Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ And You Hear Me Call ❯ And You Hear Me Call, Chapter 2 ( Chapter 2 )

And You Hear Me Call

Chapter 2

Pairing: 1+2/2x1

Warnings: Angst

Category: post-EW

Rated R for eventual sex and language

Gundam Wing copyright Bandai, Sunrise and Sotsu Agency.

 

Many thanks for Natea and Diamroyal for beta reading.

 

“I wasn't jumping, for me it was a fall
It's a long way down to nothing at all” —U2, “Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of”

 

Duo was lying in bed, trying to figure out whether or not he had enough energy /today/ to take a shower or get himself clean in some other way before Trowa dropped by to make some tea and heat up that nasty rice gruel Wufei kept sending over. Before, it wasn't bad, but after having it day in and day out, even the bits of chicken Wufei had put in, along with the chicken-and-mushroom broth to give it some flavor, couldn't save the slop—Wufei said it was called “shi fan”—from looking like something he puked up.

 

“Better than that preserved stuff you'd be having instead, Maxwell,” Wufei had said over the vidphone, when Duo had first opened the plastic container, peeked inside, and voiced his distaste with a “What the hell, Wufei? I thought this was real food, man.” That was true; Trowa couldn't cook for him /every/ day, and Duo still had to eat somehow. At least the soupy rice was healthy, if less than appetizing.

 

But back to the matter of showering and maintaining proper hygiene. That'd pretty much gone to shit since he'd gotten sick, and it was beginning to show pretty badly, if yesterday had been any indication; Trowa had managed to bear up okay, but Quatre had had to resort to mouth-breathing a few seconds after he walked into Duo's apartment. It didn't help that Duo didn't look too well off either; a glance in the mirror revealed a haggard young man with bloodshot eyes set off by dark circles, a pale face save for the bright red nose, chapped lips glistening with that cream he'd been slathering on every hour and, as the crowning glory, a tangled mess of matted brown hair that was falling out of a several-day-old braid.

 

Then again, he hadn't expected Quatre to show up anyway. They'd gotten back from visiting Heero in the hospital and had dropped by Duo's so he could get fed and to update him on how Heero was doing. Not that there'd been much to update on, Quatre grumbled, because Heero seemed more interested in the TV than either of them. After a few minutes of Trowa trying to talk to him, they'd left.

 

“Dude, you know how he's feeling better than we do. Shouldn't you be less pissed off if you understand?” Duo had said, before eating some of that disgusting gruel.

 

Quatre had put on a long-suffering look. “Just because I know how he's feeling,” he'd said, “doesn't mean I have to like it.”

 

He'd gone on before Duo could interject, saying, “Heero's angry. He's upset because he's lost his voice and he's not getting it back, so at least it's not personal, but he doesn't want to communicate with anyone. No, I understand what he's feeling very well. But I'm frustrated.”

 

“Why? You'd probably be able to help him better than any of us right now.”

 

Quatre had sighed, sipping his tea. “Thing is, Duo, unless he accepts my—or anyone's—help, it's useless. If Heero doesn't want help, he can't get it. So we wait and see if that changes.”

 

“Oh,” was all Duo had said, and the conversation had ended right there. Of course, he'd come out feeling even more guilty about the shooting, because it shouldn't have been Heero losing his voice, it should have been him.

 

Granted, Heero hadn't talked too much—Duo preferred to think he didn't waste words, much like Trowa—but losing his own voice had to be devastating. Duo didn't want to imagine not being able to talk for the rest of his life; it was too horrible, so he felt relieved that it wasn't him, even though it should have been, and /that/ piled on the guilt even more.

 

Duo had thought about visiting Heero once he'd gotten over the cold, to at least say he was sorry for putting him in that position, but after hearing Quatre, he was torn about taking the precaution of avoiding Heero for a while until he calmed down, or just getting it over with and turning up at the hospital to let Heero punch him in the balls or throw the goddamn hospital food tray at his head.

 

Before Duo could expand on that mentally, however, the phone rang in the other room, the shrill ringtone piercing the air nastily.

 

“Fuck.” He managed to get out of bed and stagger to the console, pressing the “Answer” button. The screen remained blank, but he could hear some TV show in the background.

 

“Hello?” he asked.

