Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ How to Be Dead ❯ Skeleton Jar ( Chapter 11 )

Part 11 "Skeleton Jar"

Unfortunately, the perpetually guarded, disgruntled look had taken its position again, and Heero had it trained cautiously on Duo’s roommate, looking ruffled in a second pair of the morgue worker’s jeans and a black T-shirt lettered with a smart-mouthed phrase. And judging from the severity of the wary stare he was receiving from across the room, as he sat silently, sullenly, and not slouching an inch on the barstool at the kitchen counter, that either it was his shirt, or he had committed some awful faux-pas in being forcibly undressed by his roommate. And not surprisingly, Heero really hoped that he was wearing his shirt.

Trowa’s eyes, though not narrowed in threat, were guarded and stony as they ran over him more than once. He had his arms folded over his chest, revealing the multitude of tattoos decorating his forearms. Heero stared straight back, feeling no reason that he should leave until he wanted to, if Duo had invited him in willingly.

"So," his roommate said calmly, "vampire, huh?"

"Yeah," Heero grunted. He didn’t want to be a freak show tonight; he hoped he wouldn’t want to see any proof of this claim. Trowa carefully looked him over once again, lips pursed tight.

"Cool."

And that was that. He turned around impassively, as if the undead wasn’t there at all anymore, slipped on a pair of headphones and picked through a bowl of trail mix sitting before him.

Thankfully, Duo came back out of the shadows of the apartment only a few moments later, looking as casual as ever about a vampire in his living room and relieving the two of each other’s dubious company. He had changed his own clothes, which had been encrusted with old blood, and strode confidently into the room in a pair of black pants that were perfectly identical. And a large rat squirming in his hands.

"Look what I’ve got for you, Heero," he announced, holding the rather plump rodent in one hand out toward the vampire on his couch. He arched his eyebrows. "Dinner."

Trowa sat up immediately and threw off his headphones. He turned around on the seat and shot icy daggers at his roommate. "Hey. That’s my rat."

"Yes, your rat, Trowa. But your rat has been shitting on old newspapers that I bought, in the cage that I clean every damn week, and when you set him loose, I find him chewing holes in my clothes," Duo told him as calmly as could be, and all the while the aforementioned rodent was busily trying to wring his bulky little body through Duo’s fingers. "And since Heero’s officially in my charge, I’ll decide if he eats your rat." He smiled so brightly afterward it was borderline savage. "Understand?"

"Fine," Trowa relented, his stoic face blistering cold. "But if he kills my rat—"

"You can get another one from the kitchen cupboard, Tro. That’s where you got this one, for god’s sake! They’re everywhere in this damn city."

"But I like this one," he growled flatly.

Heero found it necessary to politely interrupt, while the massive rodent stared him in the face with a pair of beady, crusty eyes and a pair of jagged incisors protruding from his closed mouth. "Thank you for the offer," he said, successfully suppressing the hint of distaste, "but I’m not hungry. Really."

"What?" Duo had now turned his attention fully to Heero, looking almost horrified at that. "Don’t give me that bullshit, either!" He leaned briskly down and took the vampire by the forearm, lifting his bony arm up to display. "You’re a goddamn rail! And you’re as colder than a penguin’s ass. Don’t think you can fool me with that ‘I’m all right’ shit, ‘Ro. I told you before I can see straight through it."

"But," he reminded him, "I’m dead, remember? What does it hurt if I go hungry for a while?"

The sudden flashes of color in the corpse’s eyes were painful to watch, though beautiful, and Duo found himself growing even more frustrated at the tone of self-effacing constantly haunting his words, the constant flickering sadness in his expression. Heero gazed up at him, his lips as motionless as ever, but the emotion in his eyes pained and distant. Duo hated to see it. Unintentionally, he felt his fingers tensing into a fist, squeezing around the rat, but too late. It let out a terrible sounding shriek of fright and bit him.

