary: Quatre & Trowa | Pairing - Secondary: Original male character & Relena | Pairing - Secondary: Treize & Zechs | POV: Duo | POV: Heero | POV: Quatre | POV: Trowa | Rating: 4 | Release/completion year: 2011 | Setting: Alternate universe | Setting: AU - Modern U.S. plus magic | Title: Plastic | Visual art collection: Commissions
Heero had accomplished very little at home on Saturday, as he’d been too busy helping Relena get some of her furniture to a consignment store and fondly watching Duo flirt with her. Technically Relena didn’t need to be getting rid of the contents of her apartment just yet, but she was so eager for her wedding and moving in with Colin that apparently certain organizational activities in preparation for that were sometimes the only way she could keep herself from going crazy. So, since she’d known Lindsay would be out most of the day, she’d bribed her brother with pizza to help her make sure the furniture she was selling was clean and in good repair, which had turned into a many-hours-long term of hanging out.
Ironically, when that little party had broken up, it had been so Relena could go off to the dinner with their parents that Heero had claimed a prior engagement to get out of, and Heero could spend the evening not having dinner with his parents. Relena had reminded him that he was going to have to accept the invitation next time or risk insulting their mother, and she threw a surreptitiously thoughtful look at Duo as she said this.
At any rate, this had prevented him from doing much at home besides wasting time and reading to Duo, so his usually weekly cleaning took place on Sunday instead. What he was really concerned about was the vacuuming, which he’d neglected for a while.
As he was getting this done, he came across the doll he’d bought off Amazon a couple of weeks ago in order to divest it of its uniform. He’d completely forgotten it in the midst of Duo’s excitement about the gift, and poor Spock had fallen to the floor and been hidden by the skirt of the sofa in back. Now Heero picked the thing up and looked at it thoughtfully.
“Aww,” said Duo, who was, as often, in Heero’s jeans pocket. “I forgot about him.”
“This one’s an ‘it,'” Heero smirked.
“So it is.” Duo shook his head pityingly. “Put a paper towel on that thing!” He added in a suddenly much-altered tone, as if he was seriously concerned but masking it with casualness, “Unless you’re just going to throw it away.”
Considering how unnerving it would be to see a body that resembled his own tossed carelessly into a trash can, Heero answered immediately, “No, I wouldn’t throw it away; it’s in such good shape. I’ll send Quatre to Goodwill with it; or wait ’til you’re human again, so you won’t have to go, and take it myself.”
“Oh, I think I’d be OK to go to Goodwill if you were there to protect me.”
Heero, who was playing with paper towels and making a skirt for the second time in his life, smiled at this. “You know, I can’t really see you as a damsel in distress.”
“Really?” Duo sounded pleased. “Even though I can barely even move on my own?”
Heero shrugged. “Maybe physically you need some help sometimes, but you definitely don’t have the personality of someone who needs ‘protecting.'” He was heading into the computer room by now, taking Spock to set by his computer so he’d remember to deal with it at some point.
“Well, thanks, Heero!” said Duo in satisfaction. “It’s nice of you to say so.”
Heero liked the way Duo said his name. He couldn’t help contrasting the doll in his left hand with the doll in his right, nor thinking in some interest of how much more real one seemed than the other. Even though he’d never seen Duo except as a doll, even though the Spock figure was modeled after a living person he had seen (on screen, at least), Duo seemed infinitely more human in every possible way. Heero could picture Duo as a human a hundred times more clearly than he could Zachary What’s-His-Name, and he was definitively attracted to one and not the other — hot though Zachary was.
He thought about Duo as a human all too much these days; as he went back to his vacuuming, he was dwelling on the image once again. He wondered how accurate it was. A week from tomorrow night, assuming everything worked properly, he would find out, and he speculated that it might drive him mad. That he would find Duo attractive as a human, whatever he looked like, he had no doubt whatsoever, and he was bracing himself for it. But he feared he could never be adequately prepared for whatever form Duo would present.
Once he’d finished dealing with the carpets and had put the vacuum away in the coat closet where it lived, he pulled Duo out of his pocket and looked at him.
“What?” Duo wondered.
Heero tugged on the untied end of the doll’s little braid. “Was your hair really like this?” he asked.
“Yep!” Duo sounded a little curious, probably wondering where the question had come from, but didn’t seem to mind answering. “I guess the curse liked it too, since it left it like this.”
“That’s a lot of hair,” Heero murmured. He hadn’t really thought about it before, but Duo’s braid went all the way down past his lower back; on a human that would probably equal pounds.
“Yep!” said Duo again, this time in a tone of great pride. “It was the envy of all the lovely ladies.”
“Yeah, I bet. I don’t think I’ve ever met a guy with that much hair.”
“Yes, you have: that super-gay friend of yours.”
“Oh, Zechs?” Heero hadn’t thought of him. “I guess you’re right.”
Deliberately to pet the hair in question as he’d once seen Trowa do Heero did not dare, though his hand longed to feel its texture again. And since he’d never braided anyone’s hair and really had no idea how, he couldn’t even use the excuse of repairing the failing braid. But his brain was flooded with images… he knew what he would be fantasizing about tomorrow in the shower…
“And how ’bout you?” Duo wondered. “Was your hair always all messy and stuff like that? Did you ever bleach it like your sister does?”
“The style’s always been about the same, but…” Heero grimaced slightly. “Quatre once convinced me to bleach part of it, back in high school. Just the top…” He gestured. “He called it ‘frosting’ or something.”
“And you hated it,” Duo guessed, sounding amused.
Heero nodded.
“I want to see pictures!”
Heero snorted. He was looking around now for The Scarecrow of Oz, since continuing to stare lustfully at Duo didn’t seem advisable.
“There must be some,” persisted Duo. “I remember listening to you guys go on and on and on about those pictures of you and Relena at your parents’ house; it sounded like there were about a million.”
“I wasn’t going on and on and on.”
“No, you never do. But pictures? Are there pictures of your frosty hair?”
“Probably somewhere,” Heero mumbled. “Do you want Oz?”
“Yooouuu are being evasive. I bet there are a bunch of pictures, and you’re embarrassed about them, and I will totally see them one day and see how your hair looked.”
“I plead the Fifth.”
“You are the Fifth!”
Heero laughed. In actuality, though he hadn’t much liked the bleach effect in his hair back then, he wasn’t particularly embarrassed about pictures from high school — but it amused Duo to believe he was, so Heero let him think that.
“Oh, and I do want Oz,” Duo added.
So Heero, who by then had located the book, headed for the couch to make use of it.
“Do you want to come play with the dogs with me again?”
Quatre had made a policy of not mentioning the whole death thing at all if he didn’t have to — thereby refraining both from reprimanding Trowa and from upsetting himself — but that didn’t mean he wasn’t thinking of it just about every moment he was with Trowa. Little unspoken addendums kept appearing after his statements; this one was, “While you have the chance?”
“Certainly,” said Trowa, setting his book aside and rising. “Let me get ready.”
Aware that he would probably rather not know, Quatre did not ask him what he was working on. He’d been buried in that same book when Quatre had visited earlier on his lunch break, and Quatre simply wasn’t interested in hearing what it contained. Instead, he followed Trowa into the next room.
He seemed to have done a good job getting Trowa into the habit of going to bed at night; Trowa almost always had his contacts out when Quatre came over anymore, and had to put them in if they went anywhere — whereas previously he’d never seemed to remove them, as he’d so rarely bothered with intentional sleep. Now as Quatre watched him insert the lenses, he reflected that, for one reason or another, Trowa probably wouldn’t be needing to buy any more of them.
Once again they managed to sneak through the Winner house without encounter, but soon thereafter their luck ran out. Evidently his parents had either noticed or been alerted to their presence, and had come to investigate; Scrat had barely run out after the ball twice when the back door opened and a hearty voice greeted them from up the path.
“Quatre! This is at least the third time you’ve brought this young man here without offering to introduce him to us!” As Quatre turned toward the house, observing both his mother and his father approaching, the latter continued, “Is this the infamous Trowa Barton?”
“‘Infamous?'” Trowa echoed at a barely-audible murmur as he too turned. Quatre really should have warned him that Mr. Winner was likely to say something like this. He probably also should have mentioned that this confrontation was inevitable, and discussed options. But now there was no time to come up with answers to the questions that would undoubtedly be asked, and Quatre had no idea how this meeting was likely to go.
“Yes,” he said as his parents drew up to them at the edge of the lawn. “This is Trowa, my boyfriend. Trowa, these are my parents, Catharine and Bernard Winner.”
Gravely Trowa stepped forward to shake hands. “I’m very pleased to meet you both. Quatre talks about you quite a bit.”
“Oh-ho!” said Mr. Winner. “All good, I hope!”
“He hasn’t told us anything about you, Trowa,” Quatre’s mother said, smiling warmly. “Do you live in town?”
“He lives out east,” Quatre put in.
“In Lujoso? Or past the county line?”
“Farther than that,” Trowa answered with amusing honesty. “But I travel a lot.”
“What do you do, Trowa?” asked Mrs. Winner.
“I’m a human resources consultant.” This lie had the calmness of boring truth, and Quatre was impressed. It occurred to him that of course Trowa was ready with something to say in situations like this; it had probably never been a lover’s parents before, but this couldn’t be the first time Trowa had needed to explain himself without mentioning magic — and that just because he didn’t like dealing with people didn’t mean he was entirely incapable of it.
Quatre was even more impressed when, upon his mother’s remarking politely that that sounded interesting and his father’s more blunt question about how this economy was treating independent contractors, Trowa responded with specifics about this hypothetical job of his that he must have determined upon at some earlier point.
Actually, he seemed to have taken all his experiences doing magical favors to make people’s lives easier and cast them into a business context so as to pass himself off as an expert on the improvement of employer-employee relationships and workplace convenience — and he was so quietly convincing that even Quatre, who knew the truth, found himself almost believing it, and thinking that Trowa would probably make a very good human resources consultant in reality. If he didn’t die. He wondered if Trowa planned on doing any kind of work after the curse was broken. If he wasn’t dead.
Fascinating as it was to watch Trowa thoroughly con Quatre’s parents, the topic itself was rather dull — as dull as anything spoken in Trowa’s voice could hope to be, anyway — and Quatre was certain that Trowa had chosen this particular fake profession so that people wouldn’t be interested enough to ask too many questions. Even so, Quatre completely lost track of the dogs while listening to the conversation, little part though he took in it.
“It can’t be easy to convince employers there’s a direct correlation between that and turnover,” his father was saying.
Trowa shook his head. “I always conduct a survey a year later, so I have a set of hard evidence.”
Mrs. Winner’s interest in this discussion had by now (understandably) lagged, and, turning to Quatre in the next convenient pause, she asked, “Are you two having dinner here tonight?”
Smiling appreciatively at this let’s-move-on question, Quatre answered, “No, we just came by to see the dogs, and then we’re heading out again.”
“Well, Trowa–” and she turned back to him– “you’ll have to come to dinner sometime. We’d love to have you.”
Trowa nodded. “Thank you. I’d like that.”
“Yes!” Mr. Winner took his wife’s hint and addressed his son. “Bring him by sometime and let him meet everyone.” He shook Trowa’s hand again. “It was excellent to meet you, sir. You two be good!” And, though he didn’t wink or otherwise indicate any secondary meaning, Quatre felt his face heat somewhat.
“I’m glad to have met you both,” Trowa agreed politely, without reacting at all to the potentially embarrassing statement (perhaps without even noticing the potentially embarrassing statement).
“We’ll see you later,” said Mrs. Winner. “Have fun with the dogs.” And with a smile she turned and drew her husband back toward the house.
Once his parents were well inside and out of earshot, “That was amazing,” Quatre commented. “You didn’t miss a beat! You must have been expecting that.”
“Not specifically.” Trowa bent to retrieve Scrat’s ball, and threw it across the yard. “But I always have some answers ready, even if I’d rather not have to lie.” He didn’t seem entirely pleased about it — as a matter of fact he looked fairly drained — but he said it placidly enough.
“But you must have known you’d meet my parents eventually, so it’s good you had a plan.” Just like he had a plan for his potential death seven nights from now. Only less depressing.
“No,” said Trowa, “I didn’t think I was likely to meet your parents.”
Quatre hid his frown and bit back his “Why not?” He didn’t really want to hear Trowa explain that he’d speculated he would be dead before the opportunity to meet Quatre’s parents arose.
Trowa was gazing at him consideringly as Scrat brought the ball to Quatre. “You look like your mother,” he noted.
For the millionth time, Quatre tore his thoughts away from Trowa’s possible impending death, and threw the ball again. He could talk about family resemblances; he would be glad to talk about family resemblances. If it took his mind off what he didn’t want, what he never wanted to think about, he could talk about anything.
Traffic was unusually bad on Tuesday morning, and, even standing up out of his door and trying to peer past the other cars at one point when everyone had been at a standstill in the road for at least a minute, Heero couldn’t tell why. “Probably an accident,” he speculated when even Duo down in the passenger seat, who couldn’t see the congestion, noted how much longer than usual the commute was taking. “Probably going the other direction,” he added wryly, “and everyone’s just slowing down to look.”
“Well, let me look,” Duo requested.
Disregarding how it would appear to anyone that happened to have their eyes turned this direction, Heero lifted Duo up to window height and held him there as long as his second hand wasn’t required for driving — or what passed as driving in this stop-and-go.
“Looks like a bunch of cars,” remarked Duo, sounding disappointed. “I was… hoping… for…” He trailed off.
“What, an accident?”
“Just something interesting…” Duo’s tone was quiet and somewhat odd, but Heero had to put him down at this point and couldn’t really look at him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Pick me up again,” Duo ordered. “Like at the next light or whatever.”
Immensely curious, Heero did so, and, in response, Duo let out a long, wondering sigh. This was always an interesting action to observe, as it was purely aural: no actual air came from Duo’s lips, nor did his chest rise or fall with the supposed breath. At the moment, however, it was less interesting in itself than in its cause. “What?” Heero demanded.
