Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ How to Be Dead ❯ Holy Water ( Chapter 8 )

Part 8 "Holy Water"

Duo had parked the car, killed the engine, and was opening his door when Heero apologized without warning or mentioning exactly what for he was issuing this apology. The mortician stopped, his arm extended with hand on the door handle, and blinked at him dumbly for a moment. "Okay," he said slowly, taken off guard. At first impression, Heero hadn’t necessarily been the apologetic type, though that may have been a product of his defunct state. "That’s nice of you… Tell me again, what did you do?"

"Gave you those," he said vaguely, his bottomless blues shifting toward Duo’s neck, somehow making the skin fill with a gentle, tingling heat and causing him to clap his hand over it, rubbing at the brusies he’d left.

"Oh, yeah." Duo muttered absently, before covering it with a laugh, grinning a little too big. "’Bout time you begged pardon for that little stunt."

But Heero wasn’t there; he was just shutting the passenger side door, bringing the black-plaid fleece blanket, now sporting three large blood stains, with him as he walked barefoot up to the step. Duo gave the empty seat a decent round of blinking, then his face screwed up slightly, and he kicked his door open quickly. Standing up and slamming it shut again, he issued a bark across the top of the car. "Oy! I was talking to you, pal," he told him pointedly.

Too preoccupied with staring up at the brick façade of the apartment building to be bothered to answer, Heero simply stood at his steps, blanket pulled perfectly around his short but hewn figure.

"Yes," Duo muttered to himself at the weird fascination the dead body showed for a perfectly average place. "A-part-ment building. Can you say ‘apartment building’?"

Heero didn’t hear, or didn’t seem to notice. Seeing the dried trails of blood caked on his calves made the image all the more surreal, and even endearing in a way that could only be cute to a mortician like himself, he was sure. Who else would let a dead person into their car in the middle of the night? Duo didn’t want to wonder about how that reflected his character as he shoved his hand into his pockets and stalked around the car. He’d been almost sweet when giving his name, and even manged to apologize—but give the guy a lift and he becomes a rude sonova—!

Duo walked up beside him and looked carefully at his profile as he stared up, seemingly content to stare at the rather unremarkable building. He then noticed just how disheveled his dark hair was, and how well the Asiatic angle of his eyes complemented the color of his eyes. And again, the sly part of him muttered secretly, Everybody else has got a rather uninteresting shade of blue in comparison, huh?

"Something take your fancy? Oh, lemme guess: the molding. I have to say, it’s not bad—it is rather new—but nothing I’d get out the lawn chair for," Duo said, watching Heero watch the building with a crooked grin. "You change your mind? You want to bleed to death on the sidewalk after all?"

"No, thank you." But still Heero did not stop gazing up at it.

The mortician simply wrote it off as "a dead-man’s eccentricity" and started trekking tiredly up the stairs. He hadn’t noticed how much this night had taken out of him. When he reached the fourth or fifth step unaccompanied, he turned around and looked crookedly at Heero, the dead man wrapped up in a black and gray plaid blanket, bleeding in the cold. He was still shivering, too. He was just getting worse at hiding it.

"Uh," Duo said, looking around with a crooked brow and jabbing a thumb, "the door’s this way, if you didn’t happen to know. We living people use them often."

Finally, Heero’s blue eyes moved and rested on him, rather unreadable. "Invite me in."

Duo looked around again. I’m starting to wonder if he’s all beauty and no brains.

"I thought I did when I said, ‘Hey, let’s go to my apartment,’ " he said slowly, expression extremely skeptical.

"No," Heero told him, looking almost self-conscious to be saying it, "you’ve got to invite me in. Say it."

"Again?"

The dead body pinned a look on him and he sighed in defeat. "Fine, then." He straightened up theatrically and cleared his throat, making a butler-like motion with his arms, gesturing to the door. "Do come in, Sir Yuy, to my humble abode." He winked at him for flourish. "That better?"

Heero walked up the stairs carefully, though it wasn’t enough to hide the fact he’d been sliced up, running rampant in the rain and cold, and was tired from being dead. "It works," he said almost smugly as he passed Duo on the steps and waited for him to unlock the door.

