Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ For the Glue to Dry on Our New Creation ❯ Chapter 1

 

For the Glue to Dry on Our New Creation

 

 

Part 1: A Heart Will Always Go One Step Too Far

 

 

"Come one now, come all ye

This story breaks free here

Tales from the back pages"

 

*

He didn't see any of them right after it was over because he realized he was afraid of them - they'd all fought again so willingly. They'd all thrown themselves back into battle like they were born to do it. He supposed he'd been designed to do it, too, but just because his body and brain were wired a certain way didn't mean he had the heart for it.

 

Wufei frightened him the most, Trowa a close second, because it appeared to him that they'd never stopped fighting, that they didn't know how. Duo and Quatre were the strangest, because they fought willingly and without losing themselves. They still approached Heero as his friends, because friendship was a concept they understood and believed existed.

 

He'd emerged from the ocean that night, battered and soggy, and he'd disappeared without a word to any of the other four pilots. He disappeared, but he didn't go far.

 

*

He found Duo first because Duo was pilot 02, and 02 came next after 01. He found Duo in London, walking the streets with his characteristic grin and his characteristic enthusiasm. It was a struggle for Heero to follow him because he hadn't been to a doctor since he'd plunged into the ocean. His fractured ribs and bruised pelvic bone made walking quickly quite difficult, but it provided him with good cover. He followed Duo, dressed in stolen clothes that were too big, and walked with a limp, hunched over enough that he could hold his ribs. He looked homeless because he was homeless, and everyone left him alone.

 

When he saw Duo meeting different people on different street corners, he realized that Duo was looking for a place to live, and that the men and women he met were showing him apartments. They went to bustling business districts, quiet residential neighborhoods where it looked like most of the homes were single-family, and worn out working class sections, with stretches of old, abandoned factories. Duo looked at each one as though the promise of an entire future lived inside.

 

Heero wondered what name he was giving all these landlords and property managers. He wondered how old he was pretending to be. He wondered why Duo looked only at apartments too large to be for just one person. Finally, he limped closer, crouching down beside a neighboring porch that was sagging toward the street. He steadied himself with a hand pressed down on the weeds growing up between cracks in the sidewalk. Heero heard the man showing Duo a small house address him as 'Max,' and while he was listening, he heard Duo give his preferences for what kind of place he was looking for - two bedrooms with a big kitchen, 'one we could eat in together,' and access to a garage because 'I like to fix up engines.' Duo would be moving in by the following week with 'a good friend,' but they would both need their space.

 

Heero lowered his aching body to the cement and wondered who Duo could be moving in with. Hilde seemed the most likely choice, because Duo always seemed to be flirting with Hilde.

 

Heero sat and leaned his arms on his knees and thought about what it would be like to live with Duo, and even more strange, what it would be like to have Duo ask him to be his roommate. He imagined Duo speaking with the landlord, shaking his hand and putting down a deposit to keep the place. He imagined Duo's excited grin and the brightness of his wide eyes when he turned to Heero where he was hiding in his stolen clothes and extended his hand to him, pulling him to his feet. "Hey, Heero, we're friends right? Wanna give 'normal' a try?" Heero pressed his lips together against the smile that threatened to crease the dirt on his face.

 

He hoped, quietly and unobtrusively, that Duo wanted to live with him. Rationally, he knew that Duo wouldn't want anything of the sort. They'd had maybe a handful of conversations in the two years they'd known each other which weren't either painfully stiff or full-on arguments. Duo should have no way of knowing that Heero liked him at all, except he thought that, somehow, Duo probably did know, because Duo understood lots of things Heero didn't. He wondered if Duo knew that their conversations served as models for how Heero interacted with strangers, that he used what Duo said and how he said it to be normal around people he didn't know.

 

"So, who is this bloke you're movin' in with? What's he do?"

 

"Oh, he's a student. We both are. I wanna get my certification in small engine repair and he's - "

 

Heero squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his hands down over his ears, struggling to his feet before he heard a name. He limped away down the sidewalk, in plain sight if anyone wanted to look. Maybe Duo's eyes were on his back the entire length of his retreat down the block, but he kept his ears covered and didn't care if he looked like a crazy person, because, right then, he felt like one. His shoes scuffed on the cement, and his pained breaths were loud in his ears. He successfully blocked out Duo's voice and didn't stop to rest until he was safely around the corner.

 

He checked into the hospital that night and allowed his ribs to be taped by a nurse who kept looking up at him like she thought he'd do something crazy. He even let them give him some pain meds that they promised wouldn't put him in too much of a fog.

 

He didn't sleep for shit and was gone by morning.

