Smells Like Teen Spirit
by Link Worshiper

(x) X (x)

Game 37
I Dig A Pony

(x) X (x)

“Mother cannot guide you.
Now you’re on your own.
Only me beside you.
Still, you’re not alone!
No one is alone.
No one is alone.”

It took Duo a couple of moments to recognize the voice as Sister Helen’s, and then a few moments more to realize that he was dreaming. Looking down, he found his hands to be the small, grubby hands of his youth and his clothes to be the black, clerical frock of the church that had been his childhood home. His hair felt lighter, his braid dangling only a bit further than his shoulder blades as it had in his youth.

This is an odd memory to be having, commented Duo’s mental voice, which was strangely still the deep baritone that had come with puberty. Glancing around the dreamscape, Duo wasn’t surprised to find himself in Maxwell Church, sitting on Sister Helen’s knee as she held him and sang softly. He leaned against her and tried to remember this specific moment of his childhood. They were sitting in Father Maxwell’s little study, lit only by a pair of kerosene lamps, one on the desk, the other on the bookcase. Glancing in the small, framed mirror hanging by the slightly ajar door, Duo glimpsed the huge, violet eyes that seemed way too big for his face damp with tears, like he had been crying. He tried hard to remember when this memory had taken place once more.

He looked up at the kind-faced nun, her mouth moving in slow-motion as she sang. For some odd reason, her mouth was the one feature about her that Duo remembered best about her. The woman had always been a good singer, unlike so many of the church patrons, who sounded bored and tired, and the small choir of orphans, who did more shouting than actual singing. Father Maxwell had been an okay singer in his own right, but it was nothing compared to the wonderful notes that used to pour out of his colleague’s mouth.

Sadly, that was probably the most he could recall about good, old Sister Helen. He didn’t recall if her hair had been light or dark, as it had always been hidden beneath the black and white hood of her habit. She’d made an odd practice of usually wearing gloves, so he couldn’t remember what her hands had been like, whether they had been young or gnarled or what. He had a vague recollection of her light blue eyes and the lines underneath them; he remembered thinking that despite her smiles, Sister Helen was a very sad lady. A dusty memory of calling her ‘Mother’ flashed through Duo’s brain.

“Sometimes people leave you
Halfway through the wood.
Others may deceive you.
You decide what’s good!
You decide alone.
But no one is alone.”

“I wish....” Duo heard his young self say in the dream. His older conscious winced at the squeaky, girly-sounding voice of his childish voice. The older Duo trapped inside his ten-year-old body frowned, feeling slightly embarrassed for the way his little hands were gripping the bodice of Sister Helen’s habit and the way it seemed they had been hiding away from everyone else in the church.

“I know,” said Sister Helen, patting the top of little Duo’s head.

Just then, the door of the study opened a bit more, and both of them looked up to see who was there, but were greeted by nothing but an empty hallway. Older, dreaming Duo was about to brush the occurrence off as a draft in the old church, when a small, childlike figure appeared in the yellow patch of light shining into the dark, little room. It was in that exact moment that the entire memory came flooding back to Duo like water rushing past freshly-opened floodgates.

It had been after the third family Duo had been sent to live with decided they didn’t want him anymore and had sent him back to the orphanage. Duo remembered a tall, black-haired man and a red-haired woman bringing him to Sunday mass hardly two weeks after having him and wordlessly leaving him there on the altar with a few short words explanation to Sister Helen before they left. The couple turned their backs and swept out of the church with hardly a backward glance at Duo as he’d burst into tears and hung to Sister Helen’s black skirts. He’d asked the nun over and over why nobody loved him and why no one wanted him for a son. He wanted to know if he was a bad child and if he was going to Hell for something he’d done.

Sister Helen had then scooped him up in surprisingly strong arms and soothed him with her singing as she carried him to Father Maxwell’s study. She’d told Duo that there was always someone to love everybody and that both she and Father Maxwell loved him. She also told him that God loved him and that no matter what, as long as he remembered that, he wouldn’t have to worry about the fickle emotions of humans. Of course, at the time, Duo didn’t buy a word of it, and to a point, he still didn’t, because he’d be damned if he thought something like God existed. But looking back on it, he was pretty sure Sister Helen and Father Maxwell had loved him. And so had....

