Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ My Shinigami, My Hamburger ❯ A Spoonful of Sugar ( Chapter 14 )

Chapter 14

"A Spoonful of Sugar"

A black American model motorcycle soon rumbled up into the driveway of an eerily quiet home sitting and holding its peace on a suburban road outside of the bustling metropolis that was Tokyo in the year 145 AC. [1] It was the only sound that permeated the neighborhood, now that all the children were off to school to cram for entrance exams and the parents off to their commute. The few young children and stay-at-home mothers that Heero knew lived nearby were still quiet at this hour in the morning, eating their breakfast and indulging in a few pacifying cartoons. While the weary-eyed mothers took in their first swigs of coffee.

One very tired Heero Yuy turned off the engine and let the kickstand down, the motorcycle settling down on the concrete like a tired animal itself and slumping to the side as Heero stepped off.

Shini called it Youkai, and Heero had always acknowledged it simply as the motorcycle. It'd been his father's possession, but it had been more like the brother that Heero had never had. He'd always had a faint streak of jealousy run through him whenever he'd walk by the garage and see him tinkering around with it, feeling like there had suddenly been a second child and Heero's amount of parental attention had diminished in favor of pampering the baby. His mother had been completely with him, luckily, and when he'd wanted to go out for a ride, she'd insist that Heero rode along. She wasn't concerned about collisions or accidents; she trusted enough in her husband that he would be cautious. And she could see the jealousy in her son's face when he spoke at lengths about it. The motorcycle had been one of his father's last indulgences before his untimely death, and even though he'd sort of held a childish grudge against it, it felt wrong to leave it to rust and fall to pieces. Also, when Heero had come of age, he didn't have to worry about finding his own mode of transportation.

It took the mortal a few seconds to realize the grip around him was missing, and he quickly slipped the helmet off his head. His disheveled brown hair jutted out oddly and he was too busy trying to find where the Shinigami had run off to brush it down. With a strange, backward-looking mohawk effect, Heero whipped his head around to see the black-clad deity walking up the sidewalk that led to his porch. The porch of his half-Occidental, half-Oriental suburban home. He automatically felt the need to run after him and keep him closely in check, but he realized that it was pointless. Shinigami was Shinigami and he would be impossible to control now. At least he was home, he thought.

He could tell by how happily Shini trotted in his bare feet down the concrete path that he would be too giddy to even try to calm down anyway. The thick, dark cape around his shoulders quickly found itself tossed to the wayside after Shini had shrugged it off and stood on the steps, his back to the street, and shook out his ink-black feathers and his hair with a satisfied sigh. Then, before he could be seen by any passersby, the Angel of Death smirked to nobody and walked confidently through the front door-like it was made of nothing more than water. There was a tiny, supernatural ripple emanating out from where Shini had passed, but Heero had a certain feeling that only people with a sense for metaphysical things would have seen it as well.

Heero followed dutifully behind him after he had exchanged his backpack and his helmet in the saddlebags of his motorcycle now dubbed Youkai. He frowned and stopped to pick up the wing-concealing cloak off of the string of flowers along the sidewalk and balled it under his arm as he continued walking. He took the steps in two lazy, mechanical strides and stopped silently at the door, a frown still spread across his face. It seemed completely unfair that Shinigami walked through the door like it was no more than thin air, and he would have to find his key hidden within the pockets of his pack and unlock it. It wasn't like he had lazy tendencies, but being around a deity made a mortal realize just how cumbersome some of the rules that applied to them could be.

Heero squinted into the frosted, Western-style window in the door and watched the blur of pale skin and brown moving curiously about his foyer. It made him fish out his keys all the faster and unlock the door. It held tight a few inches open by a golden chain and he gave a tiny sigh as he slipped his arm inside and disengaged the second lock. When he slipped inside, Heero automatically shut the door behind him and locked it again. It was an old habit he had never gotten rid of.

And when he turned around, he saw the Shinigami crouching down to the floor, his robes spilling out behind him like pure shadow. They were both standing in the lowered, cemented part of the hallway, where it was custom in Japan to take one's shoes off before stepping up onto the elevated floorboards that ran through the entire house. Heero gave him blank look and tossed his concealing cape onto a coat rack near by. Shini was still sniffing curiously at the edge of the floorboards, his hair hanging over his shoulder as he slunk closer to the floor and showing off his surprisingly toned back and the bulging muscles that held his black wings in place. Wings that extended casually into the air, darker than midnight and lighter than air.

There was a little cough on the mortal's part when he stopped to stand beside the Angel of Death that was examining his floor. "What are you doing?" he asked flatly, hoping he'd pick up on the impatient undercurrent.