"Aw, shit!" Duo yelled, shaking his hand out furiously. The fat rodent landed below with the sound of a large melon hitting the floor, his ugly, naked feet clawing at the air as he flipped his bulbous body over. And in a second, he was waddling as fast as was possibly out of the room and into the shadows in the corner.

"Watch it!" Trowa growled at him, immediately flying out of his seat after his pet.

"That fucker has teeth!"

"It’s not his fault. You were gonna pop him! You never give him anything to chew on, either. He can’t help his teeth growing."

"I never remember so generously giving him my favorite jeans, but he took them anyway, Trowa!" the mortician hissed at him as he disappeared, chasing his rat into his bedroom and forcibly slamming the door behind him, his extensive preventive measure against any vampire sucking his precious pet dry.

After disappearing sullenly into his room, Duo still had a few healthy strings of cursing waiting on the tip of his tongue, but instead decided that it could wait and grumbled them under his breath. His other hand had flown up, gripping his finger tightly, trying to distract him of the pain. It also served to help squeeze the blood out of a good-sized bite out of his index finger. It looked like a thick, maroon liquid oozing out in the dim lighting.

His face contorted into a half-disgusted wince. "Ugh," he grunted with a crooked smile unfurling across his face, "this stuff looks worse every time I see it."

Heero didn’t realize he was standing so close to Duo all of a sudden until he flinched abruptly, widening the gap between them to a fraction and a half. Magnetized by the scent of blood and already hellishly tempted by the radiating waves of body heat coming off solely him, the lean vampire was hungry beyond compare, and it pushed all his cautious, rational thought out the window. The mortician let slip a sharp, startled intake of air as he lifted his head and felt the side of his mouth brush against the dead body’s jaw, so close that they looked like puzzle pieces about to clinch together when he glanced, flushed, down his nose.

"Heero?" he breathed, inadvertently peddling the words directly into his ear. A chilled hand had wrapped around his, letting the tiny, intermittent drops of blood drip onto the back of the vampire’s knuckles, a river of fire on his cold skin.

For a moment, he didn’t respond. He only stood there, silently hovering between one option and the next in his mind, slowly drifting toward Duo’s body and the abundance of heat it always gave off. The blood still dripped freely onto his hand as he gripped Duo’s, though it ebbed as it began to clot. For an instant, the image of Heero putting his bleeding finger in his mouth and sucking him dry rose to mind, unbidden, and he had to swallow rather dryly.

And just as suddenly as he had risen to his feet, Heero spoke up.

"I’m sorry," he muttered, letting his head hang slightly, brushing his wild hair against the side of Duo’s quiet face. He hesitated, and the mortician waited. He didn’t step back. He didn’t move away.

"Why are you doing all these things for me? Why have you let me into you house, and, when you know what I am, why do you let me stay?" Heero asked, his voice drifting, wretched. It made something tighten painfully in the pit of Duo’s throat to hear it, and all the more difficult to think and all the easier to respond in a soft tone.

"You needed somewhere to go," he answered. "I was only doing what was right."

Heero waited again, letting out a breath. His fingers had begun softly toying with Duo’s, letting the maroon liquid pass between them, unnoticed. "And buying a bloodsucker dinner, that was the right thing to do? Giving clothes to the undead is only being polite?"

Duo’s brows hitched together, staring past his shoulder into the glowing apartment lights. "I wasn’t going to leave you out there," he said firmly.

"I would have. If I were you."

"No, you wouldn’t have," he countered. "I haven’t known you all that long, Heero, but I know you wouldn’t have. You would have done the same in my position. Well, you had better have," he intoned with a gentle smile that Heero felt, rather than saw.

His voice had drifted into another territory again, his tone vague. "I wouldn’t have. I would have been too afraid, if I had been you, after what I did to you."

"What, shave a few years off my life expectancy? Chh—that’s nothing. It’s all right. I won’t even notice that they’re gone, I promise you. For all I know, I could go to sleep right now and never wake up the next day. It’s not really for me to decide, ya know? So don’t worry about it."