“I can… feel… your hand…” Duo said, a slow grin growing on his little face. “I mean, there’s still nothing — it’s not, like, tactile… but I can feel the temperature difference.” When Heero had to set him down again, he went on in a more excited tone, “Yeah, your hand is definitely warmer than just sitting here. Come on, come on, pick me up again.”
As the traffic hadn’t really sped up, Heero was soon able to comply, and to observe Duo’s renewed grin. “Oh, god,” the doll exulted, “this is so awesome! I can feel it! I can totally feel temperatures! Ha-hah!” After setting him down again, Heero could see, out of the corner of his eye, little plastic arms and legs waving in excitement.
“It’s working,” Heero forced himself to say. “Six more days!” Mentally, though, he was reeling from the buzz he’d gotten hearing Duo talk about the warmth of his hand and being able to feel him; he knew Duo hadn’t meant it that way, but he couldn’t help considering it downright erotic. It didn’t help that Duo’s hands, and the warmth and strength Heero imagined in them, were a constant feature in his fantasies. It was awfully early in the day and awfully far from the shower to be getting aroused by the thought of something he couldn’t have, and he worried about this one in particular because he was sure Duo wasn’t going to let it go.
He was right. When they eventually reached their destination (it had been some kind of emergency road construction slowing the traffic), Duo proceeded to spend the entire workday demanding that Heero pick him up and put him down repeatedly. And, though the majority of his reaction consisted of, “Warm! …cold! …warm! …cold!” — which was too absurd to be arousing, though it was endearing — there were comments here and there that more than made up for it:
“Every time you put your hand on me, it surprises me all over again! I’m so not used to this anymore!”
“I’d forgotten how nice it is to be warm… not that the cold isn’t fun, even if it’s just for contrast, you know? Now, if only I could feel the texture too, it would be perfect.”
“I can feel it on specific areas, even! Like, I can tell where you’re holding me. I could always tell before, but I couldn’t feel it. Now it’s all warm in particular spots.”
Fortunately, Duo was too caught up in the interest and glee of the circumstance to notice the effect it was having on Heero, but a few of Heero’s co-workers weren’t so preoccupied. Among others, Dorothy raised one of her strange eyebrows at him when he answered only absently a question she asked; and (though it was difficult to tell) even Wufei seemed to be able to see, from the distance of his own private planet, that Heero was paying less attention to him than usual when he came around to find out if Heero had ever seen The Wizard of Speed and Time and relay his own thoughts on it.
The day’s tribulations didn’t end after work, either. Duo wanted to feel the heater and the air conditioner and see if he could detect temperature differences among the various rooms of Heero’s home. Most of this was far less maddening than the earlier comments about Heero’s warm hands on Duo’s body, and Heero humored him in the majority of his requests — but drew the line at holding him under hot and cold water.
“You don’t need a bath right now,” he said with a laugh.
“Well, do I get to take a shower with you tomorrow, then?”
“No.”
“But I want to feel the hot water!”
“You’ll just have to wait until next week when you’re human.” Heero was really quite pleased with how placid his tone was in the face of the idea of showering with Duo.
“Next week when I’m human,” Duo sighed happily. “Can I use your shower then?”
That definitely didn’t help with the mental images, but Heero was again quite proud of himself when he managed, “Sure,” without any trace of unsteadiness in his voice.
“You gonna shower with me then?” wondered Duo next, slyly. And it was a good thing that such a jokingly flirtatious remark didn’t really require an answer, because, after the type of day this had been, Heero didn’t think there was any way he could have given one.
It got worse when, as they settled down to read some Oz before bed, Duo demanded a seat in Heero’s lap rather than on the end table. This was simultaneously exactly where Heero would like Duo, and probably the last place he should have him if this continued. Because if Duo made any comment about the warmth of Heero’s lap, the temperature increase was unlikely to stop there.
Heero couldn’t at first think of a decent excuse not to comply with this request, since he had held Duo on his lap before. He couldn’t bring himself to explain that, at this moment, having Duo there would make him feel like some kind of rapist, doll-form notwithstanding. What he eventually came up with — and rather cleverly, he thought — was, “No. I don’t want to read if you’re not going to be paying attention.”
“I’ll pay attention!” Duo protested.
“You can sit here,” Heero allowed, placing him on the arm of the couch and curling a hand around him for stability.
“Ahh,” Duo said, which was almost as bad as anything else. “OK. But do I get to sleep in your bed tonight?”
Heero felt himself flush, and wondered whether the heat would make its way down to his hand and Duo’s attention. There had been days when he’d wondered how he was going to get through the lunar cycle… at the moment he was just wondering how he was going to get through today.
Quatre had once asked whether there were schools for magic, and sometimes Trowa thought their casual time together almost qualified as one. Quatre was charmingly eager to learn what he could about magic and how it worked, especially whenever Trowa cast some type of spell he hadn’t seen before, or when an eager couple of magicians showed up at the door with a pie they just innocently thought Mr. Barton might like.
“That’s the disadvantage of having lived in this house for so long,” he told Quatre in a sigh once he’d gotten rid of the followers without answering most of their questions. “Half of the magical community knows my address.”
“So how did you find Denis Roblund’s daughter?” Quatre asked in great interest, echoing one of the things the followers had wanted to know.
Trowa shrugged. “I just jumped to her.”
“How? I mean, if she needed to be found, I assume nobody knew where she was…”
“If you have a very specific knowledge of someone, you can use them as a destination.”
“And you had a very specific knowledge of Denis Roblund’s daughter?” Quatre’s tone and look expressed playful false jealousy. “Who was this, anyway?”
“An eight-year-old girl. She was kidnapped. It was…” Trowa thought back. “1987. And it was her mother who had the very specific knowledge.”
“Oh, OK. So you just…” Quatre paused with a frown. “And this wouldn’t have worked on Duo why?”
“Because that very specific knowledge you need includes the physical, and he was in a completely new body. Don’t think I didn’t try, though.”
Quatre’s frown lingered for several seconds, but finally he let it go and climbed onto Trowa’s lap in the chair, as he often did at moments like this. “So the kidnapped kid… you locked onto her mom’s mental picture of her like you do on a place I want to go?”
“It’s more difficult with an image of a person; people’s images of other people tend to be far more… subjective… more prone to inaccuracy…”
“OK. So what did you have to do?”
It consistently pleased Trowa to find Quatre so fascinated by the topic he could most easily talk about, and so did the further queries Quatre used in trying to understand. Additionally, such discussions were good exercises in wording magical explanations comprehensibly, which was something Trowa would need to be able to do if he ever actually started writing the book he’d been contemplating. So he enjoyed these conversations very much, and not just because he held them with Quatre.
This evening’s culminated in his evicting Quatre from his lap so he would have the space to cast a spell as a demonstration of the principle he was elaborating upon. Gesturing wasn’t technically necessary, as he clarified to the displaced Quatre, but it sometimes helped a great deal in maintaining concentration — which was necessary, especially for a communion spell.
When he’d finished with the illustration, he found to his disappointment that Quatre did not intend to return to his lap; it was getting late. Quatre did pull him forward by his shirt collar, however, and kiss him slowly. When he withdrew, he reiterated the opinion he had expressed before that Trowa still had a hard time believing: “It is so sexy when you do magic.” With a grin he added teasingly, “I should have had that on my list of criteria for boyfriends years ago.”
“You’ll have to add it for your next one.” Trowa tried to match Quatre’s teasing tone, but obviously some of the dismay he felt at thinking about Quatre’s next boyfriend must have sounded in his voice, for Quatre’s expression gradually turned grim.
“You know,” he murmured, looking up into Trowa’s eyes, “I kept thinking it was just because you’d realized you might die soon…” Quatre shook his head. “But not all of this fits, and some of it started before that.”
“Some of what?” Trowa wondered warily.
“You’re just holding your breath waiting for this to end, aren’t you?”
Trowa frowned and said nothing.
“You assume I won’t care if you drop dead. You assumed you wouldn’t ever meet my parents. You talk about my next boyfriend like it’s something that’s going to happen pretty soon. You always look at me like you’re surprised I’m still around. You’ve never really thought this was going to last, have you?”
Finally Trowa admitted, “No, I haven’t. I’m just glad to be with you while you’re here.”
Quatre took a deep breath. “So what is it you’re thinking about me? That I have a short attention span? Or that I’m too spacy to have any idea what I want and I’ll realize pretty soon here that it isn’t you? Or do you think I’m just using you for sex and I’ll get tired of it one of these days?”
“No!” Trowa was horrified. “Of course I wasn’t thinking anything like that.” He hadn’t even realized that what he was thinking might imply any of that. “I just thought…”
Closing his eyes, Quatre sighed. “You just thought I don’t really know you, and the more I find out, the less I’m going to want to stay with you.”
It didn’t sound like speculation. And since it was perfectly true, Trowa could return nothing but a heavy, “Yes.”
“I don’t know what to do to convince you that you’re really, honestly stuck with me. What is it you’re…” Quatre raised both hands in some frustration and shook them beside his head. “Do you have some dark secret I don’t have any idea about yet? Were you a Nazi or something?”
“No! I… it’s just…” Trowa knew Quatre wasn’t going to like this, but there was no way around it. “Everything about me.”
“I thought it would probably come back to that.” Quatre sighed again, and allowed his hands to fall and clasp Trowa’s arms. “Let me tell you what I know about you so far. You are absolutely persistent and devoted; you’re not the kind of person who abandons a friend even after eighty-seven years, no matter what you personally are going through. You are intelligent and skilled and knowledgeable, and you use that to help and teach other people, and only ask for tiny little things in return. You’re blunt and clever, and you think fast on your feet; you’re fun to be around. You’re interested in talking about just about anything, and you make just about anything interesting to talk about. Not only that, but you’re extremely attractive and fun to have sex with. Should I go on?”
Trowa was definitely blushing, and he’d wanted to break in after every other word and deny it all. “I don’t really think that’s–”
“I know you don’t. And it’s driving me crazy. Why is it that you can believe the curse will be broken and everything will be fine, but you can’t believe that I honestly like you?”
“It took me eighty-seven years to believe the first one,” Trowa reminded him, forcing a weak smile.
“Trowa!” Quatre sounded simultaneously fond and very exasperated. “I’m twenty-four! I’m not going to live eighty-seven more years! I can’t wait that long!”
“I’m sorry,” said Trowa, almost automatically.
“I’m going to ask you for another favor.” Quatre slid his arms back up Trowa’s, and, as he had done on previous occasions, took Trowa’s face in both of his hands. “I know I ask a lot of you, my poor Trowa,” he said, half facetiously, “but I hope you can do this one more thing for me.”
“You haven’t asked much of me.”
“Then you shouldn’t mind doing this.”
“I’ll certainly try, whatever it is.”
“Well, it’s this: even if you can’t see anything good about yourself — yet — can you please try to believe that I do see it? That I’m not just arbitrarily with you because I have nothing better to do?” It was that same tone as before — the one that was both reproving and pleading — and Quatre’s facial expression just about matched… only there was a touch of sadness that was almost despairing to it as well.
In response to that look, the only thing for Trowa to say was, “All right.” Unwilling to be dishonest, however, he did add, “I’ll try.” He took a deep breath and attempted again to smile. “It isn’t as if it’s an unpleasant thing to try to believe.”
Quatre murmured approvingly, “That’s the attitude I want to see.”
Heero had changed clothes and was just starting to think about dinner on Thursday evening when Quatre called. “Hey, Heero, I’m running some errands with Cairo in the car, and he’s already getting a little carsick… I’m going to let him walk around outside your apartment for a bit. Do you happen to have a bowl you could fill with water and bring out for him?”
“Sure. Are you already here?”
“I’m a block away.”
“OK, I’ll meet you down there.”
As Heero put his phone away Duo asked, “What’s up?”
“Quatre,” Heero replied briefly.
“Oh, is he actually going to pay attention to us today?” Duo grinned.
“Only because his dog’s getting carsick.” Heero also grinned, though he wasn’t entirely cheerful about the question and answer.
Duo probably thought Quatre hadn’t been around much lately because he was busy with work; Heero, on the other hand, was convinced that Quatre had a magic door of his own into Trowa’s house, where he’d been spending most of his extraprofessional waking time (and probably, if Heero knew Quatre, much of his sleeping time as well). It wasn’t a theory he wanted to relate to Duo, though. Unfortunately, it was a theory he needed to relate to Duo, and undoubtedly couldn’t. It fit with the fact that Quatre was currently running errands with his dog, too: he’d probably been neglecting the animal as well as his friends, and now was giving it the unusual treat of riding in the car with him as an apology.
With a Tupperware bowl full of water held carefully in both hands and Duo in his jeans pocket, Heero headed down to the parking lot, having a little trouble managing doors but eventually making it without spilling too much. Outside, Quatre had already let the dog out of the car and was fussing with something in the back seat — possibly simply adjusting the sheet he kept spread over it for Cairo to sit on, and possibly something less pleasant.
Cairo was a calm, pretty creature that didn’t think much of Heero; Quatre had assured him that Cairo was that way with everyone, and it didn’t bother Heero greatly as he’d never really been a dog person anyway. Now Cairo didn’t appear to mind him, however, as Heero set the water down on the sidewalk and called, for he came slowly over, sniffed at Heero’s hand briefly, and began to drink. Heero, not terribly fond of the smell of vomit and speculating it might be part of what Quatre was dealing with over there, sat down on the curb a couple of parking spaces away and set Duo beside him.
“He looks OK,” he said loudly enough for Quatre to hear him. In response, Quatre made a sardonic noise. Heero smirked. “How’s that other one? The hyper one?”
“How many dogs does he have?” Duo wondered.
“She’s fine,” Quatre replied at volume. “I had to have Darryl come out and distract her so I could get Cairo into the car without making her sad.”
“Hoooowwww many dogs?” Duo reiterated.