The door of Duo’s apartment swung open earlier than usual that night, and in through it stepped a tired mortician, and an even more tired corpse, wrapped up in a blanket and little else. Through the dark doorway came their silhouettes, the keys jangling as Duo stuffed them in his pocket. He reached up quickly for the light switch, feeling Heero resisting a shiver, breathing gently near the back of his neck, waiting to be let in, and not being completely comfortable about it.

"Here we go."

Instead of assaulting their nocturnal eyes with a standard set of bright, white, 60-volt bulbs, Duo flicked on the switch to the multiple hazy lights about the room, also lighting up the red and gold paper lanterns. An old violet lava lamp lackadaisically spit oblong globs from the top to the bottom of its tube, sitting neatly in the center of the adjoining kitchen’s island, surrounded by a loyal band of dirty dishes and half-eaten containers of take-out.

Proudly taking it in for a moment, Duo turned his head to look at Heero. He was intently reading the symbols on the lanterns and the corners of his lips were up as he mouthed them silently.

"After working the night shift as long as I have, you start to get accustomed to the dark," the mortician explained with a grin. "Personally, it’s more comfortable for me. No need to go about in a world of light when this one suits me just fine. It’s not the biggest place for two roomies, but that grows on you, too."

Heero turned to look at him, seeming pleasantly surprised at something. His dark eyes were nearly black, but nevertheless intriguing. "Kind of murky."

"Murky, is it? I’m almost offended, Heero," Duo drawled.

"I prefer murky," he answered quietly.

"Oh, really? You don’t sound too enthusiastic about that."

Heero looked at him pointedly, as if reminding him of something he’d rather not hear. But he was strangely missing a biting response, giving Duo time to roll his shoulders in a shrug. "All right, all right," he muttered, unnerved by the look. "Sor—ry." He turned away, momentarily sullen about it, then strode inside, throwing his own jacket onto the nearby couch and simply walking off into another room.

Heero blinked dumbly as he was left standing in the doorway, still slowly bleeding and still naked beneath the blanket. Seeing Duo simply blend into the shadows of the apartments so naturally, so easily, offset him a little. Despite the familiar atmosphere, he suddenly felt misplaced and the cool, calm urge to turn around and never return went through his mind once.

He didn’t belong there; he shouldn’t be in the home of the mortician who suspected too much as was. He should have immediately run from the car and the man standing at the open door, gaping at him. If he couldn’t control himself, then he would—No, he had to. There was just no other option but to control himself.

Get fixed up, get cleaned up, and then leave. Use him. But forget him—you can’t worry about how your departure will hurt his feelings. He’ll be happy to see you go, anyway.

But, for all his rational thought, his hunger did not relent. Heero bit his lip tightly, feeling an inevitable stir of complaint from his empty body as soon as he imagined himself poised to make the first incision, imagined how the pulse would flutter under his lips—

"Hey, Heero!"

He blinked again, taken off guard and momentarily uneasy, ripped from a very vivid flight of fancy. Duo’s voice carried through the dim apartment from another room, as personable and casual as it had ever been. Apparently, he did not yet realize what he had let into his home. "Go ahead and show yourself to the bathroom—second door down the hall, there. Peroxide and bandages are under the sink. I’ll get you some clean clothes quick and I’ll be right there," he announced, over the sounds of dresser drawers being pulled open and shut.

Heero felt he should respond, but hesitated again, carefully eyeing the apartment. "Right," he answered eventually, bringing himself to hobble toward the bathroom. He was taking much longer to warm up from the streets than Duo was and shivered as he stepped cautiously inside. Cautiously avoiding the light switch, cautiously limping into the shadows of the room.

A few minutes later Duo returned, more easily visible as his silhouette approached down the hallway against the hazy, candle-like illumination. He carried a lump of folded clothing on his hip as he reached the bathroom doorway, squinting into it.

Heero could see the slightly confused expression perfectly as the mortician drawled, "What are you doing in the pitch dark like that?" and flicked the light switch. These were not as forgiving, and Duo watched the dead body wince under the stare of the bathroom lights. He sat on the toilet lid, hunched with exhaustion. The bright painted him as pale as death, accentuating the hungry lines in his shoulders and face, and did nothing to conceal the fact he was still finding it chilly beneath the red-soaked blanket.