“Duo?” came the figure’s small, boyish voice as he entered the study with a touch of apprehension. Duo’s older conscious was jealous of the low timbre his childhood friend’s voice had even at such a young age. He wondered vaguely if it had gotten deeper with age, something he doubted he would ever find out. Still, it never hurt to wonder.

Little Duo looked up at the newcomer for a few seconds and then quickly buried his nose back into Sister Helen’s habit as if he were ashamed to show his friend the tears in his eyes.

“Sister? Is Duo back home?” the other boy asked, tugging at Helen’s dress. The swooshing sound of her skirts as they swished about seemed to register more on Duo’s ears than the sound of his friend’s voice. Older Duo smirked, thinking how it was strange what stupid details everyone remembered, when the main things always seemed secondary.

“Yes, Duo’s back home,” answered Sister Helen, reaching out with her other hand to pat the boy’s head. She guided him closer to her and held him at her side like a mother would.

“Good,” said the boy in an approving voice that sounded way to old for his years. “I don’t like it when Duo goes away without me. I miss him and I don’t like being by myself.”

“You are never by yourself,” Helen said, reiterating what she’d just been telling Duo. “There are lots of other children here who can be your friends.”

“Yes, but none of them are Du-o,” the boy responded firmly, taking time to emphasize each syllable of Duo’s name. “Duo is my best friend and I only want to be with him.”

As more of the scene unfolded, Duo began to not only remember more about that particular incident, but more about that particular boy, whom he recollected calling ‘Wing’, for lack of anything else. (The name stemmed from Duo’s firm childhood belief that Wing had been an angel, and for the way that he could make things fly about with his mind.) Not only had they been running on the streets together before they’d been taken in, but Wing had been the one other mutant in the orphanage. Despite their young years and the parish’s constant pushing of equal love for everyone, it couldn’t be avoided that a good deal of the children were put off by the two boys strange ‘magic’. Duo had it a bit easier since he was a naturally outgoing person and often befriended most everybody, but Wing had always been a quiet one, and Duo was probably the only child there who knew that Wing was much more loving than any of them, far more than just an ‘angry monster’, as the others often deemed him.

Still, it couldn’t be helped if Duo was the only one who saw Wing’s good qualities. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Wing seemed to only have time for Duo, and no one else. They shared a little room behind the choir loft together and could often be found joined at the hip in everything they did. Wing would often chase off the kids who made fun of Duo’s unnaturally long hair or his slightly feminine features with objects sent flying after them by means of his psychic mutation. This same tactic was often employed against people who came looking to adopt, which tended to work very well and explained why Wing was often passed over in favour of another child. Not that Wing ever seemed to care.

In fact, the only thing that Duo and Wing probably disagreed on was the matter of having parents; Wing seemed to be content living in the church with Duo, and did everything in his power to keep people away from Duo as well as himself, while Duo was desperate to be part of real family. Duo’s want for this was especially keen when he saw the other kids who had been adopted so happy when they came back on Sundays for mass, and after seeing the general reaction to Wing’s psychic shenanigans, would hide to the death that he was a mutant, only to inevitably be sent back when he was found out.

His only consolation was that he would return to Wing. Like a routine, Duo would climb up the stairs to the choir loft, where he’d always find Wing, sitting by the organ pipes. Wing would look up and tell Duo that he thought Duo was beautiful, even more so because of his mutation, and that he would always love him.

I guess I really wasn’t ever alone ‘til we got separated, Duo thought to himself as the memories became clearer in his brain. In the dreamscape, his smaller self was just pulling his tearstained face away from Sister Helen’s stomach, about to look into the eyes of his friend, when he suddenly woke up.

Reality assaulted Duo like a loud, cold gale of wind. A noisy silence attacked Duo’s ears as his eyes snapped wide open, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling, the loud ticking of a nearby clock separating the eerie quiet into second-long intervals. Long squares of moonlight cast by a series of tall windows behind him mingled with the dying light of the fireplace before him, illuminating what seemed to be an elegant living room. Most of the furniture was conglomerated around the fireplace, leaving the grand piano to sit alone in the alcove by the windows as master of the room. Beneath him, he felt a warm, hard mass that Duo eventually realized to be Heero, who was sound asleep on the couch they were both lying on.