Shini bent down low so that his head was nearly upside down and his back arched into a crooked looking 'c' shape, still sitting on his knees. He put his hands flat on the floor on either side of him and started deeply inhaling air from a tiny crack in the floorboards that rose from the cement a half-foot. "Hmmm."

That didn't appease him. "'Hmmm' what?" Heero demanded. "That's a pretty vague answer for you."

"Smell that?"

"Smell what?" He frowned distastefully.

"You don't smell that at all? Shini could swear it on his wings that there's something in your home, Teishu, very close in fact," the God of Death mumbled to himself, inching forward and once again demonstrating just how his abdomen curved into his waist as he stretched. Running his nose along the silver of a gap, breathing in lungfuls of dusty stale air, he became more and more sure of it. "He knows it, he does. It's in here."

As much as he frowned at him, it didn't help Heero to understand him.

"Whatever. Do whatever you want," Heero groaned tiredly and started to walk past with a definite lag in his step. He wanted to lay down, he wanted to forget he was harboring the Thirteenth Son of Shinigami in his home, he wanted to forget he was going to work tomorrow, he wanted to forget he had to clean and buy groceries, but mostly the Shinigami part. He toed off his shoes and nudged them in place before stepping onto the polished floorboards and walking by, headed for his room.

"I don't care, just don't wreck anything, alright?" he mumbled. "Just try?"

"Hai, hai, Teishu. Wakarimasu," Shini replied distractedly, more interested in scratching at the gap he'd found.

"Don't touch anything that looks like it could break, because it probably will," Heero found himself rambling on, without much attention to what he was saying. "You're only going to be here four more days, thank God, so don't mess up anything. Please."

But the deity was much too preoccupied with sinking his fingernails into the wooden plank and ripping it clean away with a victorious gasp of, "Ah-ha!" on his lips.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the mortal snapped over his shoulder, making a contorted, exhausted face as the Shinigami grinned, sitting on his knees, and didn't even bother acknowledging him with a look, even as Heero repeated to call to him and ask him very roughly what he was doing to his floor. He stalked back over to the foyer until he was standing over him, at the edge of the wooden floor. "Hey, stop that. You're ruining my floor."

He arched an eyebrow. "Are you even listening to me?"

Shini still bore a bright grin; he hadn't paid attention to a single syllable thrown at him. He tossed the old, slightly damp and dusty board over his shoulder carelessly to let it clatter to the ground beside the door, making his mortal husband make another sharp accusation. He ducked down and stuck his arm slowly into the hole he'd created, reaching so far that he pressed the side of his face to the floorboards and bit at the tip of his tongue.

"Hey," Heero growled. "Listen to me, and get your arm out of there. That's absolutely no way to treat my home, and I will still throw you out if you earn it, deal or no deal. I'm not gonna deal with you like this anymore-"

A moment later, the Angel of Death sat back onto his haunches with a contented smile and flicked a lock of hair over his shoulder with a hand. In the palm of his hand, kicking off the tangled web wrapped around her, was a bulbous black widow spider clawing her way around the folds in his human-like skin.

"Ha ha! See, he told you he smelt something of Death in your home, Teishu. Little did he know it would be right underneath your feet, though," he explained happily, letting the cautious spider scamper from palm to palm, always keeping one hand in front of it. He craned his head downward so he could look sideways at her spindly legs and get a glimpse at the red hourglass imprinted on her belly. "Kanojo wa ubarashiii da, ne?"

When Shini looked up, he realized that his mortal husband had taken three very generous steps to separate him and the toxic creature. "Kill it," he ordered uneasily, taking another step backwards in his stocking feet just to be sure. He was shocked that there had been such a deadly creature in his home, for who knew how long, and that he had been walking over it every day as he went out the door on his way to work. Sleeping, while it could have made webs beneath his bed. It made him feel awfully uneasy.

Shini cupped the creepy, crawly thing very abruptly in his hands and held it protectively to his side, away from the command of his arranged husband. There was a look of disgust crossing the Angel of Death's innocent face, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "That's just appalling, Teishu! He will not kill her! No way, nuh-uh!"

A sour raspberry was thrown his way, and Shini stood up, gently cupping his new found pet of sorts in the protective circle of his palms, like one would with a new hamster. An eight-legged hamster with fangs and enough venom to kill a full-grown man with one bite.

"Kill it!" Heero said, now visibly unnerved by it, but still able to give him a disparaging snort. "That's ridiculous. You're a Shinigami, just kill it!"

Shini stalked up toward him, his face twisted and stern, and held the deadly pet casually in his hands in front of his chest. He stopped a two feet from his arranged husband, but it soon became five. From the cracks between his hands there were macabre, long black legs clawing to escape, and a tiny head with beady eyes and a flexing jaw following closely. As creepy as the deadly spider was, the austere expression on the Angel of Death's normally pristine face that was pinned on him was just as frightening.

