Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ 10 Seconds ❯ cruel thing ( Chapter 8 )

Chapter 8 cruel thing

I close the book a little while later. My feet had curled up underneath my legs on the chair with notice on my part and had begun to turn numb and were covered in tiny needles. I was sitting deep back in the reading chair and I could look straight up and ahead into the empty space where it belonged. The last, carefully constructed words remained in my mind for a minute, a fading impression, until another feeling overcame it.

I felt nothing. Nothing new, nothing extraordinary, and definitely without so much as an idea of what to do next in his strange contest. And when I closed it, pressing my palms against the cool, hard cover and the enchanting black and white face imprinted into it, I still didn’t have any idea. It is a cruel thing, almost, to have sparked such a terrible curosity, unending fixation with little cure, and not to leave instructions as to what to do with such an affliction. If a book could laugh, this one would.

I now know more about the human face—I know everything about the physical links needed to draw a smile, the basic colors of human expression, anything the book can supply me—but Duo still mystifies.

It burns to think about everything I could have done in his sight, in his light, in his wake, and wonder how things would have been. That desperate, clutching thought, that ruinous obsession that now controls me. How would his eyes have gleamed and burned had I caught them and made him understand—to act out that internal scene that drove me to this precarious position, if only to get it out of my system? How would he have gazed back at me, had my mouth betrayed me and said something I was afraid to say? Would it have been as terrible as I fear? Would he have let the disgust seep into his false smile and expose his true, loathing feelings for me?

Or would I be wrong?

Would he have stayed in that bed until I rolled over, instead of leaving me there?

Would he have cared about my worry? Would he have spoken to me, rather than run and hide?

Would he have held the side of my face and let me open my eyes instead?

Would I not be questioning things so much? Would I still know what I was doing in this insane world?

A war could have been enough for me. But no—I decided I needed a crush to complicate matters further. I decided I had to stare into my comrade’s eyes just to see if I could make him fall in love with me. But it was never just an experiment. I can see that now so clearly, but it’s a vision earned through turmoil, and I just feel sick.

"Heero Yuy never turns down a challenge, does he?" I mutter to myself. I feel my bones and my soul sink back into the fabric of the chair, defeated by gravity and letting it do what it would. I am still exhausted, and it is a fatigue unaffected by sleep. I sigh and let my eyes slip close, still limply holding the book in my lap.

"No, you never do. And I’ve never seen you fail, either."

Duo’s voice is unmistakable, and his body like a magnet, pulling every atom of my attention toward him when I startle and look up. He is standing in the aisle, not far from me, and I blink at him like impossibility for a moment. His eyes are violet and beautiful and smiling over the edges of his sunglasses, cutting through to the bone.

My hands automatically close the book and my blood courses thick through my face and into my fingertips. The entire contents of my chest cavity rearrange themselves and lodge themselves firmly at the top of my throat. And suddenly, holding the book is the most engaging thing I could possible do and I set my eyes tightly on it. Concentrating. Trying not to let my emotion take control again.

(Too late.)

Duo never stops smiling. I can feel it as I determinedly watch my fingernails grow, all the while watching him with every higher sense and no detectable sign of interest. He leans up against the bookshelf slightly, one hand reaching idly up and nudging a book out of the immaculate straight line and toying with it. He puts the other hand on his hip, making the fabric of his dark shirt shift audibly, and bends a little forward.

"What’cha reading?" he asks calmly.

"A book." It’s the only thing I can think of—I don’t mean to be caustic.

Duo lifts an eyebrow. "Hmm. You don’t say." I am too busy trying to push the sound of his voice out of my mind (and since when has it been so velvety to the ear?) when he speaks up again. "What’s it about, Odin?"

He enjoys using my codename. It makes me more anxious now. I feel like a child caught reading material for a boy years older than him and blushing underneath his mother’s scrutinizing eye. But it is worse. This time it is Duo’s eye, the only one I want to impress so badly it’s making my entire being turn and leap like a fool.

"A face."

The eyebrow lifts again. "A face?"

Shit. He’s laughing at me. "The human face, I mean," I manage out. I can feel that coldness seeping into my tone, something I resort to automatically. I have no idea how it can disguise such a tumultuous emotion clawing at me, but I thank the stars it can. It is only then that I look up at him as I cautiously loosen up.

But behind that smile I think he notices.

He reaches down and I numbly reach my hand up, lifting the book up to him. He hums again and I feel odd all over. And, opening the cover, I feel red hot and embarrassed, almost. His eyes skim over the first few words over the rims of his sunglasses. I can’t stop watching, even though he could catch me at any moment. He flips a page. "Is it interesting?"

I nod.

And pray he doesn’t get to that dreadful page.

"It sounds good. Have you read it all?"

I nod again. I don’t know now if I could make a sound if I wanted. But luckily he knows how to read the slightest tilt of my head out of the corner of his eye. He hums again.

"So this is where you’ve been slinking off," he grins, suddenly dropping one hand and clapping the book close with the other, looking down at me. And for a moment, neither of us talk. He just smiles and I hope that smile doesn’t mean he’s peering into my mind.

And then he says, "We have to go. There’s three bogies are headed for the stony ridge to go look for some snakes in the grass."

"Lions?" I ask. I ignore my throbbing heart for a moment and fall back into a familiar pattern. Three mobile suits, heading for our Gundams.

"No, bulls. Mean ones."

Three Taurus suits.

"And that’s not all, Mr. Hito. The principle’s going to call you to the office in only a few minutes to arrest you." My stomach turns cold. "Someone saw a pair of ghosts that shouldn’t have been there on the security cameras." And that’s when he pulls the gun from his underneath his dark shirt and gives it to me.