Rubbing his eyes, he figured out where he was. Just as Heero had promised, they’d gone to Nataku’s, where Heero had done more work on the oil painting of Duo. After that, they’d returned to Heero’s house for dinner and found it empty, save for Mr. Barton, who was busy working on something work-related. Too lazy to traipse all the way back to the beach, they’d contented themselves to roast marshmallows stuck on the ends of fondu forks in the fireplace while they watched the moon come up outside the windows.

It seemed they had both fallen asleep on the couch they’d been sitting on while they’d been observing the sky, and Duo couldn’t actually say that he minded very much. Sitting up and scrunching down by Heero’s feet at one end of the sofa, Duo examined the sleeping lacrosse player. He was no longer wearing Quatre’s old tux, having exchanged it for a pair of jeans and a loose tee-shirt before they’d left Duo’s house earlier. It’s kinda scary to think it, Duo found himself reflecting as he watched Heero’s sleeping face, but I think I’ve been alone until Heero came along. I’ve never had someone in my life quite like him....

Heero stirred slightly in his slumber, licking his lips and cuddling his face into the small throw pillow wedged between his cheek and the crook of his arm. The little movement was so tiny and delicate that Duo couldn’t help but notice it. How did Heero, someone who seemed so big and commanding (despite his small stature), make even simple things so natural and alluring? It was a paridoxal mystery like Duo had never encountered before.

It’s weird, Duo reflected, tucking his knees against his chest and resting his chin atop them, but I kind of like having someone as grounded as Heero in my life. And here I was thinking that I knew the way everything fit together, that the best was irregularity. Yet, here’s Heero, throwing a wrench in the spokes by being such a part of the system. Hm, now that’s a paradox: throwing things out of balance by being perfectly in balance.

But when he thought harder on those musings, Duo began to wonder if Heero truly did have such normalcy. Duo eventually settled on the idea that Heero was some kind of anomaly in the world, an extraneous part that didn’t fit, yet everything depended on. “Now I know I’ve been watching way too much science fiction,” Duo thought out loud, his voice muffled by the cloth of his pants.

A smirk played across Heero’s lips, causing Duo to narrow his eyes at him. When Heero started to snigger softly, it was a dead giveaway that he wasn’t sleeping.

“How long were you awake, you big jerk!?” Duo hissed playfully as he threw another one of the sofa’s little pillows at Heero. The cushion bounced off the side of Heero’s head and leapt over the arm of the couch, landing on the floor with a soft pfftht.

Heero opened his eyes, his midnight blue irises flickering with orange embers from the dying fireplace as he slowly sat up in a reclining position against the arm of the couch. “You know, you look really cute when you’re thinking about something hard,” Heero drawled with that damn mischievous smirk still tugging at one corner of his mouth. His eyelashes fluttered as he lowered his eyelids slightly, watching Duo sit by his feet with half-moon eyes. “You look even cuter when you’re dreaming about something that confuses you, but you like anyway.”

“No one’s ever called me cute before,” Duo sent a glare at Heero that also glinted with the fading firelight, but the only reaction he got was a low chuckle from the Japanese youth. Apparently Heero thought his attempt at a tough stare was cute too. “I’m serious! No one’s ever said that before!” Duo protested when Heero made no effort to wipe that amused look off his face.

“Just like no one’s ever said I was... what was it, sweet?” Heero arched an amused brow that was just barely defined in the moon’s glow. He looked like a glass angel with the bluish-silver light playing upon him like that and Duo almost expected the moon beams to shimmer right through Heero. He was strong and beautiful, but Duo was no longer foolish enough to think that glass was unbreakable. It was obvious enough with all the scuffs and chinks that had worn away at Heero that it was only a matter of time before he fell and shattered to millions of jagged, deadly shards that were all too small to be glued back together. A sudden urge to make sure Heero never teetered over that perilous edge overwhelmed Duo, and it was all due to the way the silly moon was dancing across Heero’s hair.

“Well, I suppose you learn something new every day,” Duo said with a shrug. “Though I think discovering you’re ‘sweet’ is a bit more of a compliment than being ‘cute’.”

“So you’d rather I’d say you were ugly?”

“No! I didn’t mean it literally,” Duo huffed, throwing his arms up over his head. “I mean, why can’t I be ‘hot’ or ‘sexy’ or something? Why cute?”