"He will definitely not kill her," Shinigami stated firmly, even as there were visible blue pricks appearing on his hands as the spider started biting him, unbeknownst to him. "She is living, just as another creature. She hasn't done anything to harm or threaten you, so she deserves no punishment, especially not Death! She cannot choose that she can kill, it was the way she was born. The way Shini was born."

A horribly squeamish looking expression slipped through onto Heero's face as he watched the black widow furiously biting at her captor, biting until her venom had been drained, and little rivulets of blue-violet Divine blood began running through the folds in his palms.

"And he is not like other Shinigami, Teishu should know that," the God of Death chided darkly, taking personal offense even as the visible hurt surfaced in his eyes and his voice laced with difficulty. "He is not a killer, Teishu. He is not! You can't call him that, you just can't!"

"Shini," Heero felt the name rolling off his lips in a little gasp, as he felt a little jolt run through him. He couldn't tell if it was from watching the little drops of immortal blood falling to the floorboards, the venomous spider unloading her poisons into the Shinigami, or hearing the sharp defense in the deity's voice, paired with the impending look of tears forming in his eyes. He was right. He was childish and inexperienced and stubborn, but Heero could see that he was right and that he had to acknowledge it, and he felt the familiar feeling of guilt welling up in him. He felt those inhuman violet eyes falling upon him imploringly as he sighed.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled almost inaudibly, backing off again as the spider made more leeway between his fingers. "You're right, so don't kill her if you don't want to." Another sigh followed, and he exasperatedly ran his hand through his disheveled hair and started off down the hallway toward the kitchen. "I'm getting myself a beer. Do whatever you want," he mumbled as he turned the corner.

Shini lifted his hands up and watched a little trickle of his blood stream out his fingers. He grinned, despite it, and went trotting after him. "Can he keep her?"

"No!"

"But she doesn't hurt him! See?" the Angel of Death implored. "She can't live under Teishu's floors forever! There'll be nothing to eat and she'll pass on the worlds."

"Oh, that's horrible." Heero barely bothered to lift his voice loud enough to make it out of the kitchen, and as he opened the refrigerator door, a distinct shiver went up and down his spine, but not from the cool air drifting out onto his skin. He knew that seconds later, Shinigami would be standing behind him, begging again, barely aware that he held a very deadly creature too close for comfort for him. It may not have hurt the immortal being, but with one careless mistake she could escape, bite him, and he'd be long gone.

And it didn't help that he wasn't the most inclined towards spiders.

He gripped his fist around an American-style beer with a Japanese label and felt the sweat of the bottle rubbing off onto his skin. Twisting the top off easily as he nudged the door shut with his elbow, Heero turned to see his prediction come true. He quickly took a step backwards from the black widow, still struggling to halfway escape the clutches of her well-meaning captor.

Shini bowed to him humbly, still cupping his hands around the deadly spider, and then begged him again, his innocent eyes matching the pout in his lips. "Pretty please, partn'r?" he asked, slurring his words like some ridiculous cowboy. Heero arched an eyebrow at him in consideration, but it soon fell on the black widow, and only a second later he shook his head and said, "No," again.

"But Teishu!"

"I don't care what you say or think about her, she'll kill me if she bites me. I don't plan on dying just yet," Heero retorted flatly, brushing by the Angel of Death and his pet venomous spider-at a considerable distance, of course-and sat down at his kitchen table to take a long, remedying drink from the alcohol bottle. After the chair legs scratched along the floor, the air filled with a tense silent on the Shinigami's part. "She can live, but just not here."

For a few seconds, it remained at a stalemate, with the sound of Heero tiredly ingesting alcohol to help ease the thoughts that were giving him so much trouble, now that he wasn't alone anymore. It was silent after he set it down on the table, back in the ring of water it'd left on the tabletop, and puckered his lips slightly. The sound of the black widow trying to escape the immortal hands that held her couldn't be heard, nor the sound that the unhappy expression on the Shinigami's face made. What could be heard, a moment or so later, was the deity walking over quietly and sitting himself down at the table one chair apart from the mortal man. Shini sat in silence, watching the profile of Heero's face as he eventually stopped staring off into nothing and turned his attention toward him. He flinched slightly, just seeing the spider again, and the deity's face darkened.

"Is that you want to do when you see him, when you see Shini?" His eyes lowered half way, absorbed in thought, trying with difficulty to say the next thing on his mind. "You want to move away?"

"No," Heero said automatically, not even giving it a genuine thought. He didn't want to seem like he was a callus bastard, so he automatically denied it. But looking back on all his actions, on the events of the days past, he knew that he had been one, and there would be no hiding that fact, no matter what he would say.

"But you are afraid of her."

"Yeah," he grunted uneasily. "That spider could kill me."