 

*

He found Trowa in a motel in Nantes, shirtless and, by the looks of it, drunk. He was taking large swallows from a bottle of something dark amber colored, possibly bourbon.

 

Heero had been watching for maybe five minutes when Trowa stood up from the table and slid open the glass door leading out to the parking lot, catching his toe on the track and nearly stumbling. He staggered the rest of the way out to the lot, stopping by a car and relieving himself on the front passenger-side tire.

 

Heero, crouched in the deep shadow between two cars directly across from Trowa, craned forward to better see his movements, curious as to whether Trowa had consumed enough alcohol to successfully overload his body's ability to process and eliminate it. Heero had never tried to get drunk before, but Duo had said that his own attempts had been fruitless - their bodies burned everything up too quickly.

 

As Trowa turned and swayed back into his room, sliding the door shut behind him, it was clear that he'd found the threshold beyond which even Gundam pilots could trash themselves. Heero had never seen him looser, had never seen his shoulders slouch like that, had never seen him so melancholy. Trowa sat on the edge of the bed and looked utterly at a loss.

 

Heero understood the feeling. Trowa had nowhere he needed to be and nothing he needed to do. Heero crept closer to his room, sticking to the shadows when he could. Reaching the wide expanse in the middle of the lot, he darted to the other side, again hiding in the shadows, but now much closer to Trowa's room. From this angle and distance, he could see Trowa's skin shining dully in the orange light of the motel room, especially across his forehead and along his upper lip. He realized what was about to happen when he saw Trowa's stomach muscles heave, forcing the tall pilot to his feet and sending him reeling into the bathroom.

 

He waited, wondering if he should venture inside to make sure Trowa was all right. He wondered if it was boredom that had inspired this experiment, or whether it was the wide-eyed stare Trowa had been directing at the table's wood veneer, that lost look, that feeling of stasis when the rest of the world was moving by at a blurred pace. Trowa had been the most steadfast of them all, stoic and unflinching, fearless in the face of missions that demanded his soul more than his skills as a pilot. There had been no way for them to get at what he hid. Maybe this wasn't an experiment at all.

 

He wondered what it was about Duo that let him look for apartments in London, grinning at the prospect of a future, and what it was about himself and Trowa that they were respectively wandering and lost.

 

When Trowa emerged from the bathroom, his color had returned and his face shown as though he'd just scrubbed it. He sat on the bed again and stared at himself in the mirror mounted over the dresser against the wall. His mouth was drawn down in a tight frown.

 

Heero thought that Trowa would probably pass out now that he'd gotten rid of the extra alcohol in his system, but he only glared at himself until he abruptly crossed one arm in front of his chest and pulled on the elbow with his other hand. He was stretching, Heero realized, when the pilot switched arms, then pulled one behind his head over his shoulders. He twisted his spine and fisted both hands in the bedspread, then turned the other way. Then he stood up and twisted his torso far enough around to stare down at the backs of his feet. He turned back and bent forward at the waist, laying his palms flat on the carpet and lowering his head until his nose nearly touched his knees.

 

Heero crept further forward, eyes intent on the boy's body, interest sparking at this impressive show of flexibility. Trowa was long - taller than any of them - but densely packed with wiry, young muscle. Without his shirt, Heero could see the knobs of his spine poking up where his lower back was bent. He could see biceps and triceps stand out over the bone they wrapped around.

 

There were few things in the world that Heero 'liked,' but the human body was one of them - a thing he'd grown to appreciate and trust and admire over his years of training. The human body as a weapon - like his and like Trowa's - was powerful and erotic. At sixteen, what Heero knew of human sexuality, he had gleaned from his own physical reactions to seeing a body like Trowa's do exactly what it was supposed to.

 

His breath caught when Trowa straightened and then leaned back, spine bowing backward into a perfect bridge. Every visible muscle stood out in stark relief as his whole body stretched, and Heero wanted to run his hand over that stomach, flat as a shelf. He wanted to sit on the bed and stare at it, rest a cup of water over his belly button to see if it would fall. Then Trowa's abdominal muscles flexed and he kicked his legs up over his head, spreading them first part-way, his knees bent, next letting them drop lower into a split. He held himself up like that until his face turned red and his arms started to tremble, finally tucking his legs, relaxing his arms and rolling forward into a sitting position.

 

Heero spotted a picnic table outside the room next to Trowa's, and when the boy rolled back onto his shoulders and up into a handstand, he darted over to it, taking a seat on the bench and settling down to watch more closely. He held his breath when Trowa went up on one hand, hair hanging in a curtain that masked his face. The fingers of that one hand were splayed wide on the carpet, and from where Heero sat, they looked abnormally long. His mouth twitched into a smile when Trowa switched arms, shifting his weight just slightly to the left to keep his balance.