“But you are all those things,” Heero said, dropping that amused eyebrow and furrowing it in confusion.

“Now that is cute,” Duo said, smiling at the adorable expression riddling Heero’s features. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he couldn’t believe he was actually having this discussion with Heero.

“Why is it that I can be cute, but you can’t? I highly doubt that I can be so,” Heero asked, ruffling his thick, long bangs. The gesture just made the whole picture even more adorable, especially considering what the topic at hand was. He actually got up and strode over to the mirror that hung over the mantelpiece to examine the way he looked when he made that face. The embers in the fireplace set Heero’s outline on fire with a line of soft mandarin orange.

“You can only be cute if you’re hot and sexy, which I’ve told you that you are,” Duo quipped as he stretched his legs out across the cushions Heero had just vacated, crossing his arms and turning his nose up in the air. “So there,” he added, sticking out his tongue for extra measure.

“Way to improvise,” Heero quipped. Turning away from the mirror, Heero added with a perplexed shrug, “I’ve said you’re beautiful, which you are. Doesn’t that count?”

“Girls are beautiful, Heero, not guys.”

“Not so. Beautiful just suggests ‘aesthetically pleasing’. A boy can be just as much that as any girl can,” Heero shot back almost immediately, warming up to the verbal sparring with a warm grin. Such banter had shifted from being antagonistic defenses to mere friendly tradition, though sometimes there was the sense that they used their sarcastic words to dance around issues they were afraid to address in a straightforward fashion.

Duo rolled his eyes, saying, “Yeah, but beautiful doesn’t equate with ‘ throw me on my back and ravish me,’ or something to that general effect.”

“You want me to ravish you?” Heero wondered, starting to walk back towards the couch, though for some reason, the light made it seem more like he was gliding through the air. There was an strange glow in Heero’s eyes that Duo had never seen before, though he couldn’t exactly say it was one he didn’t like.

“So what if I do?”

“I don’t see what it has to do with being cute,” Heero pointed out as he neared, repositioning himself on the edge of the couch so he was sitting thigh-to-thigh with Duo, his torso turned in to face the longhaired mechanic.

“We’re on a tangent here, ‘Ro. Just go with the flow,” Duo retorted, realizing for the first time that Heero had placed his hands on the sofa in such a way that Duo was penned against the corner.

“Alright,” Heero leaned in and whispered into Duo’s ear. A wet tongue darted out and slid around the shell of Duo’s metal-studded ear, causing the lacrosse manager to shiver uncontrollably. The action made Duo swallow and quiver, even more so when Heero swung a leg over Duo’s so he was straddling one of Duo’s thighs. Heero’s lips wandered around the side of Duo’s face and eventually found their way to his mouth and gently pried it open with a single, loving kiss. One of Duo’s arms was slung lifelessly over the back of the sofa, the other pulling Heero’s slim waist against his stomach as he leaned up into the kiss and greedily tasted the lacrosse player’s mouth over and over. Heero’s hands were still firmly planted, one on the back of the sofa, the other on the arm, and clawing almost vengefully at the floral-patterned fabric.

God, with the way I’m craving such conformity, Duo found himself thinking, I must be part of some kind of system.... I can’t believe I just admitted that....

Once again, Duo found himself noting what weird things one noticed at certain points in time. Here he was kissing the boy who’d been watching him from afar for years, and he was thinking about his place in the big scheme of things. Duo figured right then that he was either insane or extremely ADD.

A gasp, which was quickly stifled by another frenzied kiss, escaped Duo’s mouth and brought his thoughts tumbling right back onto the sofa with Heero. With the way Heero was rubbing so enticingly against Duo, it was taking every ounce of willpower Duo had to keep from clawing Heero’s shirt off. Losing himself in the moment, Duo took the initiative and at least gave into temptation somewhat, sliding his hands underneath Heero’s shirt and rubbing them across the corded muscles of Heero’s whip-like body. It felt nice--extremely nice--to finally be able to do that. Still, he was a little nervous to let his hands wander much further than that, even when he felt Heero slide against him in such a way that made Duo lean his head back and open his mouth in a nearly silent, guttural moan.