Duo tried not to let himself grimace at Heero’s state, but couldn’t help it. It wasn’t like he gave him any more favorable expressions than his little frowns and smug twitches of the mouth. He stepped inside, passing the large mirror over the sink, and held the clothes out to Heero, who simply looked up at him, not taking them.

"Don’t worry about it. I won’t need ‘em back, and I’m pretty sure I’ve been flea-free for a month and a half."

Still, the corpse did not move except to try and still his betraying shudders. Duo arched an eyebrow at him, sighed, and laid the clothes on the counter. "Fine. Let’s just see that wound of yours," he said, trying to sound busy and indifferent. By the time he’d opened the cupboards and picked out the needed supplies, the dead body had shed the bloody blanket and was almost wincing at the sight of his leg, as if he didn’t expect it to be there.

Duo sauntered back over, already scrutinizing the damage. Much to his surprise, his stitch job seemed to be holding up remarkably well for how improvised it had been. "Looks like it turned out better than I thought. Doesn’t seem like you’re bleeding too badly, you’ve just agitated your wound. You know, mugging innocent people and all," he said, standing in front of the corpse, glancing up at the thinly pursed face he made. "Unfortunately, I think you’ll live."

"Funny," Heero breathed, grimacing up at him.

"As your physician, I must tell you running around at all hours of the night, robbing and pillaging, is bad for your condition," he continued with a sly smile. "Get plenty of bed rest and hot chicken noodle soup."

The corpse merely lifted an eyebrow at him. "Still funny."

Duo held a roll of bandages in one hand and unrolled a length as he knelt down on one knee, nudging Heero’s leg. "But seriously," he told him earnestly, as he began wrapping the bloodstained leg of the corpse sitting in his bathroom, "you can’t lurk around all night if you expect this to heal. Hell, it really shouldn’theal at all, you being rightfully dead, but what kind of person would it make me if I didn’t at least try and help?"

Heero sat silently for a moment, beaded with rain, bruised and nicked, and wearing another man’s beat-up jacket while he simply listened to the comforting rhythm of Duo’s speech, cooperating fully as he attempted to fix him up decently. He watched him talking absently to himself as he worked, looking equally tired, harassed by stress, and obviously avoiding rubbing at the bruising around his neck. Then he opened his mouth to answer quietly, almost forlorn, "It’d make you normal."

Duo lifted his head. "What, if I had just left you back there?" He then shook it, smiling. "Nah, it wouldn’t at all. I mean, who’d have the heart to leave a sweetheart like you bleeding in the street? If anything, you’d be more of a hazard to the public out there." The laugh he gave gently echoed in the brightly-lit bathroom. "But really, don’t worry about it."

The dead body’s eyes dropped slightly and he remained silent until Duo had finished wrapping his leg up and straightened up.

"That’ll do you for a while, if you’re not constantly raising hell. I think you should get your ass to a hospital, though, and soon. I’m no doctor. You could get gangrene and lose the damn thing anyway, running around in the rain as you seem to have a habit of doing," Duo drawled as he rolled up the excess bandage and stuffed it back into his cupboard, brushing off his hands with a few claps. Heero experimentally stretched his leg out from where he had kept it bent the knee, flexing the damaged tissue carefully. For the first time, Duo thought he saw an actual twinge of pain flash across his face, but if it had, he was expert on quickly quelling and hiding it. There was a satisfying little amount of blood to be seen soaking through, and he seemed to have full mobility, though pained, as he stood up, leaving the bloodstained blanket draped over the toilet. The morgue worker tilted his head as he looked him up and down.

"Better?"

"Aa," he grunted. He teetered cautiously on one foot as he gently experimented applying weight to the other leg.

He was so busily testing his physical condition that he missed the almost affectionate smile cross Duo’s face as he watched the pale, dead body stand himself up. Before the chance came for him to witness it, Heero found himself raising his hands to catch the lump of clothing that came his way, pinning it against his chest as Duo fluidly strode out of the room again.

"All right, time to get dressed, Supercorpse."

Heero glanced down at the bundle of blue jeans and a red T-shirt, then up at the empty reflection of the mirror in front of which he stood.