"But so could Shinigami. In truth, he probably is more likely to kill you than she is, Teishu," he confessed with a self-effacing scoffing laugh, turning away and gazing wistfully at the polished grain of the tabletop. Still, the spindly black legs could be seen, clawing through the cracks between his fingers. "He understands. All mortals fear Death-that's why you hate him."

Heero wondered what the hell he'd done to deserve such a heavy conversation, and wondered why the hell he felt so guilty about it all of a sudden. The words came effortlessly, though he wasn't sure if they were believable. "I don't hate you," he said, holding the cold glass of the beer in one hand and nervously sticking the other in his pocket.

The light in his face instantly returned. The switch had been thrown, and his innocent effervescent had returned in full as he started to beg again. "Then can he keep her?"

"I said no," Heero retorted, furrowing an eyebrow. He didn't appreciate how he felt the Angel of Death was trying to advantage of his guilt just so he could keep a lethal animal as a pet inside his house. "You're only going to be here for four more days, why do you need to keep her? You're going to have to take her when you leave, because there is no way she will be staying in this house with me."

"Oh, come on," Shini grinned, opening up his palms slowly to display said deadly creature. "She's almost tame, Teishu! Really!"

"Let that thing free in my house and I'll kick you out right now," he warned sharply, taking a distinct scoot backwards away from the Shinigami and his equally deadly pet. "And you're bleeding on my table. You should either kill her or put her back where you found her, and go fix your hand up," he ordered, unable to tear his eyes off the beady-eyed head that was appearing between his palms.

"But Teishu…!" Shini whined. He bolted to his feet and angrily stomped a barefoot against the polished floorboards with a dull thump. "He doesn't want to leave her-he wants to take care of her! Like you promised his mother you'd take care of him! Promised!"

"What does that have to do with this?" Heero said critically, lifting the rim of the bottle away from his lips just to make a skeptical face.

"He wants to keep her!"

"He can't," Heero mocked dully, glancing away to take another drink, to fill his belly with something warm and bubbly and agreeable, especially something that didn't argue back like a child.

"Well, what can he do?" Shini barked back finally, sharply putting his hands on either of his hips, his lip puckered like a boorish fighter might in an argument, and his tail whipping steadily back and forth in the air behind him. There was a soft sound emanating in the room that definitely was not Heero's lips on the bottle rim or the growl coming off a stubborn Shinigami-a soft, squishy noise. Slowly, Shini looked down into his upturned palm to see what remained of his pet, and the rest of her stuck to his hip.

"Oh, crap," Shini grumbled.

Heero paused for a second, keeping his stomach even as he observed what color the inside of black widows were, since it was smeared over the Shinigami's hand. "Well, you can go clean that off, first, and then you can go take a shower. You still reek of Darkness oil." He turned around to take another long, cleansing swig from the bottle and walked out of the kitchen, up the short flight of stairs and into the bathroom at the top of the hall. He ducked into the dark doorway and a second later it filled with a yellowish light.

Shini stood at the bottom of the stairs, staring in distraught at his beloved pet in all her assorted pieces and juices, and glanced up just in time to see a towel being tossed down to him and hear his Teishu grumbling, "I'm gonna have to throw that one away when you're done with it."

[1] The timeline will be different than in the usual Gundam Wing universe. As you can probably already tell, this is an Alternate universe, so the date really wouldn't amount to much, but I thought it would be important to stay away from the 190's in After Colony. The respect the politics of Gundam Wing too much to explain away in one session o' geek, so I thought that by the time it came around to when Heero was 25, which would be 205, that there would have been some sort of major conflict that I was not prepared to write into my story. Heero will not be using any mobile suit, guns, or mixed martial arts as far as this story is concerned, but Shini makes a pretty good weapon if he gets into any trouble (which he will), don't you think?

Hai, hai, Teishu. Wakarimasu - Yeah, yeah, Husband/Master. I understand.

Kanojo wa ubarashiii da, ne?" - She's fantastic, isn't she?

[[[A/N]]]

I know that I've been keeping you guys from the update you all deserve, but school's beginning to rag on my ass already, especially with the introduction of that Satanic spawn that most call Geometry. Pictures: Good; Math: Bad; Math with Pictures: Beyond-Comprehension Bad. Well, that's no excuse, really. I tried to fit the rest of this chapter in, but we were fast approaching a 6 or 7 thousand word mark, and I thought it'd be better to split it up. I promise you'll very soon get the next chapter, and it'll be plump full of turning point. It's one of the big turning points in the story, so automatically you've got to have some snogging, right? Thanks for reading everyone, and if anyone would like to sell Geometry answers in exchange for virtual sex, I'm just desperate enough to try. [Looks around nervously] Joking, joking! Underage! Ha!