 

Lowering his head to the table, Heero cushioned his chin on his arms, the simple physicality of Trowa's routine somehow soothing him. The room was tiny, so there was hardly room for the extensive tumbling sequences he knew Trowa could do, but it was enough to witness the other pilot's careful stillness as he balanced his weight on his palms, a kind of stillness very different from that of a few minutes ago, slumped on the bed.

 

Finally, days of travel, as well as the pain of his mending injuries crept up on him and covered him like a blanket, weighing down his eyelids and making his chest heavy. He watched Trowa for as long as he could, but he eventually fell asleep right there at the picnic bench.

 

*

He awoke in the gray light of early morning with a damp sweatshirt and a numb left ass cheek. He jolted upright, vertebrae cracking unpleasantly out of their curved position, hand feeling for the gun at his back. He slumped forward again when he found it, blinking and looking around at the foggy motel lot, gaze catching and sticking on Trowa's obviously empty room. The curtain across the sliding glass door had been pushed aside to reveal a neatly made bed. The door was open, too, indicating that Trowa had left in a hurry.

 

He had undoubtedly walked right by Heero's sleeping figure on the picnic bench.

 

He wrapped a hand around his taped ribs and stared down at the stained picnic table, wondering what would have happened if Trowa had decided to wake him up before he'd left. He imagined a big hand on his shoulder. He ground his teeth in frustration at what he knew would have happened then - that moment before recognition, that moment of pure, unforgiving instinct, when he would only have been able to perceive a threat. But then he would have turned and seen Trowa's face and its silent invitation in one visible eye. He would have seen it in Trowa's posture, in narrow shoulders - idleness and loneliness. Trowa's invitation would have been of a different sort from Duo's.

 

Had either happened. And they hadn't, he scolded himself, jerking his hood up to cover his hair as two guests emerged from their room a few doors down and crossed behind him to their car. He pushed himself to his feet and turned toward the street when a girl came out of the office and made as if to approach him. She was wearing a name tag and looking quite leery of him. In his peripheral vision, he saw her trail after him down the driveway.

 

"Hey! Wait!"

 

But he didn't stop, and she had the good sense not to follow. It was only after he had boarded a bus to the Paris spaceport that it occurred to him, maybe Trowa had left a message for him, and that she'd been trying to deliver it.

 

 

Part 2: And a Heart Will Always Stay One Day Too Long

 

 

"Come head-on, full circle
Our arms fill with miracles"

 

*

The missed opportunity ate at him for the entire journey to L4, until he forced himself to get over it. He couldn't turn around, anyway. The trip took nearly a week, with stopovers on each of the three colony clusters that preceded L4, and the whole ride, Heero didn't emerge from his private cabin. There was no one he wanted to see, and anyway, even if there had been, a detour would have ruined the careful planning of the task he'd set for himself. Pilot 04 came after 03.

 

He kept the only bag he'd brought with him on his person, slung over his shoulder or resting in his lap, or under his head as a pillow. It contained everything he owned - all the money he had from his closed war-time accounts, his two favorite guns, a change of clothes, and a book which he had never read but which contained all his fake IDs, passports, and other identifying documents. Not even his fellow pilots knew about all of those identities.

 

He wondered if he should break himself of the word 'fellow,' since the five of them had broken apart, scattered on Earth and in space. But if he did that, if he gave the five of them a different label, then he had no reason to go to L4; he could abandon his effort to see the next pilot in the sequence. He would certainly have to stop imagining scenarios in which they took his hand and offered him a life he otherwise wouldn't know how to lead.

 

*

He thought he'd cased the joint pretty well given his limited resources. He'd evaded cameras, stepped around sensors, timed his entry to when security was at its weakest - in the dead of night, right on the shift change. He'd even done his research and checked before hand who was staying in the Winner mansion that week - and still he couldn't have predicted that one of Quatre's sisters' boyfriends would stumble into him en route to the bathroom.

 

The carpet was thick; the man was essentially silent when they both rounded the corner and smacked into each other. As soon as he'd recovered, the man took one look at Heero and started shouting bloody murder.

 

"Stay where you are! Security! Someone come quick! It's a Gundam Pilot!"