The pleasured groan seemed to spur Heero on, and he reached down to his hips and laid his hands gently on top of Duo’s, his fingers curling around the longhaired boy’s wrists. Blue eyes watching Duo carefully, Heero guided their hands down the outside of his thighs, Duo’s fingertips gently grazing the rough, canvas material of Heero’s jeans as they were led over the tops of Heero’s thighs and pressed firmly to the inside of his legs. Both boys stayed stock-still, breathing heavily as they got used to this new step in intimacy. Neither knew how it would progress from there, with Duo’s hands in such a place. Slowly, and without once taking his passionate eyes off Duo’s face, Heero removed his hands from Duo’s, waiting for a response.

For a moment, Duo was too lost in a dizzying swirl of thoughts to even begin to think about what was going on. Still, he kept his hands right where they were, enjoying the feel of piston-like strength welded into Heero’s powerful thigh muscles beneath his palms. Duo knew that with hardly a swipe of his fist, Heero could have seriously maimed him, yet Heero always treated him with the most delicate, almost bumbling care, like he was afraid he would break Duo if he touched him the wrong way. It was adorable, the thought bringing a smile to Duo’s face.

Then Heero leaned down and whispered softly into Duo’s ear, “You can touch me however you want.”

“Heero,” Duo breathed. His fingers twitched all of their own accord and crept higher on Heero’s legs, nearing the blue wrinkles in his jeans where his thighs bent into his hips. At the same time, his lips probed blindly to the side in search of Heero’s mouth, his eyes falling closed. Their mouths and tongues danced a fiery tango in the moonlight as Duo’s hands began to forge their own path, touching Heero in places that forced the Japanese boy to rip his lips away from Duo’s to let out a sharp gasp.

When Heero finally was forced to pull his mouth away from Duo’s so they could actually get some fresh oxygen in their lungs, they sat there, gasping for air in the moonlit dark as they stared at each other. Readjusting his position in Duo’s lap, Heero said, “Some tangent, Duo.”

Like a rising, musical crescendo, Duo let out a loud whoop of laughter. Hands now holding Heero’s hips, Duo slid lower on the sofa, his body slithering beneath Heero’s so that it left the Japanese boy sitting on his chest. “I’ll say!” he agreed, looking up at Heero with an adoring expression that made Heero feel warm inside, like he’d been drinking a slew of hot toddies, one right after the other.

“How can you do that?” Heero wondered, still watching Duo with softened eyes that looked like molten, blue gems. At Duo’s bewildered shrug, he cleared his throat and explained. “That is, how can you just go through life as easily and carefree as you do? I mean, like the way you always... ‘go with the flow’.”

Duo let out a giddy chuckle. “I dunno. I just kinda do,” he said, covering his mouth as if he was trying to stuff his laughter back down his throat. “Hey, it wouldn’t be ‘going with the flow’ if I knew what the hell I was doing. It’s not really something one thinks about.”

“But what if you do something stupid because you weren’t thinking!?” Heero said, fingers pressing harder into the sofa as he curled himself over Duo so that his head hung between his arms. His long, spiky fringe hung down, tickling the tip of Duo’s nose and exposing his beautiful eyes completely to the longhaired boy beneath him. “What if you got hurt?” Heero asked in a strangled whisper, his face dipping down slightly as he spoke.

But Duo was too busy trying to decide if it was a good thing or not to be drowning in Heero’s eyes the way he was. He’d certainly seen Heero’s eyes, and they had in fact been the first feature about the lacrosse player that had struck Duo, but never quite like this, without the barrier of Heero’s thick bangs obscuring them from view. Duo had never noticed how bold Heero’s stern eyebrows were, or how Heero’s long lashes curled over his large, almond-shaped eyes and flicked up elfishly in the corners. They truly were amazing eyes. “Beautiful,” was all Duo could say, dumbstruck by this sudden realization that Heero was so.

Delicate eyelids fluttered once, twice, over blue iris and inky black pupil in confusion.

“You,” Duo breathed. “You’re beautiful. I’d never realized just how... how beautiful you are.”

“See, boys can be beautiful too,” Heero said with a hint of smile, his eyelids lowering slightly. He removed the hand that was resting on the back of the sofa and flicked the tip of Duo’s pert nose with it.

“What a night,” Duo sighed happily. Seeing the way Heero’s face scrunched in confusion, he explained, “I mean, not only do I have a wonderful dream, but I get to wake up from it to you and your kisses.”