 

Still no answer, except for the TV; Duo thought he heard the commercial jingle for Vodafone, but he wasn't sure.

 

“You know, if this is some stupid prank call, I'm going to go to bed, dickwad,” he growled. “Why don't you pick on someone who's...”

 

Then he heard something else, louder than the background noise: a series of taps on the receiver. It stopped for a few seconds, and then started again. A short tap followed by a longer one, then three short taps, the same short ones, and then four of them...

 

“Oh my fucking God,” Duo grumbled by the time the tapping was at its third or fourth round. It'd taken him a while to get it; Morse code. More specifically, Morse code for the word “asshole.”

 

It reached its sixth time when Duo said, “Okay, you win. Congratulations, you can use Morse code to cuss. That's fucking terrific. I'm going to go to bed, so feel free to fuck off.” He closed the connection, staggering off to his room.

 

That shower would have to wait; he couldn't move anymore today. Maybe he could beg Trowa to move him there and back when he came over tonight. He needed to do something about being dirty; the doctor's appointment was tomorrow, after all.

 

******

 

When Heero heard the sound of high heels clicking on the floor, he assumed it was one of the doctors there to check on him again. He glanced at the visitor and then back at the TV, since she was wearing a lab coat, hoping to look bored and uninterested.

 

“Hi. Sorry I took so long to finally come.”

 

That produced a double take. Relena stood before him, holding a large, almost gaudy bouquet in her arms. Well, now he knew she hadn't been hurt. Heero sighed imperceptibly in relief before he turned back to the TV; the soap opera Beach Passions had just begun, and he wanted to watch the overly musclebound Umberto propose to Belle. He'd seen the previews all last week.

 

But before Belle opened her mouth to answer, the screen went black and the monitor was pulled away from him. He looked up to see a rather irritated looking Relena with the TV under one arm and the prepaid card in her other hand. The bouquet lay in a chair, abandoned for the moment.

 

“What,” she asked in that dangerous tone of hers, “do you think you're doing ignoring me, Heero?”

 

Heero opened his mouth to answer that he hadn't heard from her in a week, hadn't known if she was all right, that obviously now that she was all right, he didn't see why she didn't tell him earlier, but that was all cut off in the middle when Relena snapped, “I don't lip-read. That's what you and the other guys do.” She nodded impatiently towards the nightstand. “Why don't you use that notepad over there?”

 

Heero rolled his eyes before reaching over for the notepad and pen and writing, “don't want to talk to anyone.” He tore the sheet off and thrust it out for Relena to read.

 

“Oh, that's terrific. I come all the way planet-side after a week of conferences, summits, and plain /hiding/ from whoever wants to kill me to see you, and you're talking to nobody,” she huffed, pushing the monitor farther away where Heero couldn't reach it. Not like that mattered, since without the card, the TV wouldn't work.

 

Hiding explained the lab coat—he should have known Relena would have been here in disguise, at the very least. “You should have come sooner—didn't know if you were hurt or not,” he wrote on the pad, tore that off and fought the urge to wad it up and toss it at her.

 

Relena gave him an exasperated glare. “Heero, you of all people should know that trying to argue with security after an assassination attempt is nearly futile. A week was the soonest I could make it here, what with bodyguards nearly putting me under house arrest when I wasn't where I needed to be.”

 

As she put her hands on her hips, the lab coat fell a bit open. Heero saw that she must have come from one of those meetings she'd been talking about; underneath, she was wearing one of her expensive suits, black with a pink blouse.

 

“Maybe if you'd asked Quatre or Trowa, you'd know I was all right, or even if you've watched the news. But you haven't been watching if you found out by now, and,” Relena held up the note saying “don't want to talk to anyone” with manicured fingers, “as this says, you didn't even bother to ask.”

 

She pulled up the chair with the bouquet, picking that up and sitting down with a relieved sigh, muttering, “These heels are killing me. Now,” she said, louder, scooting the chair closer to the foot of Heero's bed, “I'm sorry for being harsh; after all, you've been through a horrible time, and it's not that I don't care. But you've been ignoring Quatre and Trowa too, /barely/ civil to Wufei, and the doctors and nurses say you're not too cooperative. This isn't good for you, Heero.”

 

“Get to the point,” he wrote, not even bothering to tear off the page this time, but turning the notepad so Relena could see.