“You know, if Scrat didn’t have Cairo for company and such a big yard to run around in, I’d say we should get rid of her… Cameron never pays attention to her.” The guilt in Quatre’s tone told Heero he’d been right in speculating recent neglect of Cairo; the nephew’s offense must be pretty severe if Quatre was still mentioning it in the face of his own.
“Just two dogs?” Duo guessed. “And who’s Cameron?”
“Sorry… Quatre’s oldest nephew,” answered Heero. “And, yes, two dogs.”
“Well, this one is a mighty fiiine-lookin’ animal,” Duo drawled.
Heero laughed a little.
“What was that?” Quatre called.
“My voice is too goddamn quiet!” Duo yelled.
It seemed Quatre still didn’t hear him, so Heero replied, “Nothing.”
Duo sighed and turned his attention to Cairo, who was now sniffing about.
“Four more days,” Heero murmured reassuringly. With his little plastic hands, Duo patted appreciatively at the one of Heero’s that was half curled around him where he sat on the concrete; it was a strange sensation.
Meanwhile Quatre was saying, “I still need to go to Carquest and a grocery store; do you guys want to come with me?”
Heero had a secret love of auto parts stores, but was being perfectly honest when he replied, “Not in a car that smells like dog vomit.”
“We could take your car,” was Quatre’s teasing suggestion.
“That animal in my nice car?”
“Oh,” said Quatre in mock surprise, “did you get a nice car?”
Duo had been talking nonsense at the dog, to which Heero had been half listening in amusement as he held this distance conversation with Quatre; now, all at once, Duo’s tone changed, and his random noises abruptly became a good deal more intelligible: “Whoah! Hey! Hey, stop! Bad dog!” And at the same moment, Heero felt Cairo’s warm, wet, snuffling nose against the hand he’d had on Duo’s body.
It happened with dizzying quickness. At the sound of Duo’s supplicating but somewhat muffled, “Heero!” the latter looked down in time to see Cairo take the doll by the head, pick him right up, and start to turn away. Heero made a grab for Duo, but missed entirely as Cairo began trotting toward Quatre.
“Hey!” cried Heero in his turn, diving after the dog, missing again, and scrambling to his feet. He never actually did manage to get his hands on Duo, and it was a startled and confused Quatre that pulled the doll from Cairo’s mouth.
“What…” Quatre began.
Heero snatched Duo in a panic and began looking him over for damage, despite knowing that he was supposedly indestructible. As he did this, Duo was swearing continually, and only stopped when Heero’s eyes met his. Breathlessly he asked, “How far was that?”
“I don’t know,” replied Heero, his panic settling into horror. “I couldn’t– Quatre, did you see?”
Quatre’s eyes had gone wide as he’d realized what had just happened, and he shook his head. Then they all simply gazed at each other blankly. Cairo leaned complacently against his master, unaware that he’d caused any trouble.
“Shit,” Duo said again at last, sounding distraught.
“It may not have been too far,” said Heero quickly. However, as even he wasn’t sure how far the dog had gone before he’d caught up, his tone was none too certain.
Duo just stared up at him, painted eyes wide.
Heero held him tighter. “I’m sure it’s all right,” he said, though he wasn’t. “I’m sure I got to you in time.” Though he wasn’t.
“I’m so sorry,” Quatre breathed, one hand on the dog’s head rubbing almost absently at its ears. “I don’t know why he did that. Maybe… maybe he thought… I don’t know…”
Duo took what sounded like a deep breath and spoke in that disconcerting tone of false cheer Heero had heard from him a few times before: “I’ve never known what it is about me that dogs like so damn much. They’re pretty common familiar animals… maybe they sense the magic or something.”
“I guess we’ll find out on Monday.” Quatre clearly wasn’t referring to why dogs liked Duo so much. There was a distant, contemplative quality to his voice, which Heero attributed to his suddenly thinking of Trowa and how this might affect him.
Perhaps Duo was on the same wavelength, for he said, “Don’t anyone mention this to Trowa, OK? He shouldn’t have to worry about it before he has to. Especially if it turns out he doesn’t have to worry about it at all.”
Slowly Quatre nodded, though he didn’t look entirely convinced.
Heero also wasn’t sure what to think. If he were the one under a curse and approaching what he believed to be the end of a long period of suffering, he would want to have clear expectations about the day in question, know whether or not he could anticipate success. On the other hand, Trowa didn’t seem the type to get his hopes up — about anything, really — and Heero didn’t feel it was his place to make the decision when Duo and Quatre were both more familiar with Trowa and more concerned for his well-being. So finally he nodded too. Then they all just stared at each other again, bleak and pensive.
When somebody showed signs of wanting to pull into the parking space they were occupying, Quatre finally stirred. “I’ve got to go,” he said reluctantly, looking around as if he’d forgotten where he was. “I am so sorry about this.” Seeing his human moving again, Cairo climbed up through the car’s open back door without being urged.
Duo shook his head, dragging his somewhat slobbery braid back and forth across Heero’s hand. “Not your fault,” he said. “It’s not exactly something you can train your dog not to do.”
Quatre smiled weakly at Duo, then raised his eyes to Heero. There was in his face that thoughtful expression that suggested he wasn’t saying something he had on his mind. Heero remembered him wearing that look a few days before the email about Trowa; he wondered what Quatre was thinking now, and whether he wasn’t saying it because Duo was present or for some other reason. What Quatre did say eventually was, “Thanks for the water.”
Heero nodded. Their goodbyes were subdued, and then he stood on the curb holding Duo in both hands and watching Quatre drive away.
Duo was very quiet as they returned inside, even once the door was closed and they were alone and out of anyone’s earshot. Heero hadn’t put him back in his pocket, but continued to keep both hands possessively on him as he walked with the bowl under his arm dripping down his side, and now he gazed at the doll in similar silence.
Finally Duo said, “If that just ruined everything…”
“Then we start over,” Heero interrupted tensely. “We start a new month and try again. We try harder.”
“But–”
Heero would not even hear the beginning of an objection. “We start over,” he reiterated.
For a long moment Duo stared at him, his eyes blinking away in their uncannily regular rhythm. And eventually he said, as quietly as before, “Thank you.”
Not trusting himself to answer verbally, Heero nodded.
“And now,” Duo announced next, clearly changing the subject, “I think I really do need a bath.”
Heero forced a smile. “Yes, I think so too.”
“So bring on the hot water! That’ll be my silver lining.”
Smile widening somewhat, if a little sadly, Heero hoped it could be his as well.
So what was going through Cairo’s head? Find out here.
His Own Humanity is an AU series set in modern-day America (plus magic) featuring characters from Rurouni Kenshin (primarily Saitou and Sano) and Gundam Wing (primarily Heero, Duo, Trowa, and Quatre). In chronological order (generally), the stories currently available are:
Sano enlists the help of exorcist Hajime in discovering the nature of the unusual angry shade that's haunting him.
Best friends Heero and Quatre have their work cut out for them assisting longtime curse victims Duo and Trowa.
During Plastic (part 80), Cairo thinks about thinking and other recent changes in his life.
A look at how Hajime and Sano are doing.
A look at how Trowa and Quatre are doing.
A look at how Heero and Duo are doing.
Couple analysis among Heero, Duo, Trowa, and Quatre.
Quatre undergoes an unpleasant magical change; Heero, Duo, and Trowa are forced to face unpleasant truths; and Hajime and Sano may get involved.
During La Confrérie de la Lune Révéré (parts 33-35), Sano's 178-day wait is over as what Hajime has been fearing comes to pass.
During Guest Room Soap Opera (part 3), Cathy learns a lot of interesting facts and Trowa is not happy.
A few days before the epilogue of La Confrérie de la Lune Révéré, Duo and Sano get together to watch football and discuss relationships and magical experiences; Heero listens in on multiple levels.
In case you, like Duo, are curious about Heero’s high school hair adventure, have a look at this excerpt from his senior yearbook that I drew:
It tends to be rather a matter of chance whether or not people I draw look attractive, and I’m often just happy if they look human. In this case, that Heero turned out looking not very handsome I don’t mind specifically because of Duo’s thoughts on the matter in part 74; Duo finds him attractive and doesn’t give a damn what the rest of the world thinks, so it kinda doesn’t matter how he looks when I draw him for this story :D
I really would’ve liked to have Mrs. Winner’s name spelled and pronounced differently in order to state that Quatre was named after her, but “Quatarine” looked way too much like “Quarantine,” and I just couldn’t handle it XD
Burst
And then the world exploded. Also Heero’s jaw distended horribly. Strange things happen sometimes.
His Own Humanity: Plastic 26-30
Plastic
“A curse affects both the victim and the caster. A skilled curse-caster can bend this effect so that their share in the curse is something they don’t mind, something that doesn’t inhibit them… but even if they manage that, repeatedly having a share in any curse leaves a mark eventually.”
When Heero rescues an abandoned doll from the gutter, he hardly thinks it’s going to change his life; but now he and his best friend Quatre find themselves involved in the breaking of a curse from almost a hundred years ago, and perhaps in falling for exactly the wrong people.
Author's Star Rating: 5 | Category: His Own Humanity | Contains: Angst | Contains: Gay Duo | Contains: Gay Heero | Contains: Gay Quatre | Contains: Gay Trowa | Contains: Get-together story for main couple(s) | Contains: Language (gendered) | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Language (religious) | Contains: Misunderstanding/lack of communication | Contains: Pining | Contains: Psychological torment | Contains: Sex (explicit) | Contains: Straight Relena | Contains: Surprise/forced kissing | Contains: Unique | Friendship: Duo & Trowa | Friendship: Heero & Quatre | Genre: Adventure | Genre: Drama | Genre: Humor | Genre: Introspection | Genre: Romance | Length: 150k-200k words | Navigation | Pairing - Primary: Duo & Heero | Pairing - Primary: Quatre & Trowa | Pairing - Secondary: Original male character & Relena | Pairing - Secondary: Treize & Zechs | POV: Duo | POV: Heero | POV: Quatre | POV: Trowa | Rating: 4 | Release/completion year: 2011 | Setting: Alternate universe | Setting: AU - Modern U.S. plus magic | Title: Plastic | Visual art collection: Commissions
Heero was not a morning person. He did what he had to, of course (part of which was being to work on time at eight every day), but in general the world before ten o’clock seemed to him something like the setting of a horror movie — and the monsters were those perky people that could do equations and complicated analysis and be polite to obnoxious others at only the slightest notice upon awakening. On Saturdays he made sure to stay safely in bed until the coast was clear.
The problem with sleeping late, however, was that, no matter how nice it felt to awaken in his own time without an alarm, he was always rather sluggish for a while unless he had some specific task to see to immediately. Most weekends this didn’t bother him, but right now, with Duo around, he preferred to be a little more alert. So as soon as he was out of bed, he turned on some music a little louder than was his habit, and headed for the kitchen to start his coffee immediately.
“Good morning!” Duo greeted him cheerfully from his end table.
Before replying, Heero reminded himself firmly that Duo couldn’t sleep and therefore could be neither night person nor morning person at this point. “Morning,” he finally said.
Duo had muted the television with the remote lying by his side; as Heero got the coffee going he asked, “So what are we listening to?”
It occurred to Heero that he was a little too accustomed to living alone; he hadn’t even considered that his wakeup music might inconvenience Duo. This, of course, sent his thoughts out to the happy field of ‘living with Duo,’ whence he quickly reined them in because that kind of thinking wouldn’t do anyone any good. “Prisn,” he answered the question.
“Never heard of it,” said Duo promptly.
“Yeah, most people haven’t,” Heero yawned. Turning his back on the gurgling of the coffee-maker, he leaned against the counter and looked at Duo. “So what kind of music do you like?”
“Mexican circus music,” Duo replied after a moment’s thought.
Halfway through another yawn, Heero felt his brows contract in confusion. “What?”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s really Mexican or what…” Duo waved an arm vaguely. “In one place I lived, there was a Mexican family next door, and they used to play this stuff really loud so we could hear it too. Drove my kid’s parents crazy. It was this really cheerful, upbeat stuff that sounded like what you hear in circus scenes in movies, and it was all in Spanish. I think.” As a sort of aside he added, “I speak maybe ten words of Spanish, and that’s Wade Spanish anyway.”
“And that’s…” Heero stared at him. “That’s your favorite music? Something you heard through a wall and didn’t understand?”
“You asked.” It was Duo’s ‘shrug’ tone, but there was a grin involved as well.
“But…” Heero couldn’t quite explain why this baffled him so much. How could someone over a century old be so lacking in any decisive opinion about music? “Didn’t you live through the jazz era? Didn’t you pretty much live through the development of all modern styles of music?”
“Well, yeah, but mostly with kids! I mean, if you had to listen to things like Mr. Green Jeans and Muffy Mouse and Hanna Montana for seventy years, you’d appreciate some Mexican circus music too!”
Heero laughed. “OK, I see your point.” Then he moved forward, picked up Duo in the hand that wasn’t holding his newly-filled coffee mug, and headed for the hallway. “But I think this is something we need to fix.”
“Onward!” cried Duo in his small voice as he was carried away from the place he’d occupied for almost the entire time he’d spent in Heero’s apartment.
Entering his bedroom, Heero felt a slight, unaccustomed embarrassment about its state. It was true that he only tolerated mess up to a point, but he knew that sometimes that point was farther along the clutter scale than others’ — certainly farther along than Quatre’s. However, the only thing Duo had to say was, “Ooh, I finally get to see your bedroom.” Which Heero really should have been expecting.
“Yes,” replied Heero calmly, and then just couldn’t help adding, “Remember what I told you about being a very good boy?”
“Is that what we’re doing?” Duo said in a deliberate tone of pleased surprise. “I mean, that’s definitely something we need to fix too, but I thought you were talking about music.”
Deciding that he probably couldn’t get away with the response he was considering, Heero just chuckled again as he set Duo down on his dresser next to his CD player. The doll began swiveling his head back and forth in a wide arc, examining the room. “Oh, you’ve got that cool hands-drawing-each-other picture,” he commented, waving an arm.