“You’re at your most beautiful when you dream, you know?” Heero said, resting his weight on the crooked elbow he laid across Duo’s chest, his other hand still lingering on the arm of the sofa above Duo’s head.

“Only with good dreams, Heero,” Duo said a bit cryptically.

“Well, you must have been having a very good dream, because you were perfect in your sleep before,” Heero said with certainty and a decisive nod of his head. “What were you dreaming?”

A slow, rather sad smile crept across Duo’s face. “That I was happy,” he said softly. Reaching up to brush his fingers across Heero’s face, he whispered, “Then I woke up to find out I really was.”

“Why’s that?” Heero asked, sitting up and leaning against the top of the couch, his arms folded on its arching back. He tilted his head slightly so he could still watch Duo as he rested his head in his arms. “Tell me what makes you happy, Duo.”

“I... well... I never thought about it before,” Duo stammered, unsure of what to say now that he’d been put on the spot. He had never really thought about his favourite things or what pleased him; he just knew when he was glad or happy, and it was as simple as that. He told Heero so.

“Well, think about it now,” said Heero in a firm tone, though his voice was still quiet and soft. “I want to know more about you,” he said, rubbing his cheek against his wrist like a tired kitten. “I want to know what makes you smile and what makes you laugh, what makes you cry. I want to know why your eyes light up when your by the ocean and why you love the rain. Tell me what makes you... you, Duo.”

“Umm....” Duo shifted beneath Heero as he tried to think, disrupting the Japanese boy’s lazy posture. “I guess that I like the rain because, well--oh I don’t know! I’m no good at this game!” Duo pulled himself upright against the couch’s arm in frustration, causing Heero to tumble off his stomach and plop in Duo’s lap in a mess of limbs. Duo squinted and turned his head towards the floor, expecting to be on the receiving end of one of Heero’s vehement glares.

But when a low, amused laugh reached Duo’s ears, he slowly reopened his eyes and looked back up at Heero, whose face wore an expression nowhere even close to an angry stare. Rather, as Heero was rearranging himself on the other end of the sofa, his legs tangled with Duo’s long ones, he was shaking his head and quivering slightly with the force of his laugh.

“Alright then, smarty-pants, why don’t you tell me why that’s so damn funny, why you’re laughing,” said Duo as he threw his arms over the back of the sofa, trying to look as nonchalant as he could without making it seem obvious that the mere, simple contact of his legs against Heero’s was driving him wild. The touch wasn’t even sexy or erotic in the least and didn’t make Heero react at all like before, when Duo had been exploring his body more boldly. Instead, it was more just the concept of being able to touch Heero so freely, intimate or not, without fear of being throttled that made Duo’s mind spin.

Heero raked his fingers through his shaggy bangs, the movement causing the straight moonbeams shining over his head to flicker across Duo’s face as Heero’s hand passed through them. With one corner of his mouth lifted in that ambiguous smirk of his, he said, “I told you that I always found you to be an amusing individual, Duo. You interest me.”

“Oh, so I’m a sideshow in a circus now, am I?”

Heero rolled his eyes, a gesture that seemed out of character for someone as serious as Heero was, but actually fell in perfectly with that cynical air of his. “No, Duo,” he said, “you’re an actor on stage, fumbling through the drama of your life.”

Duo narrowed his eyes, a suspicious pout on his lips. “You stole that from Shakespeare.”

“Just like Shakespeare stole it from someone else,” Heero returned, his lips parting slightly to transform his smirk into a grin. “Now it seems you’ve forgotten your lines,” Heero said, cocking his head slightly. There was a slight pause, and then Heero added, “You can call for it.”

“Line,” Duo deadpanned the phrase actors say when they have forgotten what comes next and need the stage manager to supply them with the words.

Heero’s grin softened into a smaller, more private grin, the secret one he saved only for Duo. “The rain reminds me of the day I first met Trowa, when I was out hitch hiking,” Heero said slowly, the beginning of his story enough to tell Duo that he wasn’t going to feed this to him easily, as was Heero’s usual way. “I’d been walking along that road for almost two days straight and I hadn’t eaten in nearly four. I don’t know where I got the stamina, especially when it started to pour down on me. Still, I kept my thumb out every time a car came by, just in case the next one would be the one to pick me up and carry me away to a new place and a new life.”

