Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Anything at All ❯ Feels Like Home ( Chapter 3 )

A/N: I’m setting a goal to make updates at least twice a month from now on. Look forward to it!   Chapter Three – Feels Like Home   Matt was a perfect date, from what Hilde could tell. She hadn't had to open a single door nor had she wanted for attention even in the midst of a crowd of co-workers who all knew each other. That was not to say, however, that she felt any less alone. This was not her crowd, and as she made small talk with the working professionals around her she began to wish she could slip away and go home to Duo, who would doubtlessly be fixed in front of the tv watching an old, campy horror flic. He had, as long as she had known him, gravitated toward the bad effects and poorly scripted plots. She had never shared his interest but sitting with him was a way for her to enjoy his company and relax without the pressure of his full attention. Sometimes she would be able to just admire his handsome features without him knowing. Hide cleared her throat at the thought, squirmed a little in her high heels and tried to concentrate on the conversation she had been having about life after the war with a woman (if you could call her that, as she could not nearly be much older than Hilde) with long chestnut curls and earrings that dangled and swung with her every movement.  "But that's really nice, not having to work for someone else, you know, being your own boss. I'm so jealous!" The girl chatted enthusiastically. Hilde tried to find it in herself to match the brunette's smile, but as she glimpsed her manicured nails that were wrapped delicately around her glass of chardonnay, she found it difficult to find her compliment sincere. Instead she shrugged and tried to steer the conversation away from the gritty details of what her job truly entailed. Curling her fingers into her palms, suddenly paranoid that the remnants of motor oil that never really disappeared despite rigorous scrubbing would give her away, she excused herself on the pretense of refilling her now empty glass with wine.    The sudden knock at the door made Duo jump. He reached under the couch for the pistol he kept there, loaded. Old habits died hard, after all. Shoving the gun into the hem of his jeans in the small of his back, he made his way to the door, ducking lower than the height of the windows as he approached. He let out the breath he was holding when a quick glance through the peephole revealed the sorry sight on his doorstep. He swung the door open. “I let her out of my sight for one whole evening……” he muttered to himself as he ushered Matt, who was carrying piggyback-style a semi-conscious Hilde, inside. Matt winced as he turned to slip Hilde into a controlled fall onto the couch. He rolled his shoulders as Duo helped arrange Hilde on the couch. Duo felt her balmy forehead and brushed her bangs out of her eyes before stepping back to consider where they usually kept the aspirin his roommate would no doubt be in need of come morning (if not sooner).
          “How much did she have?” he asked Matt without taking his eyes off of the sleeping girl who was now curling herself around a throw pillow.
          “I stopped counting after her third scotch and soda” his friend answered.
          “Atta girl….” Duo mused. ‘Drink like the big boys.’       &nbs p;   “I’m sorry, man.” Matt said sheepishly. “I should have kept better track of her.”
          Duo shrugged.
          “It’s not your fault. She’s a big girl. She knows what she’s getting herself into.”
          Matt was silent for a while before he said softly, “That’s what I was afraid of…”
He excused himself after asking if there was anything else he could do. Duo assured him he could handle it and tried to reassure him that he shouldn’t feel guilty. After locking the door behind him, Duo made his way back to the couch in their living room and flipped the safety back on on the gun he then slid back into its hiding spot under the couch. He stayed there, sitting with his back against the glass coffee table, letting the relative silence of the house settle around them. He could hear the hum of the refrigerator, the whir of the air conditioning through the vents, the ticking of the clock in the kitchen, and Hilde’s slightly labored breath in front of him. Resting his elbows on his knees, he dug his hands into his bangs and just watched her for a while. He wasn’t aware of how much time passed before she tried to roll over and fuzzily struggled with the task of kicking off the heels she had been wearing. Duo helped slide her feet out of them and placed them neatly on the floor to one side. Hilde mumbled something and rolled over onto her side, facing away from him.
          He thought suddenly that he might as well get her a blanket as he watched her wrap her arms around herself. He got up then and made his way down the hall which led to their bedrooms. Before he had time to think it out, he had already grabbed the extra blanket he kept in his room and walked back into the living room with it. If he had thought about it he supposed the more logical thing was to find one from her room, but rejected the idea on the basis of him being a little frightened of rummaging through a girl’s room. He knew where this one was, at least. It was brown and heavy for its size, with the yawning face of a tiger stitched on one side. He laid it gingerly over her, but her eyes opened nonetheless. She visibly struggled to put the pieces together of where she was for a moment before looking up at him sheepishly.