 

She sighed, laying the bouquet on her lap. “You lost your voice. That's terrible, and we all wish that hadn't happened. But it's not coming back, Heero, and there's nothing we can do—otherwise, don't you think that'd have been done by now? I know you're angry. Everyone knows you're angry. That's fine, but you need to get over it soon.”

 

“Don't tell me to get over it. You're not the one who can't talk anymore.” This time, Heero threw the paper at Relena, though it only fluttered to the ground. Relena remained unruffled, only bending over to pick it up and read it.

 

“So?” Her expression was nonchalant, maybe even bored. “If you can't stand that manmade voicebox—and I certainly don't blame you—there's other ways to get around without talking, which you'll have to learn anyway, like it or not. I can't lip-read to save my life. What about picking up sign language?”

 

She leaned back in her chair, the plastic wrapping of the bouquet crackling as she crossed her legs over the knee. “It's not the end of the world if you can't talk anymore, and you're not going to realize that if you keep pitying yourself. Sooner or later, you'll need to move forward from this.”

 

When Heero didn't write anything down, she continued. “You know you can always look to us for support; we'll always be here when you need us. But you need to get yourself out of...whatever this is. I can't do that for you, and neither can Duo, Wufei, Quatre or Trowa.”

 

Heero snorted. “Not like Duo would help anyway. Haven't heard from him.” He almost threw this sheet of paper at Relena again, but stopped himself in time.

 

She frowned, eyebrows drawing together under honey-blonde bangs. “Trowa just took Duo to a doctor a few days ago—he's gotten orders to rest as much as possible. He's getting better, but thanks to the medication, he's also currently incoherent when he's not sleeping. I'm sure he'll contact you once he's fully functional again, so be patient.”

 

“Anyway,” she said, looking at the window and the darkening sky outside, “I'd better put the flowers in something and leave soon. My bodyguards are going to be fuming when I get back.” She rose to her feet. “Will you think about what I've said?”

 

Heero didn't look at her for a long time, but instead turned his attention to the blanket across his lap, smoothing wrinkles in the gray cotton that weren't there. When he heard her suck in a breath to say something, he nodded as much as the neck brace would let him.

 

“Good.” The TV was brought back to where it originally was, and she slid in the prepaid card. “I was going to cut that up if you hadn't said yes,” she said, her blue eyes sparkling mischievously. “Looks like fun, especially since it's not /my/ card.”

 

Heero rolled his eyes. He'd been doing that a lot, but what had been happening lately seemed to demand eye-rolls when it wasn't on the TV screen. Well, except for Beach Passions, but he'd learned all soap operas were inherently dumb.

 

Still, he had to admit, he was going to miss it when he finally got back to work.

 

******

 

A week and a half and a neck brace removal later, Heero had returned to his apartment. There was still another week of rest he had to go through before returning to duty, which bothered him; he wanted to get back into a routine as soon as he could. Life outside the hospital was nice, but not doing /anything/ didn't feel right, despite Commander Une's orders for him to stay home until he'd made a complete recovery.

 

Until then, he spent his nights much like this one, standing at the window in the dark with a mug of hot water, looking out the window at nothing in particular. Now that he was out of the hospital he didn't feel much like watching the TV so much. It wasn't that watching the snow fall and collect in glittering heaps on the ground was any more entertaining, but it allowed him to /think/, to reflect a little bit and deal with what had happened.

 

Quatre stopped by often to visit. He was going back to L4 tomorrow, because there was a meeting that even Rashid couldn't serve as proxy for. He showed up once a day, at first accompanied by Trowa, then later, as he gradually memorized the route to Heero's apartment, by himself. Initially, the visits had a purpose; the first was showing up with a food processor—the way Heero's throat was, eating solid food was out of the question—then later, to “help” prepare meals, and, recently, Quatre finally abandoned that and simply came over for the sake of being there. Not that Heero minded; since the war ended, he didn't get to see Quatre that frequently—being the head of a large company took up a lot of time.

 

Wufei had shown up once or twice with some rice gruel and soft noodles; things, he said, that were good for people recovering from whatever illness they had, since they were easily digestible. Both were all right, Heero thought, the noodles salty enough to have flavor without making his throat sting, but he wanted something he could chew for once.