“What were you planning to do?” Duo asked with a sort of dreamlike quality to his voice, watching Heero with an almost enraptured look on his face. His eyes were focused on the way Heero’s small, plush lips moved when he talked, the slight pucker to them when he formed certain sounds and the way they curled when he said others. The cold, bluish moonlight only did to make the scene more ethereal, giving Duo that glass angel image all over again.

Heero shrugged, disrupting the moonbeams again. “I had no idea. I was just taking it day by day back then,” he said. “But then Trowa came along and his family let me come home with them. It was... the first day of the rest of my life.”

“Every day is that day,” said Duo. With a wry chuckle, he went on, “Unless, of course, it happens to be the day you die.”

“You certainly are the morbid one,” Heero commented dryly, though the rest of what he had to say was a bit less sarcastic. “Then again, I suppose you have enough rainy days of your own to have an excuse for such cynicism.”

“Ain’t it the truth,” Duo laughed, flexing his stiff knee. The movement pressed another part of his leg against one of Heero’s, and an involuntary shudder ran down Duo’s spine. He dared not say anything for a few moments for fear that his nervousness would show, and Heero seemed to not mind the quiet.

“What are you thinking?” Heero broke the silence, not even bothering to remotely try and hide the gaze he swept shamelessly across Duo’s body.

It took Duo a moment to get his wild thoughts in order before he could say anything. “I’m thinking... about... how nice it is to just be here with... with you,” he said at last, feeling embarrassed, even more so when he felt his cheeks turn pink. He was sure that with the moonlight painting his face, it was damn obvious he was blushing. He quickly spoke the next thought that popped into his head to distract both Heero and himself from his flustered expression. “You wanna know what’s really ironic?” he asked in a rushed voice.

“Hm?”

“Us,” Duo answered, his finger wagging back and forth to indicate the two of them. “Would you believe it if I told you that the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time was getting stuck being the manager for the lax team?” Duo went on, his hand dropping to his side and hanging off the side of the pretty couch. “Remind me to thank Principal Une for that one, ya know?” Duo let a tiny chuckle slip between his lips before a sudden realization dawned upon him. “Oh crap!”

“What?”

Duo tugged relentlessly at his bangs in frustration. “I just realized that I lost that bet I made with Q!” he whined, his eyes large and fretful. “And I just know that little weasel is gonna make me take him somewhere pricey for dinner because of you!”

Heero nibbled on the tip of one finger as he looked at Duo with a look of supreme bewilderment. “What did you bet him?”

“That there was no way in hell that I’d ever like lacrosse! Now look at me!” Duo cried, leaping up and practically getting caught up in the tangle of his and Heero’s legs. “I’m sitting here, getting cozy with the freaking captain of the team!” he cried, reaching behind him to grab his hair and toy with it. He didn’t even realize that he had started playing with Heero’s shoelace, which he still used to tie the end of his long braid.

“You say it like it’s a bad thing,” Heero said as he turned to sit normally on the sofa, now facing Duo’s back as the longhaired boy flitted about the room. There was no masking the blatant hurt in Heero’s tone as he spoke. For someone who seemed as tough as Heero, he certainly had a lot of emotions welling up inside, and he was always more than willing to bleed them for Duo.

Duo whirled around, still gripping his hair like it was some sort of lifeline. “I’ve loved these days,” he said softly, his eyes glowing like luminous, purple moons in the dark room. “All of them... even when we used to argue.” His mouth wasn’t twisted in the usual, masking grin he often wore, but instead was a bittersweet, almost sad smile, one of the most genuine expressions he’d ever worn in his life, as he gazed through shadows at Heero.

Heero’s face was streaked with so many emotions that it was impossible to discern just what he was feeling. Brushing one large chunk of brown hair out of his face, his piercing blue eyes caught Duo’s and he whispered, “I’ve loved you.”

The braid dropped out of Duo’s suddenly loose fingers, swinging like a knotted rope in front of his body. “Excuse me? Duo’s voice was small and almost nonexistent.

“I love you,” he repeated. “I think I’ve told you this before. Why do you have so much trouble believing me when I say it?”