Heero nodded, unzipping the binder that held his CD’s and beginning to flip through it. Duo turned his painted eyes in that direction and watched him. “So what do you call this stuff?”
“What stuff?” Heero looked up at him, forgetting that there would be no facial expression from which to obtain a hint about Duo’s meaning. Not that he minded looking at Duo: it was always thought-provoking to see the plastic body in those little clothes Heero had bought beneath the long and bizarrely realistic hair, and Heero still liked to imagine what Duo would look like as a human.
“This music that’s playing,” Duo said.
“Oh. Well, this group’s ten fans,” replied Heero ironically, “call it ‘experimental-hard-rock-slash-neo-classical-fusion.'”
“How pretentious,” remarked Duo in his ‘grin’ tone.
Heero shrugged. “It sounds better than ‘our orchestra has electric guitars.'”
“You know how weird it’s been to watch this whole ‘genre’ thing develop?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there’s half a million different kinds of just ‘rock’ now, aren’t there? I mean, I remember where all there was on the radio was ‘pop’ — and for a while they were calling all of that ‘rock’n’roll’ — and ‘country-western.'”
“Really?” Heero had found the CD he wanted, and was spinning it somewhat absently around his finger while he waited for the song currently playing to end. “No classical or jazz or anything?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess there was that… But you didn’t hear people talking about ‘trance’ and ‘thrash metal’ and whatever the difference between ‘hip-hop’ and ‘rap’ is… which, by the way, what is it?”
“I’m…” Heero grimaced. “…not really sure…”
“Can’t be important, then,” declared Duo.
Heero’s expression needed very little alteration to go from grimace to grin. “OK, you’ve heard enough Prisn; now listen to this.” And he switched the CD.
“All right,” Duo agreed jovially.
They might not have found Duo a new favorite, or even broadened his musical horizons to any great extent, but Heero at least was enjoying himself so much that he rather lost track of the rest of the world for a while. He was only brought back to it, with something of an unpleasant jolt, when Duo remarked eventually, “Trowa really likes jazz.”
Because it always came back to Trowa, didn’t it?
When Heero had nothing to say in response to this, Duo went on a little wistfully, “At least he used to. He was pretty good at clarinet back in the day. Of course he was almost completely self-taught… we sure couldn’t afford music lessons. I wonder if he still plays…”
So Trowa was musical as well as magical, was he? Heero restrained himself from remarking sourly that he bet Trowa did still play, and had been practicing for ninety years and was now a virtuoso — whereas the extent of Heero’s musical inclinations was occasionally singing along with something when he was absolutely certain nobody could see or hear him.
He looked around, letting life come back into focus, and realized with a start what the time was. “Oh, Quatre’s going to be here soon to watch the game,” he said. “I’d better get dressed.”
“Aw, you’re going to change out of those sexy pajama pants?” Duo complained.
Feeling his face go abruptly hot, Heero glanced down at his cotton pants and their repeating pattern of Optimus Prime’s face. “Yes,” he said, and was pleased at how levelly he managed it.
“Well, do I at least get to watch?”
If Duo’s tone hadn’t been so clearly joking, Heero did not doubt that his own face would have gone even more red than it probably already was. In any case, he took care not to let Duo see it as he picked him up. “No,” he said in the same level tone.
Duo made an exaggerated sound of disappointment as Heero carried him back into the living room and replaced him on his end table. A moment later, before Heero had even reached his bedroom door again, the sound of the TV coming back on floated down the hall. And Heero went to change contemplating how frustrating words could sometimes be that otherwise might have been exactly what you wanted to hear.
So he liked Heero.
Duo had unmuted the television, it was true, but he wasn’t paying it any attention. His view of the hallway was mostly blocked, but he thought what he was doing could still accurately be called ‘looking after Heero.’ And if he’d had the luxury of a facial expression, it would have been pensive indeed.
The last time he’d been even remotely romantically interested in anyone had been eighty-seven years ago. Oh, sure, he’d always been able to recognize attractiveness when he encountered it, and there had been that whole coming-out thing in the 60’s… but it had all been almost more clinical than anything else — observations that led nowhere. And he’d never really thought about why he’d spent so long without anyone specifically catching his eye. But he was thinking about it now. Why exactly had this been the case? Surely over the course of nearly nine decades he should have met someone to interest him…
Admittedly he’d spend a good percentage of that time with children, but he’d gotten to know his fair share of adults as well. Also, he was a doll, but so what? His mind was the same, wasn’t it? Or had Trowa been right, all those years ago — was Duo really so petty and superficial that he couldn’t even fathom liking someone without the possibility of attendant physicality?
And, more importantly perhaps than why it had been like this for so long, what had changed now? Because something had. Was it Duo? Was something inside him maturing to allow a new interest after so long without any? Or was Heero just that overwhelmingly attractive? Perhaps it was more that Duo had some hope of regaining his humanity sometime soon, and so was allowing himself to notice humans in that light again.
He laughed helplessly at himself. This was all just another observation that led nowhere, since Heero was still clearly uninterested. Which hadn’t been a problem when Duo was idly reflecting that he might at some point start thinking of Heero as more than a friend, but could prove somewhat annoying now that he actually had.
Little time was available for him to dwell on this (which was probably for the best), as a knock sounded on the door and Heero reappeared, fully dressed, to let Quatre in. Evidently it was Heero’s turn to provide snacks again, for Quatre was empty-handed. Duo was getting the hang of these sports-oriented get-togethers.
That Duo had gone over a century without ever learning the joys of basketball seemed incredible. It was always interesting (and, to be frank, somewhat annoying) just how many things he’d never seen or done. Immortals were supposed to be knowledgeable and experienced, weren’t they? In the vampire movies, they always spoke a dozen languages and had contacts everywhere and loads of money. Duo spoke only English, could have counted his friends on one hand if his fingers separated, and didn’t even have any way to make money.
But he did like basketball. Movie immortals never did that. And they didn’t know what they were missing.
He liked Heero, too. This fact was rapidly becoming inescapable. The way Heero shook his fist and half-growled out commendations at the team he was supporting, a much less obtrusive celebration than Quatre’s cheers or the victory dances Duo would undoubtedly have done if he’d been capable, had an intense, subtle sort of happiness behind it that Duo enjoyed seeing almost as much as the skillful plays that inspired it.
Perhaps as a direct result of this, Duo was struck with the thought that playing basketball with Heero might be even more fun than watching basketball with Heero. Of course, the idea of playing anything was pleasant, for obvious reasons… but basketball in particular, especially with Heero, seemed like fun. He couldn’t be sure, of course — it had still been a relatively new sport back when Duo might have had the option to play it, and limited mostly to venues he didn’t frequent — and besides that was a pipe dream at this point anyway, but even so he had to express his curiosity on the subject.
During the next commercial break, therefore, he asked, “So do you guys ever play this game?”
“Sometimes,” Quatre replied, while at the same moment Heero said, “Every once in a while.” And they exchanged a look, the spontaneity and mutuality of which was comical even if the expression itself was not.
“What?” wondered Duo, amused.
“Two-on-two is more fun than one-on-one,” Quatre explained with a smile, “but we have a hard time persuading our friends — the friends we play stuff with — to play basketball. They’re fine with tennis–“
“As long as they can use racquets that cost at least $300,” Heero put in.
“–but they don’t think much of basketball. I think they find it a little…” Quatre trailed off as if unsure of the word he wanted.
“Ghetto,” Heero supplied.
Duo laughed, but could question no further as the commercials were over. Once a new set arrived, however, he pursued the subject. “So these snobby friends of yours who won’t play basketball… they wouldn’t happen to be the same ones who are always playing matchmaker at you guys?”
Quatre threw him a surprised look. “Yes, they are.” And he glanced at Heero as if to ask, “What have you been telling him?”
Pleased to have put these pieces together, Duo sat back (figuratively speaking) to enjoy the rest of the game.
Thereafter, Quatre announced his intention to check that Trowa had eaten something today before he went home, much to Duo’s satisfaction. It was silly to worry about not having seen his friend since Thursday when he hadn’t seen him for almost ninety years and Trowa had been just fine, but that didn’t make Duo any less pleased that Quatre was going to check on him.
“And I need to do my laundry,” Heero said as Quatre disappeared into Trowa’s house.
“Ooh, can I come with?” Duo requested.
Heero gave him a very skeptical look and said, “Why?”
“Just to spend more time in your scintillating presence,” Duo replied in a tone that indicated this should have been obvious.
“I don’t think you pronounce the ‘c’ in ‘scintillating,'” Heero said.
“Yeah, maybe not,” Duo allowed. “So can I come with you?”
Heero’s face took on a pensive expression that Duo knew very well. It was the look that said he was pondering the logistics of carrying a talking doll to wherever it was he did laundry — never very promising. What, then, was Duo’s pleasure when Heero suddenly grinned and said, “Why not? You can sit in the laundry basket.”
“I get to sit in the laauundry basket, I get to sit in the laauundry basket,” Duo sang cheerfully as Heero went to fetch what he needed. He had a feeling this was going to be a good weekend.
Quatre awoke on Monday morning at about his usual time, and for a good ten seconds was somewhat distressed and disoriented because his alarm hadn’t sounded. Then he remembered the last-minute plans for a week off, and relaxed. Lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, he thought for a while about what he meant to do today, then finally got up with a smile.
Although the purpose of these days off wasn’t to waste a lot of time doing nothing, Quatre had no objection to adopting a leisurely pace in what he did need to get done. This included jogging, some tidying up at home, his laundry, playing with the dogs for a little while, and, eventually, a trip to a grocery store. But he was anything but leisurely when, late in the morning (EST), he marched into Trowa’s house with his grocery bags and an expression of determination.
“Who’s there?” called Trowa from the study as usual, but Quatre did not enter that room this time. Instead, he identified himself and went straight into the kitchen.
At the store, he’d concentrated on finding things that wouldn’t go bad quickly — crackers and canned food and microwaveable frozen stuff — and was pretty pleased with his results. They certainly made Trowa’s almost completely barren cupboards and freezer look a little less forlorn.
“What are you doing?” Trowa had emerged so quietly that Quatre hadn’t noticed he was in the room until this moment. Quatre turned, a little startled, to find Trowa staring blankly at where he was trying to decide on a good place to put microwave popcorn.
“I brought you food,” Quatre answered.
“Yes… Why?”
Quatre had come prepared for this question. The argument that Trowa would feel better and work better if he ate regularly had thus far been entirely ineffectual, so Quatre had specifically planned on approaching this from another angle. “Do you know,” he said conversationally, “what Duo said yesterday when I told him how often you don’t eat?”
He was beginning to recognize the tiny signs of discontent Trowa gave on occasion, and now saw clearly the very slight drawing-together of brows at his question. “He complained about not being able to eat,” Trowa guessed dully.
“Well, yes,” Quatre conceded. “But he also said that somebody needs to come over here and force you to start eating on a daily basis. Obviously he can’t do it,” he added with a bright smile, “so here I am.”
Trowa stared at him for a long moment, and finally said, “Fine. What’s for lunch?”
“Um…” Quatre reopened the freezer and pulled out the first box to hand. “Looks like… shrimp scampi.”
“Fine,” said Trowa again, his entire demeanor now subtly, indefinably defeated. Then he added, “But you’ll have to join me. You cannot stand there and watch me eat again.”
“OK,” Quatre said happily, and opened the cold box in his hand.
The wisdom of this particular purchase was confirmed in the ease of preparation, though the flavor had yet to be ascertained. Once Quatre had figured out the buttons on the excessively dated microwave, he leaned against the counter and again looked at Trowa, who hadn’t left his place at the edge of the kitchen. “So how’s your progress?” he asked. “Any new ideas for Duo?”
Trowa turned abruptly away and moved toward the table. “No,” he said shortly.
After a few moments of contemplation during which the microwave was the only sound, Quatre said, “So tell me about curses. What is a curse, exactly?”
“A curse,” Trowa answered slowly, flatly, “is a malicious spell that causes a set of circumstances to take effect and can only be reversed when another set of conditions is met. Cursing is considered a branch of command magic.”
“You sound like a textbook,” said Quatre with a smile.
Trowa made a faint, sardonic sound. “I’ve had quite some time to think about the nature of magic, especially curses, and organize my thoughts on the subject.” He paused, then went on more quietly, “I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a book… but I haven’t felt motivated to do so.”
“We know what you’ll be working on once you’ve cured Duo, then!” said Quatre cheerfully.
Trowa was silent.
“So there’s an entire branch of magic dedicated to curses?” Quatre was determined to keep this conversation going.
“There are five branches of magic. Cursing is a subcategory of one of them.”
“‘Subcategory,'” Quatre murmured as he began pulling out the dishes they would need. “That makes it sound so organized.” And he knew so little about magic that any question he could think to ask on the subject was essentially a shot in the dark. That didn’t matter much, though. “So are there… specialists in these subcategories? Experts at cursing who’ll curse someone for you if you pay them?”
“Yes. They’re not very nice people.”
Quatre laughed. “Really?”
“Not just because they’re willing to curse others for money,” Trowa went on seriously. “A curse affects both the victim and the caster. A skilled curse-caster can bend this effect so that their share in the curse is something they don’t mind, something that doesn’t inhibit them… but even if they manage that, repeatedly having a share in any curse leaves a mark eventually.”
Under cover of bringing dishes to the table, Quatre stared surreptitiously at Trowa. The unhealthily pale skin, the strange eyes, the overall sickly glow… were these parts of Duo’s curse, as Quatre had vaguely assumed prior to this, or did Trowa’s knowledge of the nature of curses come from more extensive experience than just Duo? It would make sense, he thought, for Trowa to have experimented with curses over the years in order to be better prepared for meeting with Duo again… but what a miserable thought. Quatre wasn’t entirely certain he would blame him, but also wasn’t entirely ready to know for certain.