 

Still, at least what he'd been eating was /food/, and not that pink mouthwash that he'd had to apply with sponges every now and then in the hospital to keep his mouth from drying out. Even if whatever he had was pureed fish or vegetables, at least it was something he could swallow. Quatre had brought over some dark chocolate that Heero would break into smaller pieces and put in his mouth for the sheer feeling of something solid in there until his throat healed completely.

 

Bit by bit, things were returning to normal. It'd taken him some time after Relena's visit in the hospital, but by the time he was ready to leave the hospital, Heero had come to terms to what had happened. The loss of his voice was still the first thing he thought about when he woke up in the morning, and the young doctor's words still rang through his head at any random time during the day, like when he was preparing lunch, turning on the TV or as he got up to answer the door. The nail in the coffin greeted Heero every day in the mirror: a two inch purplish-red scar horizontally across the throat, stopping just shy of his jugular vein.

 

The scar still showed in the window's weak reflection. Heero reached out and touched the cold glass; some time ago, he would have thought the image in the window was much like himself, far from complete without a voice. He still thought that way sometimes—that he'd never be whole without it—but there wasn't anything he could do about it, and otherwise, he was the same he'd always been.

 

“It's a miracle you even got to the hospital alive,” Dr. Maitland had said. This sentiment had been echoed loudly by Quatre, Wufei, Relena and Trowa. Relena, over the vidphone, had added that for a moment, it'd looked like he'd been decapitated. While that was information he'd rather not have known, it put things in perspective; at least Heero wasn't in the morgue.

 

But there was one more problem to deal with, and that was Duo, or rather the lack of him. Heero didn't feel Duo so much as his absence, the fact he wasn't /here/.

 

Come to think of it, the problem had two parts. One, of course, was Duo's lack of presence and failure to contact him, and the second was why Heero cared so much about it. He couldn't see himself feeling the same way about the others, though he considered them good friends. No, he felt Duo's absence strongly; it was like the pain in his still-healing throat.

 

Trowa had said that Duo was better now, that he'd returned to Preventers a few days ago, but he'd immediately undertaken field assignments and wasn't around all that often, either in the office or in the apartment building. Heero wanted to contact him, ask what was going on, but the problem was /how/. Email was too impersonal, and knowing Duo, he'd probably delete the messages without opening them beforehand. Heero had considered calling him, but as Trowa said, he wasn't home most of the time, and messages on the answering machine could be deleted too.

 

Showing up at Duo's apartment was another option, but if he wasn't available through the phone, the chances of him being actually available in person were highly unlikely. And then there was the issue of Duo's reaction to Heero's new inability to speak. When he'd finally communicated—he didn't want to use “talk” or “speak” yet—with Quatre, Trowa and Wufei without the writing pad, Heero had noticed either a slight aversion of the eyes, cringing or, in Trowa's case, a few coughs every now and then for a while. It was uncomfortable for Heero too, trying to talk normally and pretend his voice was still there, but as of now, they'd grown accustomed to it.

 

Duo would gloss it over with some joke about how rusty his lip-reading skills were before looking away, laughing awkwardly to cover up the silence. No, Heero decided, he wouldn't react well.

 

He thought of Duo gradually lessening contact until whatever they had was gone and tightened his other hand on the mug handle. Duo fading out or leaving in any way was something Heero didn't want at all. He didn't want the others to leave, either, but especially not Duo.

 

There was something about Duo that drew Heero towards him. He didn't know what, exactly, it was; whether it was his voice or the way he smirked when he told those jokes of his, or neither of those. All Heero knew was it was /something/, and while he was fine before Duo showed up and probably would be fine if Duo left, he didn't want that happening. He just didn't want it.

 

Heero realized that when all was said and done, he didn't want Duo to go and pull away because of what had happened. He wanted Duo here. With him. Not with anyone else, but with him, and preferably for as long as possible.

 

It didn't seem to help anything—he was no closer to figuring out how to get to Duo—and he wasn't sure how to classify what he felt for Duo either.

 

A light going out in one of the windows across from his room made Heero blink; his block was now entirely dark. Just as well, he thought, since he needed some rest. A good night's sleep would, hopefully, help him think this over a little more before he had to go back to work the following week.