“Heero, you gotta understand, I ain’t really used to people loving me here,” Duo said with a wave of one hand, slipping back into his harlequin costume. “I mean, I can’t even count how many families tried to adopt me and then decided they didn’t really want me before they ditched me at the orphanage again. And Solo used to say he loved me too, and look at him now. He wants to slit my throat.” The comment immediately dredged up memories Duo wasn’t quite sure he wanted to think about right then. He pulled his mind away from it by saying, “Hey, kissing you is one thing, and it’s nice and I like it, but how do I know you’re not gonna just leave me dead and broke in some gutter like Solo did?”

What Duo had said really cut Heero to the bone and it hurt like none other. And the pain wasn’t only due to the harsh comparisons Duo was making; Duo’s comments about being forgotten and left behind hurt Heero too. It was strange that Duo’s pain was his pain, but Heero decided that he would rather bear all of Duo’s hurt if it meant that Duo wouldn’t have to suffer any of it. “I’m not like any of them,” Heero insisted as he rose to his feet and started towards Duo, finding it hard not to not to sound choked as he spoke.

“Yeah, but how can I be sure?”

“I don’t know. Who’s ever sure about anything?” Heero asked, now close enough to Duo to put his arms up around Duo’s long neck and hold him. “You’re just going to have to trust me,” Heero said, resting his head on Duo’s shoulder, his lips grazing the collar of Duo’s shirt as he spoke. “Do you trust me, Duo?”

“I....” Duo wasn’t sure what to say. Trust wasn’t really on his top ten list of people-relations, and he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to add it. It was a scary concept to him to place faith in another person, especially if he wasn’t sure if that person would always pull through for him. Even Quatre, Hilde and that whole crowd, Duo was cautious around. He blamed it on a childhood of learning not to rely on anyone but himself. He heard a haughty voice in the back of his head preaching that he shouldn’t keep making such stupid excuses for himself all the time.

Heero pulled off of Duo’s shoulder and looked into his eyes. Despite the darkness and Heero’s lack of a couple inches, he still managed to posses a serious expression that not even a fool would mess around with. “You’re so ahead of yourself, you’ve forgotten the really important things, Duo,” he said with a slight, growling quality to his tone. “Only fools are satisfied with where they are. Don’t you want more?”

“I....” Duo stammered again, this time finding himself too distracted by Heero’s intense, Prussian blue eyes to conjure up a coherent answer. “I... I want you,” he said at last, not even realizing what he’d said until afterwards. A hand flew to his mouth and clamped shut over it, hoping to distill any more stupid things that might come out of it inadvertently.

Heero smiled again, though it was brief and hardly flickered across his face before it fell away. “You don’t regret saying that, do you?” he asked warily.

Slowly dropping his hand, Duo said, “Um, kind of... yeah, to be honest....”

“Why?”

There was that damn simple question again, one that Duo was afraid Heero liked asking too much. Duo had always found that asking ‘why’ led to certain dangers and he’d liked to avoid it as much as possible. Unfortunately, hanging out with someone like Heero seemed to put a damper on that scheme. But now that it was out there, there was no getting around it. Duo decided to just fess up and be honest. “Because it’s true,” he said sheepishly. He was sure he was blushing like a moron again.

The smile returned to Heero’s face as his arms tightened around Duo’s neck and he pressed himself closer to his taller boyfriend. Tilting his chin up slightly, Heero said into Duo’s ear, “It’s a beginning.”

The words reminded Duo of a song, which he quickly called to mind. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end,” he sang as his arms hesitantly crept around Heero’s waist. It was strange that whenever they were kissing, Duo was more than ready to leap into the action, often very aggressively. But when it came to little intimacies, like holding hands or laying in each other’s arms, Duo was a bumbling nervous wreck.

“I like that song,” Heero said, drawing Duo out of his thoughts. Kissing Duo lightly on the cheek, he murmured, “I hope this beginning never ends.”

That golden, familiar warmth flooded through Duo’s system, and he found himself saying in reply, “Me too, Heero.”

(x) X (x)

a/n: Sorry for the delay! School’s just started, and I figured it would be a good idea to get cracking on that summer reading, you know? TInsert song by Stephen Soundheim, from the musical, Into the Woods. The chapter title is a wonderful Beatles song that has a nasty habit of getting stuck in your head; it might seem random, but listen to it, and you’ll totally see where I’m coming from when I picked it as the title for this chapter. The line at the end of the chapter is a song by Semisonic, which I’m sure most of you know.