"No," he whispered, almost too faint to hear, and edged with a thick anger at himself. "When you were scared, frustrated, and confused, I used you. I was selfish and rude. And then I hurt you."

"Was I all that?" Duo chuckled nervously. "Heero, I—"

That breath in particular had left him very quickly, as soon as he felt the vampire’s mouth brush once against the side of his mouth, his finely-scuplted head shifting so finely, and then his lips reappear on his neck. Hey, he thought hazily, unable to breathe, when did all these stars get here? They’re kind of nice…

And just as abruptly, the darkening bruises on his neck burned, so intensely that his knees weakened and he groaned in pain. When he found himself able to breathe again, the brief, terrible agony abating, he had an arm clutched to Heero’s waist, steadying himself.

"See," he muttered, bitter, in his ear, "I hurt you. And I’m still hurting you."

Duo had to wait a few minutes before he could think above the pounding of his heart in his throat. "No," he said, "you’re not. If you really want to hurt me, you’ll keep talking like that about yourself. I don’t want to hear that, either. It wasn’t your fault, and you didn’t mean it. I can understand—you had just been attacked, you were probably terrified, and probably no warmer than you are now—you were just a little crabby, that’s all."

"I still am terrified," he said, comforted by Duo’s words but not yet secure. "Every night I’m terrified of what I might do, of who I’ll hurt next. I feel like I’m nothing but a monster, nothing but a bloodsucker. And the sad part is, I am. I even feel remorse about feeding off the mice in the streets."

"You did what you needed to, and you’re not a monster if you feel remorse, ‘Ro. To tell you the truth, you’re more thoughtful than most of the living people I know."

" ‘ ‘Ro.’ "He chuckled in a familiar rueful tone and the breath brushed Duo’s ear as he continued, his exhaustion wearing through. "Am I really that fascinating just because I’m dead?"

Duo hesitated. He still had his arm around Heero’s waist, and it sent electricity clean through him when the vampire let out a final sigh and closed the agonizing, microscopic gap between them. He shivered as he pressed hungrily into his body heat, soaking it in silently—he felt so cold. On that metal table, in the bright lights, he had never really been very warm, but what had been there was gone. He was icy to the touch, and bone thin beneath. He wasn’t quite alive, but he didn’t need to be a skeleton, for god’s sake, Duo thought.

"Heero," the mortician said finally, after the vampire had rested his face in the crook of his neck, silent and needing that silence at the same time, "you need to feed."

"No," he whispered.

"You do, and I don’t want to hear any more guilt from you about it," Duo argued, taking his free arm away from Heero’s waist, while the other hand was cradled close to the vampire’s chest, intertwined with his fingers, slowly absorbing the heat they gave off. He used it to take his long, braided hair and pull it neatly away while he craned his neck in a graceful curve, opening it up to Heero’s lips while they breathed slowly over his bruises.

"Just do it. You have my permission and all that jazz, so don’t worry about it," Duo told him, closing his eyes as he exposed his skin willingly to him, preparing himself for the bite and the unknown sensation it would cause.

Heero very slowly straightened up, and Duo felt his eyes upon the side of his face as it was turned away. "I can’t," he said, almost ashamed.

"You mean you won’t."

"Yes."

"Do it anyway. You need it more than you want it."

The vampire didn’t move for one very long, very quiet moment, pressed close and slowly warming from his body. Then he moved his head slightly, tilting it, and his body shifted against the mortician. Duo squeezed his eyes shut tight, setting his jaw even tighter, and pinching his lips together, determined not to show fear as he moved in for that first incision. But it was not sharp, diving teeth he felt after that long, drawn moment. Heero cupped his chin with one hand, turning his face toward him, and kissed him.

Duo felt like the world had been gone for years, a faint and unimportant memory, when he finally pulled back only a fraction to tell him against his mouth, "I care about you more than I need it."