So instead he asked, “So what is it about Duo’s curse that’s giving you trouble?”
Trowa sighed faintly. “Someone who deliberately casts a curse has a limited control over and understanding of what is required for the curse to be broken. But this wasn’t meant to be a curse; it was the artifact that twisted my spell into one. I have no idea what needs to happen for Duo to be human again.”
“And your divinations haven’t answered the question,” Quatre finished for him, “and your research hasn’t given you any answers either.” He’d finished spooning shrimp and sauce onto two plates, and was now bringing these back to the table.
Trowa nodded in response to Quatre’s words, and turned his eyes to the food in front of him. “Thank you,” he murmured.
Quatre made a noise of acknowledgment, and sat down nearby — not too near, but not at the opposite end of the table, either. And it soon became evident that, as far as microwaveable frozen food went, he’d made a good choice on this. He noticed after not long, however, that Trowa was staring down at his plate without moving. Bracing himself for another debate, Quatre asked, “What’s wrong?”
Trowa looked up, then over at the kitchen. “Did you buy all of this?”
“Yes,” replied Quatre, raising his brows slightly and wondering what Trowa thought the alternative was.
“How much did you spend? I’ll pay you back for it.”
Quatre shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
Trowa set down the fork he’d picked up but hadn’t yet used. “I am perfectly capable of doing my own shopping.”
Matching Trowa’s flat, steely tone, but laying a sheen of cheerfulness over the top, Quatre replied, “Of course you are. But since you don’t…”
Trowa stared at him hard for a moment, and Quatre got the feeling he had other arguments he would have produced if he felt like continuing to argue at all. Instead he simply said, “Half, then. I’ll pay you half.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Quatre said, “OK. It was about sixty dollars.”
Trowa nodded, then finally began eating.
After several silent moments Quatre asked thoughtfully, “Where do you get money, anyway? You don’t seem to have a job…”
“No.” At least Trowa appeared to be enjoying his lunch, whatever he might say. “Eighty-seven years of investment and interest.” He went on in a ‘before you ask’ sort of tone, “According to official records, I am Trowa Barton the third and was born in 1970.”
“You’re your own grandpa, huh?” Quatre grinned. But as the reference seemed to go right over Trowa’s head, he added, “Well, you certainly look good for someone who was forty at last count.”
To his surprise, Trowa actually smiled. It was faint and sardonic, yes, but it made Quatre’s heart leap. “And a hundred and eleven at a more accurate count,” he said, and bit into one of his shrimps.
Quatre left Trowa’s house later feeling that this endeavor had gone very well. Admittedly it was a little difficult to tell, but Trowa had seemed to be in a better mood after eating than before. And Quatre was obviously going to have to come back every day this week and make sure Trowa ate again in order to get him into the habit, but it wasn’t exactly a task he minded. Indeed, the memory of that little smile, brief and ambivalent though it had been, would undoubtedly have bolstered him through any number of much less palatable undertakings.
“I really don’t know how you stand this,” Heero remarked conversationally. “Some TV is fine, but this is insane.” They’d essentially spent the whole of Monday in front of the television, and Heero didn’t think he could handle a repetition on Tuesday; he wondered how Duo could.
“Oh, I have a special power,” replied Duo mysteriously, “which allows me to watch TV for days on end without doing anything else.”
Heero looked over at him, curious.
Duo explained. “It’s called ‘having no other choice.'”
Heero winced. There were just so many ways being a doll must be miserable; it didn’t quite seem fair that even Duo’s primary source of entertainment formed one of them. Remind me never to piss Trowa off, was Heero’s immediate reaction to this thought, but he forebore from saying it aloud. Duo had been complaining lately that Trowa hadn’t come to see him for so long, and Heero didn’t feel like bringing the subject up if it wasn’t already on Duo’s mind.
Instead, he stood abruptly and said, “No. We’re going to find something else to do.”
“‘Something else to do?'” Duo echoed in an eyebrow-waggling sort of tone.
Firmly, Heero took the remote control from where it lay next to Duo on the end table, and turned the TV off. “Yes,” he said. “Anything but more TV.”
“‘Anything?‘” said Duo in that same suggestive tone.
Heero gave a monosyllabic laugh and rolled his eyes. He was already pondering what kinds of pastimes besides television-watching were available to someone that couldn’t hold, eat, or drink anything, couldn’t stand under his own power, whose knees and elbows didn’t bend, and who would be considered more than a little bit anomalous to the world in general. (He couldn’t deny that a little voice in the back of his head added, ‘and whose entire groin is a solid piece with no movable parts,’ but he did brush the thought away as entirely unhelpful.) He hadn’t come up with anything yet when his reflections were interrupted by the ringing of his phone.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to cell phones,” Duo remarked as Heero dug into his pocket.
It was one of his parents calling. Heero took a deep breath, bracing himself mentally, before picking up.
His mother always greeted him, “Heero?” in a questioning tone, as if someone else might be answering his phone.
“Yes,” he replied. “Hello. How are you?”
“We are very well,” said his mother with her usual businesslike, almost brusque cheerfulness and faint trace of disapprobation. “Relena and Colin are coming over for dinner on Sunday, if you’d like to come too.”
Heero counted the days since he’d had dinner with his family, and saw very plainly that he could not turn down this particular invitation. If only they’d planned this for Monday, so he could plead Final Four… Stifling a sigh, he said, “Yeah, that would be great. Six thirty?” Because no dinner at the Yuy household had ever happened at any other time.
His mother confirmed this, then proved that, as usual, she didn’t have much else to say besides what she’d specifically called for. She wasn’t very good at chatting on the phone, a trait Heero had inherited from her — but at least he didn’t try. She asked what he’d been up to lately without really wanting to hear the answer, which was good, since he didn’t really want to give the answer.
He could just imagine telling his mother, “Well, I found a talking Ken doll in the gutter and have since developed a crush on him, but he’s already got a 100-year-old boyfriend.” She might, at least, be glad to hear that Quatre was chasing someone else; she was just sure that, any day now, Heero was going to announce he’d started sleeping with his best friend.
They exchanged a few more somewhat stiff comments, and finally hung up, with the reiterated promise of a meeting on Sunday that Heero wasn’t particularly looking forward to. A couple of months ago he wouldn’t have minded, but at the moment there were few places more awkward and uncomfortable to be on a Sunday evening than at his parents’ house with his sister and her fiance.
“I didn’t know you were bilingual!” said Duo, sounding impressed, as Heero put his phone away.
“Oh. Yeah.” Heero shrugged slightly. His family tended to speak Japanese among themselves, which included phone conversations; Heero didn’t really think much about it.
“Well,” Duo went on matter-of-factly, “that is extremely sexy, and I am totally jealous.”
Heero laughed briefly. “Didn’t you say you spoke some kind of Spanish, though?”
“I said I spoke maybe ten words of Wade Spanish, which doesn’t even start to count.”
Looking down thoughtfully at the doll, Heero said, “You keep mentioning this ‘Wade.'”
“That was what they called the neighborhood Trowa and I lived in growing up.” Duo’s plastic head was swiveled upward to return Heero’s gaze, and his eyes blinked with unnerving regularity, like an animation in an old video game or something. “See, the city was right up against this shallow river, and there was this big old sort of shantytown on the other side… a bunch of poor people lived there, mostly non-white, the kinds of people that got kicked around most back then.”
“Has that changed?” asked Heero with light dryness.
“It was worse back then,” promised Duo somewhat flatly. “Anyway, it was quicker for them to wade the river than walk a couple of miles to a bridge to get into the city, so they got called ‘Waders’ and the part of town where most of them worked — hell, it was practically the only part of the city a lot of them could get work — but that part next to the river got called ‘the Wade.’ I mean, this all started before I was born; I always knew it as the Wade.”
“And what was it like?” Heero asked curiously.
In response to this question, Duo laughed. “You know, there’s this thing I see happen on TV,” he began in an amused, pensive tone, “and you probably know about it too, if TV hasn’t been lying to me like it sometimes does.”
“Yes?” Heero prompted, returning to his seat on the couch and facing Duo.
“Someone’ll find out that someone else speaks another language — say, Spanish — and they’ll say, ‘Oh, oh, say something in Spanish for me!’ And the other person suddenly has no idea what to say.”
Now Heero laughed too. “OK, yes, I do know about that.” He was certain, however, that Duo, if he found himself in that situation and did happen to speak Spanish, would be one of those smartasses that just translated the words ‘something in Spanish’ into Spanish.
“Because you know about a billion words in that language, right?” Duo said. “And how are you supposed to decide just at a moment’s notice which ones will represent the language and how it sounds to someone who doesn’t speak it?”
“Are you sure you haven’t experienced this personally?” Heero asked, eyebrows raised.
“Well, I think that’s about what it feels like when you ask me what the Wade was like.” Duo said this in some triumph, as if he’d just made an irrefutable point in an intense debate.
“Oh,” said Heero, understanding, and laughed a little again.
“I mean, I could tell you a million things about life there, but there’s no quick and easy way to tell you ‘what the Wade was like.’ What would you say if I asked you what this city was like?”
“All right, I see your point,” Heero conceded. For, while there were a lot of concise answers he could have given to the proposed question, none of them would really paint a reliable picture of the city in general. “How about this, then: do the movies get it right? I guess that’s more about era than location,” he admitted immediately, “but still…”
“Well, sometimes…” Duo went on in a ‘scratching his head’ sort of tone. “As right as anyone can get it when they’re trying to cram all the social changes and attitudes and stuff of an entire decade into an hour and a half. They always try to capture ‘the spirit of the times’ in movies, but that’s something you can only do after the fact, I guess. I mean, I don’t think I ever did anything that embodied the progressive and inventive spirit of the 1910’s, and I definitely never looked around and thought about it. But sometimes the movies do get sets that look pretty good.”
Again Heero nodded his understanding, and couldn’t help thinking about how movies a hundred years from now would portray this decade; what ‘spirit’ might they attempt to capture? “OK,” he said. “Then tell me one of the million things you could tell me about life in the Wade.”
And as Duo obeyed, leading them into a fascinating, lively, and long-lived conversation, Heero wondered why he’d ever been under the impression that they lacked interesting things to do.
Evidently Trowa was getting used to this routine Quatre was imposing on him, for, when Quatre came over for lunch on Wednesday, he found Trowa closing the book he’d been reading as if he’d been specifically waiting for a reason to do so. Actually, that wasn’t at all uncommon; Trowa seemed to be more than pleased at any excuse to set aside his research. Given how many hours a day Trowa was spending buried in books or on the internet, and to no avail, Quatre found this completely understandable.
They had some kind of breakfast-like affair involving sausage and potatoes — not the best of the frozen meals with which Quatre had stocked Trowa’s freezer — and their conversation somehow found its way to hiking and the local opportunities therefor. Local to Quatre, that is, but since he was the one that did most of the talking this was not inappropriate. Trowa always seemed to listen somewhat grudgingly to what Quatre had to say, as if he’d rather be doing or thinking something else but couldn’t help being interested. This simultaneously amused and bothered Quatre, but, as he wasn’t really sure what to do about it, he simply continued as he had done.
After lunch, Trowa returned to his study and, as far as Quatre could tell, the same book he’d been perusing before, but instead of reading it he only sat still in his horrible armchair and stared at the nearby table. He had that pensive little half frown on his face again, and Quatre decided to make him some tea before he left him to his work.
Almost the only food-like item present in Trowa’s kitchen before Quatre had forced half a grocery store on him had been a package of cinnamon orange tea. Having observed this, Quatre had bought him some more, but had also picked up a couple other flavors he thought Trowa might like. Of course someone that generally didn’t eat or drink anything, and that quite possibly had an entire century’s worth of tea experimentation under his belt, could probably be trusted to know of his one culinary indulgence what flavors he did and didn’t like without help from anyone else… but Quatre speculated — it was just a feeling, really, but an instinct he trusted — that it was the caffeine Trowa really sought, and the taste was irrelevant.
Wild mint seemed a good choice for today, so Quatre got a cup of that ready and returned with it to the study. There he found Trowa continuing to stare at nothing, the book evidently untouched in his lap, a slight frown still on his otherwise unreadable face. The magician did not even seem to notice when Quatre set the teacup in its neat little saucer down at the other end of the table.
Was Trowa staring at nothing, though? As Quatre’s eyes left the object he’d brought into the room and roved over the others on the cluttered table, he began to rethink this assessment. Trowa’s gaze seemed to be directed at an old, tarnished silver candlestick devoid of a candle that stood among the books and papers and other items. It occurred to Quatre that it had always been there, but he had never really taken notice of it before; and simultaneously that, even in a house full of mismatched articles from a variety of eras, this particular piece looked out of place.
He leaned closer to examine it. It was obviously very old, much too old to be any relic of the early twentieth century, or even — though he was far from an expert on the subject — of the late nineteenth. And then, with a faint, quick intake of surprised breath, he noticed the pattern of tiny moons, progressing from the merest sliver to round and full, carved delicately into the sides of the square base.
“Is that…” he began, and found his voice coming out in a murmur, almost a whisper, as if he were asking Trowa to divulge some serious secret.
For a long moment Trowa did not move or speak, as if he hadn’t heard Quatre’s beginning of a question and had, in fact, forgotten he was there. But finally with a deep breath he tore his eyes from the candlestick and turned them on Quatre. He wasn’t wearing his contacts today, and Quatre had already noticed that the moon must be starting to wane at the moment. Now the moons in Trowa’s face regarded him emotionlessly for a moment before returning to their previous object of scrutiny.
“Yes,” Trowa said.
Quatre also turned back to peer intently at the artifact. “It’s a… candlestick…” he said at last.
“Yes,” Trowa said again.
“I’d expected it to be… something…” Quatre shrugged and laughed faintly. “Something more, I guess. Something that seemed more magical.”
“Any object can become an artifact,” Trowa reminded him, “if enough magic is performed around it.”
Quatre nodded, then murmured, “So it was Trowa in the study with the candlestick.”