 

For several seconds, Heero stood rooted, strangely amused as the man cast about comically for something that could be used as a weapon. Right then, he wished for Duo's quick tongue, Trowa's expressive eyebrows, Wufei's acerbic wit, or better yet, Quatre's easy confidence, but alas, all he had working for him were his legs. So he turned and ran back the way he'd come, wondering just how quickly news of his presence would make it to Quatre. If Heero had any hope of making it out of the mansion without another "Breaking and Entering" charge going on his already lengthy Gundam Pilot record, then Quatre needed to be notified immediately.

 

He ran until the sharp ache of his healing ribs forced him to stop. Ducking into a small alcove behind multiple urns and potted palms, he bent forward over his knees to catch his breath. He held his hands tightly against his thighs to keep himself from breaking every piece of expensive, useless crockery providing his cover. He scolded himself for bringing this on Quatre, for inflicting his problems on everything that Quatre had going for himself.

 

He resolved to remove himself from the mansion as quickly as he was able, and maybe find Quatre later, in the city, or at his office. He squeezed his knees and dropped to a crouch when he heard Winner security approaching.

 

"He'll try to lose us in the residential wing; we have to find him before he gets to an exit."

 

"Careful - Master Winner said not to touch him. Get too close and he'll likely snap."

 

His lips pulled apart in an ugly grimace. They were right to be afraid of him, though he didn't know why they would assume that he'd come here to hurt or threaten Quatre.

 

When they were out of earshot, Heero pressed a hand to his ribs and straightened. The bandages were coming loose; he hadn't bothered to change them since he'd left the hospital in London. He looked down at his shabby clothes and ran a hand through tangled, dirty hair. He saw himself as Quatre would surely see him, and he flushed in shame at the image. He squeezed back out between two glazed urns and started to run again, calling up the layout of the mansion and turning down a flight of stairs. It was one of the back staircases, used primarily by cooks and maids to get down to the main kitchen.

 

Right then, he felt like he belonged on L4 even less than he did with Duo in London or in that dirty motel room with Trowa. He already missed the feel of fresh air on his face. The recycled oxygen of the colonies was suffocating. All of this - this whole task that he'd set for himself - was suffocating.

 

He tore through the rear kitchen at a dead run, jumped down the steps into a small mudroom, and slammed through the door onto a modest patio, his sore hip forcing enough of a limp that his foot caught on the door frame. He exhaled a sharp "Hunh!" when he fell against a narrow chest and thin, familiar arms came up around him. The two boys staggered together, and Heero clamped down on the reflexive need to -

 

"Heero! Thank heaven I found you before they did! I tried to tell them that you were - Oof!"

 

Quatre went down easily underneath him, the growl that rumbled in Heero's chest masking the boy's quick, labored breaths. Heero rolled him over and muscled him into a solid hold. Then he stared at the back of Quatre's head - at the mussed hair that was bright even in the dark - for a good ten seconds before he was able to convince his body that this boy wasn't the threat he was running from. He glared down at the bare arms he'd twisted back at painful angles, realized that Quatre was in his sleeping clothes - a lightweight t-shirt and a pair of loose pants - and quickly backed off him, casting a quick look at the door he'd just come through, waiting for security agents to come streaming out.

 

"Sorry," he croaked. It was the first word he could remember speaking since he'd yelled at Wufei through his Gundam's communicator.

 

He scooted further back, but Quatre followed him like they were attached and folded him into a tight hug. That bright hair pressed against the side of Heero's face, and he stiffened when he felt warm hands tracing out the bandages through his shirt. He gently pushed Quatre off him and stared, a bit dazed, as he was abruptly forced to remember how to talk to another person. Fortunately, Quatre propped up the first part of it while he sorted himself out.

 

"It's okay; I'm fine," he said with a small laugh, shaking his head at Heero, surreptitiously rubbing his twisted elbows. He grinned and reached out to touch him again. "It's great to see you, Heero! I've been worried sick since you disappeared! When the fighting stopped, there was so much we needed to talk about. You fell into the ocean, you know!"

 

Heero's attention wandered, his gaze drifting along the back of the mansion, checking each of the exits.

 

"I was certain that you wouldn't be killed by something like that, but you could have contacted me, found one of us, you know. Have you been to a doctor yet? Your ribs aren't wrapped very well. Have... have you spoken with any of the others? Have you seen them? Is Wufei all right; he was in custody when I left Earth."

 

Heero met Quatre's gaze again and shook his head, not feeling that he had the wherewithal to tell Quatre who and what he'd seen. He didn't really want to share, anyway. "Have you?" he asked instead.

 

Quatre looked a little sheepish, shrugging and giving him a nervous smile. "No, I haven't. Things have just been crazy here; there's so much work to be done. There are still arrangements to be made to carry out my father's wishes. There hasn't been time."