          “I overdid it, huh.” she said softly.
          “A little.” Duo replied with a small smile. He walked around to sit next to her as she sat up on the couch. He leaned back and sighed, suddenly wondering what time it was. He sank into the couch tiredly as they shared the silence for a moment. Hilde rubbed her eyes and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. She seemed groggy and still smelled of booze and mingled perfume, but her lucidity was encouraging. Duo wasn’t much in the mood for keeping her from aspirating vomit tonight.
          “Think you’re gonna be sick?” he asked, just in case. She shook her head and said “no”, but that she really needed to pee. Duo chuckled good-naturedly and flipped through the channels on TV while he waited for her to get back from the bathroom. Advertisements and infomercials filled the air. When she did come back, she seemed much more awake, and commented on the absurdity of one of the products being sold by an abrasive salesman. Duo said nothing and finally settled on a rerun of a sci-fi series he’d seen every episode of already at least twice. The two watched silently together except for the occasional indignant grunt from Hilde at a particularly absurd scene. Soon her body began to thirst for sleep and she found herself leaning more heavily into the cushions and Duo's shoulder. When he showed no sign of discomfort with the closeness, she let go of her remaining inhibitions and rested her head on his shoulder. He moved after a moment or two and she jerked back, forming an apology that died on her lips as he set a throw pillow on his lap and patted it. She hesitated a moment in disbelief before scooting to lie with her head resting on the pillow.  "Just make sure you tell me if you're gonna puke." he said, laying a hand on her head, "These are new shoes". "Yer not wearing shoozz…" she pointed out, still slurring a bit. "Exactly." Hilde closed her eyes and let the remaining dizziness fade. She smiled and tried to savor the moment, both cursing herself for being too inebriated to truly appreciate it and glad to have the ability to leave the more cumbersome thoughts behind that would ruin it for herself anyway. She sighed and let the swirling nothingness in her head take over. Her eyes popped back open suddenly and she froze as Duo began to gently stroke her hair. It was such a little thing, she knew, but incredibly surprising coming from the hands that felt the burden of taking so much life during the war and silently withheld from most unnecessary or intimate interaction. She knew this wasn’t normal for him, and that caused a great swirling of uncertainty where there had just been blissful absence. She was sure he was intimate with his girlfriend, but even then there was a difference between the lewd behavior he showed then and what he was doing now. Hilde felt goosebumps up her arms and unintentionally tensed, but soon her body gave up the ghost and let the day catch up with her, along with the task of ridding her tissues of the substances she had consumed hours earlier. Duo continued to absentmindedly stroke the soft ebony locks of Hilde’s now horribly mussed hair as cyborgs battled a giant space squid on TV. He felt unnaturally warm and wondered if it was because of the addition of Hilde’s body heat. He couldn’t be sure how much time and poor computer graphics went by before a very quiet realization slipped into his consciousness. The warmth had nothing to do with the temperature, but with a feeling he was very unfamiliar with filling the crevice of his chest. He tried to pinpoint it and could only come back to the word ‘home’. Not a word he had used often in his life, and when he wound back the reel of memories he could find no similar feeling except for very briefly in between when he had first arrived at the Maxwell Church and when it met its fiery end. His mind flashed to the feeling of Sister Helen’s hands braiding his long hair after a bath she had somehow wrestled him into. She had paid special attention so not as to tug too harshly on the tangled mess as she slowly worked it out into something less wild. The seemingly endless and capricious patience the woman showed him was humbling. He wondered if his mother had been like that, if he could have known her. That was the end of that train of thought, since he knew from years of experience that it led into much darker places that proved difficult to pull himself from once immersed. Still, he thought, maybe Hilde had given him something similar to what Sister Helen had tried to give him all those years ago. Before she met a terrible, violent death in his arms.
          With that, Duo looked down at Hilde and as he judged her to be settled into a deep slumber, he scooped her up in his arms and made his way down the hall to deposit her in bed.