Here was another reference that seemed to go right over Trowa’s head. “It was created by a group of moon-worshiping magicians around 1760 in France,” he explained seriously. “It’s been difficult to find records of its history, but, as far as I can gather, it was created by accident — most artifacts are — when the group used to cast spells at an altar where this and another, matching candlestick stood.”
“So there are two of them.”
“I don’t believe so. Apparently both became magical artifacts, but when the group noticed how much magic the candlesticks were absorbing, they began deliberately channeling their own power into one of them; so it became extremely powerful, while the other remained a standard artifact. Well, perhaps a little more powerful than a standard artifact, but nothing in comparison to this one.” Trowa gestured at the candlestick on the table, from which Quatre’s eyes had wandered to his companion’s much more interesting face.
“Why did they put their power into it?” Quatre wondered, looking back at the candlestick as seemed to be indicated by Trowa’s movement. “I can see where such a powerful artifact would be useful, but did they know that’s what would happen?”
Trowa surprised Quatre by snorting in derision. “I doubt it. I can’t be sure, but the feeling I get is that they did it just to see what would happen. Just for fun.”
“Really?” wondered Quatre, amused. “Not to… appease the moon spirit… or something?”
“The changing nature of this group is interesting to watch in retrospect. I would let you see the records, but you wouldn’t be able to read them.”
“I’m fairly good with French, actually,” Quatre informed him.
For the second time that week, Trowa smiled, just a little, and again Quatre’s heart-rate seemed instantly to increase at the sight. “I’m not,” he said simply. “I can’t even pronounce the name this group called themselves. But one of the conveniences of magical skill is the ability to understand the magical language, which is universal to everyone who also has magical skill.” Now he gestured to the book in his lap, across whose pages were marked the indistinct and unfamiliar characters Quatre had noticed a few times before in books here. “Almost all of the records of note are written in the magical language.”
“Ohh,” Quatre said, a little disappointed. “Well, what do they say that’s so interesting?” He was pleased at getting Trowa to talk to so much, but also had to admit that the subject was not without interest in its own right.
“The group was not a serious undertaking at the beginning,” answered Trowa sardonically. “They were all or almost all magicians, yes, but they were not people who used magic for anything. They were aristocrats: rich, idle people who thought it would add some spice to their pointless lives to start a secret society and pretend to worship the moon in made-up ceremonies. I gather that it was mostly an excuse to show off useless magic and have drunken orgies.”
This startled a laugh out of Quatre, and inside he couldn’t help reflecting that, while he’d certainly never expected it, hearing the word ‘orgies’ from Trowa’s pale lips was every bit as pleasant as he would have thought it might be if he’d ever thought about it at all.
“But there were a few who took it seriously,” Trowa went on, unaware of the fascinating train of thought onto which he’d put Quatre for a few moments. “The second generation of members, you might call them — people who actually felt a connection to the moon which they wanted to enhance. They were the ones who wrote all the records, and they were the ones who transformed the group into a real cult after it had been nothing more than an exclusive club for several years. They continued pouring their energies into the artifact, and using it in rituals related to the moon and its cycles, which eventually gave it an affinity with the moon.”
“What happened to the cult?” Quatre asked.
Trowa shook his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to find any records later than 1785. As I understand,” he added a little wryly, “that was a bad time to be an aristocrat in France. I’m lucky to have found any records at all.”
“How long have you been researching this?”
After a moment’s thought Trowa answered, “Sixty-two… no, sixty-three years. I thought if I could find something that would tell me more about the artifact, I might learn something that would help break the curse.” He sighed faintly, and said nothing more, though the lament was clear: he had learned more, and it had been fascinating research, but so far it hadn’t helped. He reached out a pale, slender hand to the candlestick and ran one long finger up and down its tarnished side.
Quatre watched without blinking. Trowa had a sort of stark, lean sexiness about him that was only augmented by his strangeness and sadness, and which Quatre could really do without noticing at moments like this. He was afraid he’d caught his breath just a little, too, as he watched Trowa’s cold, almost caressing movement toward the artifact, for Trowa looked over at him again abruptly.
Blushing as if Trowa were able to read his thoughts — Quatre assumed Trowa couldn’t read his thoughts, anyway — he said quickly, “Well, I made you some tea,” realizing even as he said it that it probably wouldn’t be hot anymore… not that Trowa ever seemed to care… “Maybe today will be the lucky day when you find your answers.”
Trowa returned to staring at the candlestick beneath his fingertips as he murmured, “How many times I’ve thought that…” The hopelessness in his tone was almost overwhelming.
Quatre wanted very much to hug him, but still didn’t quite dare. Instead he smiled as brightly as he could and said bolsteringly, “Well, it has to happen sometime — why not today?”
With a faint sound of doubt that was almost disdainful, Trowa turned his eyes downward to the book in his lap once again, and Quatre reluctantly deemed it time to leave. Without a word of goodbye, which was becoming customary at the ends of these visits, he moved toward the door. A look back before leaving the room showed him that Trowa’s gaze had already strayed from the book and was once more riveted on the artifact on the table, staring blankly into the past.
His Own Humanity is an AU series set in modern-day America (plus magic) featuring characters from Rurouni Kenshin (primarily Saitou and Sano) and Gundam Wing (primarily Heero, Duo, Trowa, and Quatre). In chronological order (generally), the stories currently available are:
Sano enlists the help of exorcist Hajime in discovering the nature of the unusual angry shade that's haunting him.
Best friends Heero and Quatre have their work cut out for them assisting longtime curse victims Duo and Trowa.
During Plastic (part 80), Cairo thinks about thinking and other recent changes in his life.
A look at how Hajime and Sano are doing.
A look at how Trowa and Quatre are doing.
A look at how Heero and Duo are doing.
Couple analysis among Heero, Duo, Trowa, and Quatre.
Quatre undergoes an unpleasant magical change; Heero, Duo, and Trowa are forced to face unpleasant truths; and Hajime and Sano may get involved.
During La Confrérie de la Lune Révéré (parts 33-35), Sano's 178-day wait is over as what Hajime has been fearing comes to pass.
During Guest Room Soap Opera (part 3), Cathy learns a lot of interesting facts and Trowa is not happy.
A few days before the epilogue of La Confrérie de la Lune Révéré, Duo and Sano get together to watch football and discuss relationships and magical experiences; Heero listens in on multiple levels.
And here’s a picture of Trowa playing his clarinet (not entirely relevant to this part, but he never actually plays the thing during the course of the story, so here’s as good as any):
I actually drew this for Zombie Girl’s 2010 birthday, since, as I’ve mentioned, the whole story is for her and Trowa is her favorite. I screwed up the damn angles, and I can’t fix things like that on paper very well, so the clarinet got all super long, but ZG didn’t seem to mind.
Colors and Whatnot
Their torsos are so loooonnnnggg.
Falling Snow
This is an illustration for a story Zombie Girl was writing. She decided after the first chapter that she wasn’t actually wasn’t going to write it after all, so now nobody but me ever gets to read about Quatre finding Trowa poisoned in the snow and rescuing him and giving him a haircut and falling in love with him. This is sad. Here is a detail of Trowa:
Auch für Mich
Love is for everyone ^__^
Fascinating
I wanted a Heero/Duo icon for my other lj to use with the Blue October line, “I want to show you just how fascinating kissing it,” so I drew this. I love how Heero’s hand looks all puffy.
The Eyes in the Mirror
Sure, they’d discussed a restaurant and renting something they’d both missed while it was in theaters, but just because the resulting plan was ‘dinner and a movie’ didn’t mean it was a date. No matter how much Heero wanted it to be.
Days keep slipping by while Heero, who desperately wants to step up his relationship with Duo, the taxi driver that always takes him to work, continually puts off confessing that he likes him.
Author's Star Rating: 4 | Category: Duo and Heero one-shots | Contains: Gay Heero | Contains: Get-together story for main couple(s) | Contains: Pansexual Duo | Contains: Pining | Contains: Primarily conversation | Genre: Drama | Genre: Introspection | Genre: Romance | Length: 7k-8k words | Pairing - Primary: Duo & Heero | POV: Heero | Rating: 1 | Release/completion year: 2010 | Setting: Alternate universe | Setting: AU - Modern U.S. | Visual art collection: Gundam Wing | Visual art medium: Watercolor pencil
Monday
Heero slid into Duo’s cab almost fifteen minutes later than his usual time, shook off and half-closed his umbrella, and tossed his briefcase onto the empty beige seat beside him with what would have been a grumble, or perhaps a sigh, if he’d given it any volume. Despite the relative subtlety of this expression and the complete muting by the rain of any sound he might inadvertently have let escape his lips, Duo, of course, noticed his mood.
“Moving a little slow today?” he said cheerfully, throwing an understanding grin over his shoulder from the driver’s seat. Only someone that knew Heero well enough to read the signs of his discontent would have been able to guess at its cause… Duo had driven Heero to work almost every day for the past few months, and had learned to read the signs earlier than most people.
“Yes.” Heero gave him a hard look, though not necessarily an angry one. He was irritated, but only at himself for getting off to such a late start; he supposed there probably were circumstances under which he could be angry at Duo… but he hadn’t found any yet.
Duo’s grin widened as he glanced back the other direction and pulled away from the curb. “You’re my third fare of the day who’s been running late. The first guy’s basement flooded, and then this lady told me an awesome story about her kid taking his diaper off and putting it all over his room, and she had to clean it up before she could leave for work.” He chuckled. “Think your excuse can top theirs?”
“No.” There was a touch of surliness to this answer, since Heero would much rather have had such an excuse, unpleasant as either situation would have been to deal with, than the infinitely weaker ‘couldn’t get to sleep for hours and then didn’t hear the alarm once sleep finally came.’ However, he found himself, for some reason, explaining this to Duo despite its lameness.
“Well, I think this is the first time I remember you coming down late,” the driver answered him in an easy, reassuring tone. “Nobody can be on time every day. I mean, me, the earlier I get up, the later I’m likely to be. If I have to be to class at eight and I get up at six, I’ll be late; but if I get up at seven fifteen I’m fine.”
At this Heero couldn’t help smiling a little; if he’d had to guess what Duo’s morning routine was like — and he spent more time guessing about Duo’s personal life in general than Duo probably had any idea — this would certainly have been part of it. He could easily picture Duo snooze-buttoning himself into rising five minutes before he needed to leave, then getting ready in forty-five seconds and showing up to work as dapper as usual.
Except for… “How long does your braid take?” The words were out of his mouth almost before he’d even fully formed the question, long before he’d consciously decided to ask it. That sort of thing happened a lot in Duo’s cab; Heero was almost used to it.
Duo shrugged. “A minute? Two minutes? Maybe?”
Heero raised a brow at the indigo eyes in the rear-view mirror. “I don’t believe you,” he said, and noticed, as he often did, how serious his voice sounded — as if he were denying, rather than the length of time Duo claimed it took to do his hair, the possibility of a heinous crime he knew Duo incapable of committing, or the likelihood of some hideous natural disaster he would rather not believe had happened. No wonder they kept him off the phones at work.
Duo, however, far from objecting to Heero’s incongruously dire tone, seemed inclined rather to build on it. “I swear it’s true, your honor!” he protested, the edge of his face that Heero could see wrinkling in amusement as he squeaked out this appeal. “Don’t send me back to jail!”
“All right,” Heero answered, “I’ll let you off this time.” And though he still sounded unnecessarily serious, the slight grin that had taken hold of his mouth almost in spite of himself added a touch of warmth to his tone that he was sure Duo would pick up on.
“Seriously, though,” Duo went on, “it doesn’t take very long: pull it out, brush it, put it back in.” With a facetiously rakish expression that was discernable even from this angle he added, “It’s not like I have to spend forever in the bathroom to look fabulous.”
Heero pursed his lips against the response he was tempted to make — to wit, that he had no doubt this was the case. Fortunately, he was saved the trouble of coming up with an innocuous response when Duo turned a corner rather sharply and noticed Heero reeling a bit behind him.
“Seat belt!” the driver commanded, and Heero dutifully complied. Duo watched him in the mirror, eyes narrowed and jaw jutting out in an exaggerated expression of authoritative determination, until something on the road drew his gaze to where it probably should have been all along.
Heero was never quite sure whether he should worry when Duo looked at him rather than traffic, as he did rather value his life… but he certainly couldn’t complain if Duo wanted to look at him — even if it was only to be sure he was donning his seat belt as commanded — and Duo did have a remarkable talent for weaving through the lanes and avoiding other vehicles that often made Heero wonder vaguely if, with coordination like that, he might not be a very good dancer. So it was unlikely that Heero would protest until Duo actually wrecked them — and even that Heero might overlook, provided the circumstance was resultant upon Duo fixing him with that unexpectedly firm gaze in the mirror or half-turning to say something adorable over his shoulder.
Yeah, Heero had it pretty bad.
When Duo’s attention returned to him, both face and voice were companionable once again. “So are we still going to hang out on Friday?”
To Heero this was a somewhat awkward question, since his reply, “If you’re free,” was not what he actually wanted to say. He wasn’t really given to blushing, but he did busy himself with shaking the rain off his umbrella onto the floor beside his feet so as to avoid, just for the moment, meeting the eyes in the mirror.
“Only if you promise not to stand me up again,” Duo said.
Truly, obviously, Duo had no idea. ‘Stand me up’ was such a date term. And Friday’s arrangement — their second attempt, after last Friday’s cancellation on Heero’s part thanks to the demands of overtime, to turn the customer-client relationship into something more — was definitely not a date. Sure, they’d discussed a restaurant and renting something they’d both missed while it was in theaters, but just because the resulting plan was ‘dinner and a movie’ didn’t mean it was a date. No matter how much Heero wanted it to be.
“Not this time,” he promised. “I told them I wouldn’t be working any overtime this week.”
Duo winced theatrically, amusement sparkling in his eyes. “If you told them with that face, I’m not worried!”