 

Heero searched Quatre's face and thought that he looked happy about the frenetic pace of his life. Any time that they'd spent together over the wars, Quatre had always needed to stay busy, his slightly manic personality the kind that could both rally a rogue band like the Maguanacs and desperately obsess over something like the Zero System.

 

"Heero, why don't you tell me what's going on, why you're here." He rested his hand on Heero's arm, squeezing lightly. His other hand pressed against his chest. "I felt you as soon as you stepped inside my house. You woke me out of a sound sleep."

 

Heero started at that, his expression twitching briefly into a troubled frown. "I was - " Then he tensed even further at the sound of voices coming through the kitchen toward the back door, one hand reaching out to grab Quatre's wrist in a cold, hard grip. "Let's go."

 

"Heero, wait - "

 

Sucking in one last steadying breath, Heero tugged Quatre to his feet and dragged him into a brisk run. They stuck close to the back wall even as a few guards came through out onto the patio. Heero growled when their movements tripped the motion detector lights, flooding the back yard in glaring white.

 

"Heero," Quatre breathlessly tried again.

 

"Just stay with me," he gritted, flushing darkly at the pleading tone in his voice. They rounded the side of the house and he paused briefly to consider where they should go next to stay ahead of those pursuing them.

 

"Heero, if you want to lose them, I'll take you someplace they don't even know exists."

 

He turned to see Quatre giving him a nervous smile, as though the two of them were playing a children's game. What was it called? Hide and seek, or maybe tag. "Show me."

 

Quatre tugged on his hand, taking the lead and darting back into the mansion through a side door.

 

The feel of Quatre's palm was making Heero a little dizzy. It felt like warmth was spreading up his arm, and for the few minutes that they ran together through the narrow corridors of what looked to be maids' quarters, he thought that maybe coming to L4 was the best thing he could have done. Quatre's bare feet slapped softly on the wood floor and his other hand reached out to skim along the far wall. It looked as if he were enjoying himself.

 

Heero jerked to a stop when two women emerged from their rooms, looking sleepy and irate. The one on the left put her hand on a round hip, glaring at them both as if she knew exactly what they were up to. Heero wished she would enlighten him. "Master Winner! You don't appear to be in nearly as much trouble as we've been led to believe. Wipe that grin off your face while I call off the hounds on your trail."

 

In front of him, Quatre huffed a breathless laugh and then squeezed his hand. "Oh, come on Mehri, we were just playing hide and seek. Don't get us in trouble."

 

The other woman, younger and smaller, snorted the kind of frustrated, fond laugh Heero had seen other domestic servants make. "As if we could could ever get you into trouble in your own house. That guy on the other hand..." She jerked her chin at Heero and gave him a wary glare for good measure. "I can't say the same for him."

 

From Quatre's tone of voice, Heero could tell that he'd jutted his chin out in defiance. "He won't get in trouble if I say he shouldn't."

 

The smaller woman ducked her head, only half contrite. "Of course not, Master Winner."

 

"Though he does try his damnedest, doesn't he," spoke a soft, familiar voice behind them.

 

Heero tensed and dropped Quatre's hand, turning to see Trowa's long shadow coming toward them with Trowa, arms ready at his sides, at the end of it.

 

"Trowa!" In a blur of pale hair, skin, and sleeping clothes, Quatre rushed past him and into Trowa's arms.

 

Trowa staggered back a half step and lifted the slight boy off his feet long enough to press polite kisses to both his cheeks.

 

For his part, Heero was very embarrassed.

 

*

They walked, undisturbed now, to Quatre's rooms, and Heero hung back a pace, content to follow the two pilots as Quatre led the way.

 

"What are you doing here, Trowa? How did you end up here the same time as Heero? Did you come together?"

 

Heero wondered something very similar. Had they even been on the same shuttle?

 

"We didn't come together, though we arrived at the same time."

 

Quatre laughed, and rubbed his chest. "Well, that's a wonderful coincidence, though I don't believe it for a second."

 

"And I wanted to check in," Trowa continued as though Quatre hadn't said anything. "You've holed up here, Quatre."

 

Trowa got the same sheepish shrug Heero had. "I've had a lot to do here, but I've wanted to check in, as well. I've wanted to get in touch with you both. Duo too... and Wufei."

 

"Last I knew, he was still under interrogation," Trowa answered, and even though Heero couldn't see his expression, his voice had audibly tightened. "We weren't allowed to see each other, and even if we had been, I wouldn't have had anything to say to him."

 

They stopped in front of an ornate closed door and waited for Quatre to open it. Before he did, though, he turned and gave Trowa a sharp frown, a silent scolding if Heero had ever seen one.

 

"What a horrible thing to say. Wufei is our friend."

 

Trowa didn't back down an inch, though his expression never changed. "Is he? Dekim Barton was a madman, Quatre, one of the truly monstrous people on Earth and in the Colonies. And Wufei pledged his blade and his Gundam to his cause."

 

Heero could almost taste the coppery tang of Trowa's bitterness, and Quatre's face was drawn in distress. "He was confused; he... we shouldn't judge him."

 

Trowa shook his head. "He knew exactly what he was doing; he chose his side, and we should not rush to trust or help him again."

 

Quatre's unhappiness as well as his sudden shortness of breath made the hairs on Heero's arms prickle. In the full light of the hall, the height difference between the three of them was glaringly obvious. While Trowa had always been tall - and had grown taller - Heero and Quatre, during the first war, had almost been the same size. But in the year since they had first fought together, Heero's chest and arms had filled out a bit, making the power that had always been in his body a bit more visible. From what he could tell, Quatre hadn't grown any taller or broader, but remained thin and small, typical of a colony child several years younger, but not a young man of sixteen. Even though he carried himself with unflappable confidence and self-assurance, Heero could see that, physically, he was weaker.

 

Before he thought to stop himself from starting a full-on argument, he stepped between them, putting Quatre behind him, just barely touching his elbow. The boy's skin was noticeably warm. "Wufei never had a side; he always fought alone. We were lucky to have him for the first war. For the second, our reasons for fighting did not so fortuitously overlap. That doesn't make him an enemy. Barton, you should know better than anyone that nothing is so clear-cut in a fight like that."

 

Trowa's sharp exhalation and the twitch of his eyebrow and mouth were all the indication Heero had that the pilot was moved at all by his rejoinder. Trowa turned away just enough so that his hair masked his face. "If that's the story he tells them, then he's not likely to fare as well as I did."

 

"You act as though he doesn't deserve to," Quatre snapped, stepping out from behind Heero.

 

"If he doesn't know when to stop shooting, then what are we supposed to - "

 

"We help him figure it out. We go to bat for him until he figures it out, just as we were ready to do for you before you were released not two weeks ago."

 

"I want to go to bed. I'm tired."

 

Both boys looked at him, and Heero met Trowa's dark eye with a tight-lipped, pleading frown. Quatre's distress was growing, and Heero didn't want either himself or Trowa to bring on any sort of illness or fit that came about from excess stress.

 

The palpable tension held between them held until Quatre seemed to deflate, nodding and gesturing down the hall. "You're right, Heero. We'll all feel better once we've gotten a few hours' sleep. You're rooms are at the end of the hall on the left. Everything you need should be set out for you. If you don't mind, I'll refrain from showing them to you. It's been a long day for me, too." He looked up at them with, fond, tired eyes, appearing at once ancient and childlike. "I'll see you both in the morning. Sleep in as late as you like." He leaned up to kiss Trowa's cheek and to give Heero a quick embrace. "I'm really very glad you're here."

 

"We're glad to be here," Heero murmured, ducking his head.

 

*

"What's wrong with him? His skin was warm and it appeared hard for him to catch his breath."

 

He'd followed Trowa into his room, closing the door behind them and speaking softly, so as not to be overheard through the walls.

 

"How should I know?"

 

"Because you know him better than I do. Is it his heart?"

 

Trowa turned from where he'd pulled the curtain aside to see out into a courtyard. "That would be my guess, so it sounds as though you know as much as I do."

 

Heero frowned at the floor. "He seems happy, though. He's with his family; he's helping to manage his father's business."

"Yes, he appears very happy."

 

"Is he sick? He doesn't appear ill. Just... weaker."

 

Trowa leaned back against the window ledge. "I don't know. I haven't seen him since we split up from the first war. I've spent more time with you, oddly enough."

 

Heero darted a glance up to Trowa's visible eye and then looked away, turning his back to the bed and sitting down on the edge of it.

 

"We even got to spend the night together in Nantes."

 

Heero gripped his knees and squeezed.

 

"You got a private performance; I should charge. I don't generally humiliate myself in front of others for free."

 

"Then you shouldn't have left the curtain wide open," he gritted in reply, staring resolutely at the carpet.

 

"Ah, so I was asking for it. I've always liked that line of argument."

 

"Refusing to look up when stockinged feet came into view, Heero focused instead on the hole in the left toe."

 

"Did you like what you saw?"

 

Heero flushed guiltily. "I've seen your gymnastic skills before. They're impressive," he managed to answer evenly enough.

 

"Is that what you were there to see?"

 

He shrugged. "I don't know what I was there to see. I was just... checking in, I guess."