“What face?” Heero wondered, resisting the impulse to raise a hand to the area in question to attempt ascertaining with fingers the answer to his.
“That face where if you said, ‘I told them I wouldn’t be on the planet this week,’ I would totally believe you,” Duo chuckled. “And so would they. Man, when you get serious, you really get serious! You should ask for a raise with that face. I mean tell them you want a raise with that face. Or tell my boss I want a raise with that face.”
Heero laughed. This happened occasionally in Duo’s cab; he was almost used to that too. He did have to wonder, though, whether, if the driver had watched his face enough to know it so well, Duo had really never suspected…
Well, Heero reflected, his face probably wouldn’t show it. He wasn’t exactly a stereotypical gay man. The fact that he didn’t think he’d ever actually met a stereotypical gay man didn’t negate his belief in their existence, since his social circle — so called — was not wide enough to encompass any other gay men, and therefore he had no living model besides himself to compare with the mythos of television. But he hoped he was able to perceive the status he claimed for himself in others, if it existed — at the very least in someone he’d watched carefully — and he hadn’t yet observed any symptoms in Duo. And evidently Duo didn’t recognize it in him, either.
Which was why Friday’s meeting wouldn’t be a date.
…unless Heero managed to establish it as such before the time in question, and Duo accepted the arrangement — the chances of which seemed at the moment to range from slim to none, given that Heero hadn’t been able to bring himself yet to confess his crush and Duo probably wouldn’t be interested even if or when he did. Would probably, in fact, become uncomfortable, and would stop showing up conveniently outside Heero’s apartment at 7:45 every morning knowing he was guaranteed a fare that at least up until that point he’d seemed to enjoy talking to. That’s what Heero thought he would do in a similar situation, anyway.
“So Friday…” He began this phrase in the hope of tricking himself into finishing it without realizing. Generally he didn’t speak impetuously or lose control of what he was saying, but the moment he was in Duo’s cab he had a tendency to blurt things out spontaneously — which might lead, if he timed it correctly, to his saying exactly what he wanted to say and hadn’t yet been able to. His ingrained reticence and reluctance to emotional commitment won out over Duo’s influence, however, and he found himself unable to proceed.
“Yeah?” Duo wondered.
With an effort Heero forced out, “I’ll get that movie.”
“Cool.”
They were approaching the office now, so it wasn’t really the right time for a conversation beginning with an unprecedented declaration of gay admiration. He would prefer to have a little more leisure to discuss it, and be more adequately braced for possible rejection, in any case. Still, it wasn’t with a great amount of hope, as Duo swiped his card and then bid him a friendly farewell, that Heero reflected, Maybe tomorrow.
Tuesday
Heero slid into Duo’s cab with every intention of getting the big question out before they reached the interstate. He’d spent breakfast working himself up to it, considering variants of phraseology on his part and possible responses on Duo’s as well as what he would say and do if Duo utterly rejected him. However, he was completely distracted from his purpose, as he pulled the door shut, by the heartily bizarre greeting from the driver: “Welcome to my dog!”
“What?” wondered Heero blankly.
“Oh, in the book I’ve been reading…” Duo began as he inserted the taxi smoothly into traffic.
“The same one?” Heero guessed.
In response to the slight skepticism in the query Duo just laughed. He’d been working on this particular book for almost two months now, if Heero was remembering correctly, ever since a class he’d been taking had studied excerpts and gotten him interested. “Well, it’s, like, a thousand pages,” he reminded Heero, without even a trace of shame at taking so long or at the subsequent admission, “and some parts of it are really boring.”
Heero restrained his head-shake. Duo was so enthusiastic about things — about life in general, it seemed — that even in something he did purely for recreation he enjoyed a challenge. Heero couldn’t help but admire the intensity as well as the intelligence that fitted Duo for such a pursuit… For any thousand-page book he wasn’t required to read that didn’t entirely hold his interest, Heero didn’t think he would have the fortitude.
It wasn’t that he objected to a challenge… just not when he was trying to relax. Maybe that was why he found it so difficult to relax most of the time: it was too damn challenging, so he avoided it. As if that made sense at all. Duo obviously had no such problem. Still, Heero might not necessarily want to be like that… but he definitely knew he wanted to be with that. There was about Duo an almost uncanny air of ease and simultaneous boundless energy that was somehow galvanizing and restful at the same time.
“Anyway,” Duo continued, “I got to this part last night where they called a dog a ‘cab’ — part of this thieves’ dialect-thing that was really interesting for almost the whole time the author went on and on about it — and it made me think I should name my car ‘Spot’ or something. It’s got those checkers on it; I think it’d make a good ‘Spot.'”
Heero had considered, on occasion, bringing with him on his taxi rides a little notebook in which to document the number of times Duo made him smile unexpectedly. “Do people name their dogs ‘Spot’ anymore?”
“Well, it needs to be a name people know is a dog’s name, or else the joke won’t work.”
“I think your ‘joke’ is a little too obscure for it to matter.” God, would he ever be able to respond to Duo’s carefree conversation with matching lightness, or was he doomed forever to this overly-serious tone? He struggled for greater levity of expression as he added, “You might as well choose a name you like better than ‘Spot.'”
As usual, Duo didn’t seem to mind Heero’s solemn tone; eyes crinkling with his pleased expression, he looked at his passenger in the mirror and said, “Well, and it’s a translation, too, so I guess that makes it even more obscure. We didn’t read this part in class, so I don’t even know if ‘cab’ was actually the word they used — so maybe the joke doesn’t even really work. Someday I’ll try the original and find out… but my French isn’t good enough for that yet, so I’m sticking with the English version for now.”
Had Heero been a more flirtatious man, or one possessed of easier powers of socialization — or, possibly, even just a bit more surety of his success in the present case — he might have tested on Duo the only French phrase he knew: asked for a translation in all innocence, or simply thrown it out as the admitted extent of his conversance, and gauged the reaction. As it was, he kept his voulez-vous coucher avec moi to himself. That, and admired Duo’s inclination and ability to learn a foreign language at all — something Heero had never managed. Unless programming jargon counted.
Heero had been fortunate enough to complete an accredited technical training program just out of high school on a grant, and had been making decent money in a relatively stable career field ever since. Duo, on the other hand — as far as Heero understood based on their conversations up until this point — had been painstakingly working his way through a four-year degree at the local college for the last decade, paying every penny of tuition himself by driving cabs and waiting tables. Heero, while not thinking of himself as overly transient in his interests or pursuits, couldn’t help looking up to that kind of long-term determination.
And now, as Duo inquired whether Heero had finished ‘that train robbery book’ (the most recent novel he had mentioned reading), there really was no way to introduce the topic Heero had entered the taxi determined to bring up; it would seem too jarring against the clever joviality of Duo’s book talk. Heero could only hope that they were not like that as well: too different ever to mesh, and in more ways than mere orientation (which information neither possessed, currently, about the other to any degree beyond assumption).
Heero knew perfectly well that he was gloomy and far too serious… or, at the very least, too outwardly serious for his own good. It made other people take him seriously, which was to his advantage, but it didn’t necessarily make anyone like him. And Duo was so cheerful… Still, Heero thought he had noticed — only a few times during their acquaintance, since taxi drives to work, however consistent, rarely afforded occasion for such — a deeply shadowed side to Duo’s vehemence of personality with which he thought he could readily identify. There was a well-rounded awareness of the often painful realities of life under that attractive grin; Duo simply chose to be cheerful on top of it.
The facts that they could probably connect on that level, that Duo’s sanguinity so often increased Heero’s, and that Duo didn’t seem to be bothered by Heero’s lack in the first place, surely made them perfectly suited for each other. Heero certainly saw it that way… but would Duo?
So the question went unasked that day as well; instead they discussed Michael Crichton until pulling up at the office and parting.
Wednesday
Heero slid into Duo’s cab already on the phone. It was never a good sign when his work day started before he’d even left the apartment, and Duo apparently agreed; as the latter moved them out into the street, evidently realizing this was a business call, his face took on first a look of sympathy and then a dramatic expression of suffering and despair.
It was a statement almost never made of Heero that he could not keep countenance, but, as he explained the details of the current project (admittedly somewhat complicated) to his coworker, and Duo began responding to everything he said with increasingly exaggerated feigned misery, rarely if ever watching his driving, it grew more and more difficult not to laugh out loud.
It got so bad that Relena finally asked, “Is something wrong?” She’d probably never heard him smile over the phone before.
“No,” Heero assured her, tearing his eyes away from those in the mirror with some effort and smoothing over his grin. “But if you’re in the area this afternoon, I’ll talk to you then. Just make sure you call us if you do hear from him.”
She assured him that she would and said goodbye.
Almost before the call had even ended, Heero had again sought out the gaze of the taxi driver, who grinned unrepentantly at him. “Good thing I don’t charge for the entertainment!” said Duo, laughing at himself. “Good morning! Now that you’re done sweet-talking your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” Heero shook his head at the idea as he snapped his phone shut and put it back into his briefcase. Then, in one of those disturbingly unguarded bursts of madness that Duo’s cab seemed so often to induce, he added, “I don’t date women.”
He felt the blood drain from his face and then return in a rush for an honest-to-goodness, hot-burning blush. Why the hell had he said that?? He could have explained the situation in so many other ways — ‘She’s seeing someone;’ ‘We’re just friends;’ ‘I’m not interested in her’ — all of them perfectly true and all of them a good deal less burst-out-of-the-closet-from-nowhere startling.
But all Duo said was, “Oh! That makes a difference, doesn’t it?” And while he did appear a little surprised, it faded quickly and was neither accompanied nor followed by any look of disapproval. Heero thought, though, in a stiff fit of ragingly awkward, conflicting feelings, that the driver’s eyes were turned away from the mirror a good deal more than usual throughout the rest of the journey.
Obviously the latter could no longer reasonably hope to contain the specific conversation Heero had wished it would. As a matter of fact, he almost felt like jumping out of the cab and walking the rest of the way from the next light, melodrama level of that gesture notwithstanding.
It was not heartening that he felt this way about a fairly smooth admission of homosexuality that could only bring him closer to his goal. The statement had, for all its serious tone, had the kind of unassuming, personal, yet not indelicate sound he would precisely have wished for… a sound he doubted he could conjure anywhere but here or probably to anyone but Duo, if he could come up with it at all. If this relatively well-delivered and well-received confession was attended by so much embarassment and confusion, what hope on earth was there for his planned ‘let’s-make-this-a-date‘ speech?
That this was really a fortuitous event he kept telling himself with all the firmness he could command. This meant one thing fewer to worry about getting off his chest; maybe it would make the asking easier. And wasn’t it a good sign that Duo hadn’t freaked out? Now he had merely to propose casually that they rename the get-together on Friday, no preamble required. It would no longer be a surprise on top of another surprise; the two shocks were divided conveniently onto separate days. Surely this was a good thing.
So he kept telling himself.
And yet he wished he could fall through the seat and into the road like one of those superheroes that went intangible at will.
He was hardly aware of a word they spoke during the remainder of that drive. Duo, after a minute or so of silence, reverted to that completely harmless conversational staple of his, amusing anecdotes about anonymous passengers — but Heero would certainly not remember any of them later. As usual when this subject arose, he did wonder vaguely and somewhat dejectedly whether he might not be the hero of any of these stories when someone else was in the back seat, but for once Duo’s pleasant cabbie chatter could not wholly engross him. Staring out the window, uncertain whether or not he was still blushing, he tried to make for his agitation a sort of balm out of the wordless sound of Duo’s voice that was all he could hear behind the noise of his reflections. He thought he gave noncommittal interjections occasionally, too.
By the time they reached the office, Heero had straightened his head out somewhat. Whether he actually believed it or not, he was ready at least to believe that this had been a step forward, and he was fairly sure the usual tan of his face had returned. And at least his expression (as far as he could tell) hadn’t changed this entire time to betray his embarassment and turmoil. There was something to be said for stoicism.
His emotions were still rather augmented, but hadn’t really changed. So, although he didn’t exactly expect it, the half-hopeful, half-painful throb his heart gave when Duo smiled at him as he said goodbye didn’t really surprise him.
Thursday
Heero slid into Duo’s cab somewhat damp, as it was raining rather torrentially today; even with an umbrella, just the walk from the apartment lobby doors to the curb could not but discomfort.
“Good morning,” he said.
…there was another thing Duo’s cab did to him: made him offer a greeting (to Duo) before he’d been greeted. Which only happened occasionally, since Duo pretty consistently got to it first.
Through vigorous repetition of all the positive thoughts he’d tentatively entertained yesterday, Heero had come to grips with his inadvertent confession and was relatively calm. Whether he was at all ready to ask Duo about tomorrow was an entirely different story, but he thought he could at least converse with some degree of normalcy.
Duo, on the other hand, seemed out of sorts. His good morning was lethargic, and he yawned expansively before pulling out into the street. The eyes in the mirror looked tired, the planes beneath them unusually dark, the friendly opening comments that usually accompanied their gaze markedly absent.
After a few minutes of pathetic silence Heero wondered, “Not feeling well?” Here was where the austere tone did him the most disservice: there was no way he could sound concerned with that voice. He could only hope Duo would read his sincerity some other way.
The driver threw a rueful smile over his shoulder. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Heero replied, and stifled a sigh at how stiff and purely conventional it sounded.
“Thanks,” said Duo. His smile, visible in the mirror as he tilted his chin up to get a clear look at the right lane, widened into something more like his usual transmittable grin; this comforted Heero a little for his inability to express himself the way he wished to… he wasn’t sure whether it was merely Duo’s professionalism that led him to act as if he didn’t care about Heero’s social deficiencies, or whether he truly didn’t mind — and this lack of certainty was a large part of why Heero was so reluctant to speak — but it was comforting. Even when he was sick or tired or both and not inclined to converse, Duo was a wonderful person to have around.
Whatever the case was, Heero forced himself to say something else to reiterate (perhaps to prove) his genuine sympathy. “I sometimes unexpectedly get insomnia, and I hate it. And I don’t even go to school,” he added, considering how that would complicate things.