 

"Ah. Technically, in order to check in, you would have had to say something to me, and I would have to say something back. I checked into the motel room; that's how I know."

 

Heero glowered a little harder. Until then, of all the labels he would have given Trowa, smartass hadn't been one of them. "Then I'm checking in now." Finally, he dragged his eyes up the length of Trowa's body, hesitantly meeting his gaze. "Did you try to, back in Nantes? Did you leave a message with the desk clerk?"

 

The answer hung brilliantly undecided in the air, and Heero had to ruthlessly shut down the imagined 'Yes, I did,' the moment before Trowa blinked as though it were an absurd question. "No."

 

Heero nodded his understanding and stood to go, forcing Trowa a step back. "I apologize for my unwanted observation. I didn't mean to embarrass you."

 

Trowa's face was perfectly blank as Heero said it, and Heero knew that he could wait all night for a reaction from him. They were both stubborn that way. So, he turned to go, reaching for the doorknob and jerking it open a bit harder than he intended to.

 

Trowa's voice stopped him as he was halfway out into the hall, and the sound of it - the uncertainty and the annoyance at that uncertainty - made his fingers buzz. He held his breath.

 

"But did you like what you saw?"

 

Of all the imagined invitations, this one went straight to his belly like fire. He half-turned around to see Trowa staring somewhere over his shoulder into middle distance. He nodded. "Yes, I did."

 

Trowa's gaze drifted then to the upper left corner of the room. "If you want to stay, close the door." He said it so off-handedly that he could have been asking him to close the door on his way out.

 

Heero obeyed, pulling it shut and leaning back against it. He hadn't ever thought about what would happen after the invitation was made. Now his mind leaped from one possibility to the next, and all of them seemed equally implausible. His fingernails dug into the paint when Trowa tugged his shirt off and threw it at the foot of the bed. His imagination suddenly not so far-fetched, Heero stepped forward into the room. Trowa stayed put, apparently not willing to make another move after his - admittedly daring - opening gambit.

 

Heero wanted to touch that smooth strong stomach. He wanted to dig his fingers in and feel out every muscle that had allowed Trowa to move so easily that night back on Earth.

 

When Heero was within reach, Trowa grabbed for him, jerking the torn hem of the stolen shirt up to expose his wrapped ribs. His dark green eyes briefly snagged on the unraveling bandages, but then lifted to Heero's face. Trowa pulled the shirt the rest of the way off, and Heero lifted his arms to help him do it. The shirt fell at their feet, and Trowa took a half step back.

 

"Why have you neglected yourself?" he asked, voice flat and clinical.

 

"It wasn't important."

 

"What was more important?"

 

"Finding you, staying busy."

 

"Does that 'you' mean me or the four of us?"

 

"The four of you."

 

"Are you going back to Earth to find Wufei, even though he tried to kill you?"

 

Heero hesitated. "... I don't - "

 

Trowa reached for him again, as though he'd realized he didn't care to have his own question answered. He grabbed Heero by both elbows and slid his hands up to Heero's shoulders and then around to his back, pressing him close enough that they lurched together and knocked into each other. Trowa's palms were damp, and Heero didn't know what to do with the urgency coming off him as quick and slippery as perspiration. He didn't know what to do with his own.

 

When Trowa tried to kiss him, Heero shoved him hard in the chest, hard enough to send him stumbling backward. Trowa caught himself against the side of the bed and shot him a fierce, hurt glare.

 

"What is it?"

 

Heero opened his mouth to snap out something that would sting, something that would express how dangerous it was to do something like that to someone like him. But all that came out was a stilted, "I can't just..."

 

Trowa straightened and rolled his shoulders, coming forward again, but keeping his eyes on the floor, approaching him in a posture of submission, Heero realized. When they stood chest to chest, Trowa asked him again. "But you liked what you saw?"

 

The sound of their breathing was noticeably louder than when they'd first come in. He felt like he'd been running for the last twenty minutes, not standing perfectly still. He nodded and this time reached for Trowa, placing his hand flat over his belly button. "I want to see it again."

 

Trowa looked down at Heero's hand, and when his gaze came back up, Heero felt it hungrily traveling over ever bit of him. It was exhilarating. He shuffled his feet forward, boldly putting his right leg between Trowa's and sliding his hand from Trowa's belly up to his sternum. He pushed gently and Trowa bent underneath his hand like a blade of grass.

 

*

"You're bending your knees again. The key is to feel rooted and suspended at the same time."

 

Heero craned his neck back and rolled his eyes up to see that his knees were in fact bent and his bare feet were hanging over his head. He imagined he looked rather like the letter C. "But there has to be some sort of counterweight," he said. "You're too unstable walking on your hands totally upright." He took a few hesitant paces forward, feeling his ribs protest a bit, but liking more the opened-up feeling in his chest. He hadn't stretched this thoroughly in months.

 

"You're thinking too much in terms of 'down.'" Trowa, of course, held himself effortlessly straight, appearing at once rooted and suspended.

 

Heero lurched forward a few more feet and lost his balance, tucking his head and rolling forward. Trowa did the same, though much more gracefully, and when he came upright, this time, Heero was ready for him. They reached for each other in the same second, remaining on their knees, grabbing hold of shoulder, hipbone and hair like hungry children. Heero experienced his first real kiss in that manner, too, fighting off Trowa's tongue with his own and pushing hard enough that Trowa had to sit back on his heels to keep from toppling over. Heero followed him and pushed him down onto the carpet anyway.

 

*

Heero awoke in bed, under the blankets, weighted down by an arm tight across his chest and a long leg thrown over both of his. His entire right side was heavy with another's torso and, between his shoulder and ear, he felt the press of hair and breath. He awoke unafraid and well-rested. He awoke reminded that he had not yet completed the task he'd set for himself.

 

He slid sideways out of bed, holding his breath until he was free and both feet were flat on the carpet. It wasn't until he stood upright that he remembered he was naked as a jaybird. Casting about for his underwear, he found them at the foot of the bed with every other bit of clothing they'd removed earlier that night. He gathered up the stretched-out, dirty bandages that had wrapped his ribs and threw them in the wastebasket by the desk. Then he went to the window and drew back the curtain to let in the early-morning light of colonial artificial dawn.

 

The situation with Quatre was worrisome. Before he left, he would talk with one of the Winner sisters about his condition, but he was sure that, whatever could be done to help him was already being done. Quatre would never want for anything in that regard.

 

Duo was clearly fine. Heero didn't and wouldn't have to worry about him, because Duo was someone perpetually in the driver's seat, always in control of his life and his future.

 

Trowa was...

 

Wufei was still a mystery. Sharp, angry, very smart and most likely in a lot of trouble. And still fighting; that's who he was. Heero had set out to find all the pilots to make sure that they were moving forward with their lives. If he was a bit more honest with himself, he had set out to find them all to see how they were doing it, to figure out how he was supposed to do it. He wondered now, if seeing Wufei would help him do that. He told himself that it didn't matter whether it helped him; he should go see him because that's what he'd set out to do.

 

However, Trowa had... Heero leaned one hand against the window frame and closed his eyes, recalling in an instant how he and Trowa had ended up sleeping together under those blankets - first scrambling together on top of them, squirming and twisting and reaching for as much skin, friction, spit, sweat and finally, release as they each could grasp from the other. And then, collapsed on the duvet, they'd speculated about the future. Trowa had told him, lips close to his ear, as though someone might be listening in, "Une asked me to work for her. She would want you too, if she knew how to find you."

 

Standing in front of the window, barely dressed and feeling like he was at some sort of crossroads, Heero tried to sort out what kind of a person he was supposed to be, now that the world was done with him as he'd been before - as a fighter.

 

He jumped when he felt Trowa at his back and turned around enough to see that the boy hadn't made any effort to cover himself. He stood a few feet away from Heero, arms hanging loose at his sides. "You're leaving. You're going to find Wufei."

 

Heero tried not to let his gaze drop below Trowa's chest, but the fine, auburn hair on his stomach, trailing down his abdomen to between his legs was so easy to follow. And was also, very soft, if he remembered correctly, which he was sure he did. "I don't know."

 

"Don't do it. Stay with me. I dare you. I dare you to stay with me." Trowa lifted his chin and inhaled, probably readying himself for rejection.

 

"Why?" Heero asked.

 

Trowa's expression hardened. "I don't generally humiliate myself for others for free."

 

"You're not going to tell me why you want me to stay with you?" He paused. "Or was that your explanation?"

 

Trowa bristled. "I - "

 

"Because I'll stay so long as you don't feel you're humiliating yourself by being with me."

 

Trowa appeared to scramble for his mask of indifference and distance, but he couldn't find it. "I - "

 

And here, Heero had thought that he'd been the one with all the problems, or at least the one with the most.

 

"I was hoping you felt that you didn't have anywhere in particular you needed to be," Trowa finally managed to say.

 

Fin.

 

 

"Come head on, full circle
Our path blocked but sure we'll
Make records, then set them
Make copies, win races
Stay with me, go places
Once more for the ages"

- The New Pornographers