Duo nodded, his expression still weary and rueful.
“Does it happen to you often?” Heero persisted.
“No,” answered Duo. “No, not very often.”
“Well, that’s good, at least.” And Heero could think of nothing more to say. Well, he could think of plenty to say; he just doubted his ability to say it naturally enough that it wouldn’t sound somewhat creepy. One didn’t suggest a certain type of pajamas and a glass of warm milk to one’s taxi driver unless one was a good deal smoother or outwardly friendlier than Heero was. Or just a little closer to said driver.
Which brought him uncomfortably hard up against the very solid and unpleasant reflection that perhaps it would be unwise, even unkind, to attempt a transition from business associates straight to guys that are dating without even a nominal stop at friends.
How well did he know Duo, really? How well could he expect Duo to know him at this point? Was it really such a good idea to try to initiate a more romantic relationship without finding out? And wouldn’t he be putting an awful lot of pressure on Duo by asking him to take that step without giving him the chance to get to know Heero under less businesslike circumstances than these taxi rides to work?
He didn’t know. How did most people go about this sort of thing? Maybe Duo would just provide some reasonable contingency involving a forerunning period of friendship. Heero could accept that. It would drive him crazy — closer even than the current arrangement, yet still not what he wanted — but he could accept it.
It was stupid, though, even to contemplate Duo’s specific response to the idea of dating him without knowing how Duo felt about dating other males in general. What was the latest word on population percentages? Two out of a hundred American men identified as gay? Seriously, what were the chances that out of, say, the hundred men on this stretch of interstate right now, the two gay ones were sitting in the same taxi?
Heero wasn’t the type to shy — for long — from something he was reluctant to do… he knew he would confess, he would ask, at some point. But it certainly wasn’t going to be today, and it might very well not be tomorrow either. Duo’s mood made it utterly impossible today, and tomorrow… well, he simply wasn’t sure it simply wasn’t too early for all of this.
There were moments in this cab, however, when he felt he could spill out all the words requisite to forming the confession and ensuing question, if not necessarily in perfect order, at least in some semblance of coherency. At these moments he really had no idea what was holding him back, and his agitation was extreme. He was fairly certain it still didn’t show in his face or sound in his voice if he happened to speak just then — and it might have been better if it had — but these were some of the most discommodious moments of any time spent with Duo. And this was definitely one of them.
It was not an entirely silent trip following the brief opening exchange; even through the bleak mood that had gripped him in his exhaustion Duo still had an apparently unquenchable urge to say certain things that came to mind. It was clear, however, that he was not inclined toward ongoing conversation, nor in the best humor with the rest of the world; he grumbled a few fairly rude comments in apostrophe at other drivers on the road — which comments were nothing unusual in themselves, only rendered so by the lack of the cheery volume and forgiving affability that generally accompanied them. He wasn’t exactly unpleasant to Heero, but the atmosphere remained far from what it normally was.
Still, he did make a visible effort at smiling and rendering his goodbye pleasant when Heero had paid and was readying his umbrella. “Have a good one,” Duo bade him wearily.
“You too,” replied Heero, and hesitated. After a surreptitiously heavy breath he added, “I hope you feel better. Get some sleep.”
Duo’s smile deepened, and just that was worth the effort of the extra, personal words. “Thanks,” he said sincerely.
Heero smiled a bit too, and got out of the cab.
Friday
Heero slid into Duo’s cab in a state of almost frantically desperate determination he seldom reached, knowing today was the day if any was. Yesterday’s doubts hadn’t made any significant difference to his overall resolve; he’d decided to try it today, if he could. For one thing, he thought it more than likely that he couldn’t, and therefore saw no reason to put it off since it would probably be put off for him anyway. For another… well… he really, really liked Duo, and didn’t want to turn him into a distant courtly love. Heero wasn’t the happiest person in the world, but simultaneously had little patience for that sort of counterproductive self-pitying lethargy.
Duo’s wonderfully cheerful, amusing, enticing demeanor was back in place today in full force. Before Heero could even begin to think how to work the discussion around to what he wanted to talk about, he found himself engrossed in some topic that with anyone else would have been utterly dull but with Duo was funny and interesting — yard work and gardening, he thought. He was afraid he was an even worse conversational companion than usual, though, since his mind was on such a different track. Duo, as always, didn’t seem to mind.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t notice. His eyes were fixed on Heero in the mirror more often than on most days, and with a curiosity he didn’t bother to disguise. Heero thought that some of the agitation might actually be showing for once; it was certainly growing moment by moment — or, rather, street by street as they drew closer and closer to their usual goal of Heero’s place of employ and watched his opportunity shrinking.
And then, with a splash in the gutter beside the curb and a tenfold increase of inner turbulence, they had arrived. Duo put the car in park and turned a smile on Heero as he always did. “So I’ll call you tonight after class and make sure–”
Heero cut him off. “About tonight.”
Duo tilted his head slightly, wordless, his smile undiminished.
“I was wondering.” He sounded like a goddamn robot, absolutely flat and emotionless. “I was wondering,” he said again, feeling a bit faint. Apparently ‘I was wondering’ wasn’t the right way to start, though, since no other words wanted to emerge thereafter. He tried a different approach. “I’ve had a…” No, that wasn’t it either. “I have a…”
Duo’s brows went up, though he was still smiling.
And that was what did it, really. Rather than appear incompetent — especially to someone he liked so much — rather than keep dithering like an idiot — or, worse, start actually stammering or stuttering — Heero would bear all the rejection in the world. “I’ve liked you for a long time,” he said, coolly, clearly, and with perfect calm. “And I wanted to know if we could possibly call tonight a date instead of just ‘hanging out.'”
There. There was an end of that. He didn’t know if he could speak ever again, but there, at least, was an end of that. Now Duo would let him down gently and drive off out of his life.
For a long moment Duo stared at him with no change in the unconcerned expression on his face. Finally he said, “Yeah, sure, I guess we could.”
Dumbfounded, certain his face had gone white and that he had quite possibly stopped breathing entirely, Heero sat frozen, staring back. After what seemed like forever in the steady beat of the rain and the windshield wipers and the noise of cars outside and the stunned silence within he managed, “‘Yeah, sure?’ Just like that?” And again with the level, serious tone. Not that the flabbergasted squeak in which these words would have emerged from many another person’s mouth was what he wanted… but it probably would have been better to convey just a little of the utter shock that had overtaken him at Duo’s response.
Duo’s smile turned sympathetic. “If it makes you feel any better, I wasn’t this calm about it on Wednesday.”
“Wednesday?” Heero repeated. “When I…”
“Said that bit about not dating women? Yeah. I hadn’t even guessed! And I remembered on Monday you said ‘About Friday’ or something all hesitating…”
“You remember what I said on Monday,” Heero put in blankly.
“Well, unlike most people in this city, you say interesting things; I usually remember it. Anyway, on Wednesday I was pretty shocked, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it… I realized that you might want tonight to be a date and just hadn’t told me, and I didn’t really know…” He laughed a little helplessly. “I didn’t know what to do about that.”
“That’s why you were in a weird mood yesterday.”
“Yeah… sorry if I took it out on you… Wednesday wasn’t quite long enough to decide; it took me half of yesterday too.”
“And now…” This was really nothing like anything Heero had expected; he felt as if, in this conversation, he was largely along for the ride. How appropriate.
Duo shrugged. “I’ve had this thing in the back of my head for a while about whether or not I might like men, but it’s hard to decide that these days in this understanding country of ours.” He accompanied his airy tone with a casual wave of the hand, as if to indicate that this was a largely unrelated matter. “So since you’re an interesting guy, like I said, I figured you’re the perfect way to find out for sure.”
“I’m an interesting guy…” Heero’s voice trailed off into silence, probably a better indication of what he was feeling than anything he’d said to Duo all week.
“Yeah.” Duo grinned as he added, “Didn’t you know that?”
Heero saw no reason to try to fight off the infectiousness of that grin — though his own expression was more of a baffled half-smile. “No, not really.”
“You expected me to say no, didn’t you?” This was spoken a little more quietly than the previous statements, and the look in Duo’s eyes had softened a trifle.
Heero nodded.
Duo reached over the seat — which was awkward, yes, but neither of them really cared — and took Heero’s hand and squeezed it. “You’re a brave man, Heero Yuy,” he stated solemnly. It was absurd that even his deliberate solemnity couldn’t match Heero’s most casual tone.
Feeling suddenly warm all over and the beginnings of an overwhelming, adrenaline-withdrawal-like jittery joy, Heero held onto Duo’s hand for a moment and just smiled.
“So I really will call you when I’m out of class,” Duo went on, returning the pleased expression as he pulled his arm back over the seat, “and let you know I’m on my way. Don’t forget to rent that movie.”
“I won’t,” Heero assured him, pulling his briefcase onto his lap. As he opened it and reached for his wallet, Duo waved dismissively.
“This ride’s on me,” he said.
Afterward (Saturday)
Heero slid into Duo’s arms where they welcomed him onto the sofa in the midst of a nest of rumpled blankets. They’d been up so late last night after the movie, talking about nearly every subject under the sun until even the laconic Heero was hoarse and dry-throated, that Duo had opted to stay the night — chastely, on the couch in the living room, since (even if Heero had been) he really wasn’t ready for any more intimate arrangement just yet. Apparently he was ready for some small-scale cuddling, though, and Heero felt no reluctance whatsoever — felt, in fact, a clinging, overwhelming eagerness — at settling into the mess of spare bedding beside and against him and returning the half-embrace.
“Good morning,” Duo said, a charming half-grin quirking his mouth. He brought his face very close to Heero’s as the latter echoed the greeting; Heero could feel Duo’s breath warm against his skin, and his own respirations seemed to have gone all uneven and shallow as Duo’s eyes roved meticulously across his features and that adorable little grin faded into a more absent, contemplative smile. Then, abruptly, Duo pushed forward and kissed Heero briefly but firmly without closing his eyes.
“This gay stuff isn’t so hard,” he murmured as he drew back.
For a long moment Heero had no power to respond, and Duo’s traditional hearty grin blossomed beneath his amused, crinkling bright eyes.
Finally Heero said, “No, apparently it isn’t.” He didn’t even bother lamenting the serious tone now.
Duo raised a brow. “‘Apparently?’ You’re the experienced one here, aren’t you?”
Heero’s own brows went down slightly. “I’ve only ever dated a couple of guys before,” he admitted, feeling a little awkward and suddenly hoping Duo wasn’t anticipating all-encompassing expert knowledge from him. “And it was never very… physical.”
Nodding his understanding and giving no sign of disappointed expectations, Duo asked, “And women? Did you ever see any women before you realized?”
“A few,” said Heero with a shrug. “It was pretty much the same with them.”
Again Duo nodded. “Well…” Again he moved his parted lips and intoxicating breath toward Heero’s face, and again Heero’s own breath became almost embarassingly erratic. Before they touched, though, Duo finished his statement, “At least this part’s pretty easy.”
He kissed him harder this time, and with a sort of shifting, caressing pressure that was almost more exploratory than anything else. Heero, through the hot steam of indigo and tan and golden-brown that seemed to have overtaken his vision and blurred his thoughts, felt the entire universe narrow to the circumference of the space they occupied; everything more than an inch beyond the boundaries of their bodies ceased to exist, and even the forest-green couch cushions on which they sat and leant and the blankets tucked around them were dimming.
Duo’s left hand running slowly up and down his arm; Duo’s right hand on his back, fingers bending and unbending in a sort of small massage against his pajama shirt; Duo’s thigh, clad only in shorts he’d been wearing beneath his jeans last night, the smooth tanned flesh of a shapely leg intermittently visible through the parted folds of the blanket, flush against Heero’s, warm and firm; Duo’s lips pushing against his in incomprehensibly world-melting patterns — this was really all there was to anything… and all with the tacit promise of an exponentially greater level of intensity once Duo got his bearings.
Heero was not ready to stop kissing Duo when Duo pulled away, but neither was he for several moments in a sufficiently lucid state verbally to request a return of Duo’s lips to his. During those moments, Duo brought one hand near his face and spoke into an imaginary sound recorder in a stodgy, mustached accent. “March 20, 2010. Experiment Report. Test subject responding favorably to prolonged oral contact with minor peripheral stimulus. Scientist responding pretty well too. Propose increasing complexity of interaction, but not today since scientist has to be driving at 11:30 and has probably already been here too long.” By the time he reached the end of this little dissertation, his voice had worked its way back to its usual sound.
Heero, meanwhile, had regained his composure, vision, and (to some extent) clarity of thought, and had overcome the urge to push Duo down onto his back and jump on him. Instead, he just grinned in response to Duo’s performance and said, “We should schedule another experiment, in that case.”
“Well, do you want to play basketball with me on Wednesday?”
“Yes,” Heero found himself saying, almost before the precise nature of the invitation had actually registered. He had a feeling that his answer to ‘Do you want to [verb] with me?’ spoken by Duo would be an unmitigated ‘yes’ for an indeterminate period of time to come. Once the meaning of Duo’s words did sink in, though, he added, “But we can get together next Friday too, can’t we?”
Duo grinned; perhaps he could sense Heero’s keen interest in the proposal even through the inadvertent facade of solemnity, now that he was aware of Heero’s keen interest in general. And if that was the case, Heero thought, there really was no logical reason to try to abandon that facade for the rest of the world.
“We have all week to discuss it,” Duo said.
“Or put off discussing it,” Heero replied with a smile.
To judge by his expression, Duo — like Heero — already knew what conclusion they were most likely to come to.
This story was written for Sharon as part of the “Help Haiti” auction in 2010. I’ve rated it . What do you think of it?
I don’t think the perspective is correct in that picture, but whatever… if I were worried about anything in it, it would be the less-than-perfectly-straight lines of seat and dashboard that I couldn’t be arsed to use a ruler for.
This story is included in the Gundam Wing Collection ebook.