Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ My Shinigami, My Hamburger ❯ The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight ( Chapter 19 )

Chapter 19

"The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight"

Of the momentous occasions of one’s life, the most important ones always either are too frenzied or too emotional to recall clearly, or they are crystallized in your mind. You can remember where you were at the time, who you were with, even way the light fell on the ground that day—the most miniscule details become as solid as a photograph in your mind and it was no different for Heero concerning the deaths of his parents. He was surprised how long he’d actually gone without replaying those events in his head, as they were unusually sharp and particularly biting when he began to dream them that night. It’d grown to an intensity and vibrancy of his old nightmares of the nights directly following his parents’ deaths. And in it, the story line had become tangled, disturbed, and suddenly more interactive—Not that that was any good thing.

Heero found himself no longer just a spectator to the hideous cinema playing out in his head. He was also standing in the middle of that military base, and one of the rowdy soldiers had spotted him with a hungry, ogling eye intent to do no good. He stopped and turned toward instead to where Heero stood in the dream, his twelve year old legs suddenly beneath him again and unwilling to move. He could not and did not escape this dream antagonist and he soon found himself thoroughly being tossed around, ridiculed physically by the man’s forceful hands landing again and again on his face, and finally being discarded after the snot had been beaten out of him into a dark outbuilding. No sooner than had he hit the floor did he begin to cry, and in the dream, it was a strange, detached sensation that Heero believed was real, for lack of realization that he was still dreaming. In the dark of that utility shed he sat up with an aching body and lifted a hand to his face to access the damage with his fingertips, still shaking with the choked sobs.

He brushed his fingertips over his lip and found a thin line of blood pouring from his mouth in one tiny stream down his chin and continuing through his fingers as he tried to catch it in his hands. The feeling that his face was swollen and bruised beyond recognition faded in a growing fear as the blood did not stop—it kept pouring steadily from his mouth in a single, narrow line of crimson and then snaked down to the floor and winded toward the door. He couldn’t stop himself from crying as the horrible fear grew and the blood didn’t cease. His mind started to scream of death and muddled with paranoid thoughts when from the dark Death himself appeared and reached out for him. Somehow, the Shinigami had found his way into that dark shed and a hand ran along Heero’s face tenderly while he sat back in a shadowed corner. With a pained moan, Heero leaned into the hand, trying to reach out and find the deity, but beneath him, the hand disappeared and he collapsed to the floor abruptly. He felt no pain, only the agony of what his mind could imagine, and soon saw nothing in the dream world, for his eyes were opening on the real one.

Sunlight was pouring gently in through his shutters, painting all in his room a soft tone his sleepy, sensitive eyes were thankful for. The horror of the dream slowly faded away as he glanced around, his mind lazy and still sluggish from sleep. He could see his desk, lined with the books of his adolescence, and the calendar hung on the wall beside it, still unmarked from the time that he had departed for America. As he blinked his eyes awake, he was suddenly aware that someone had been gently stroking his face as he lay on his side and ran their fingers soothingly through his hair. And in the silent sanctuary of his room that someone was singing a peaceful archaic melody with his rich, baritone voice rolling sumptuously over the Latin lyrics. Heero remained motionless for a moment, blue eyes open and lucid, listening to the voice that could only belong to the Shinigami. Even while he felt his hair being stroked, he remained still, listening intently. And he remained listening, inadvertently fascinated, until the song had ended.

Shini, who had long noticed the mortal’s waking, simply smiled to himself as the last note sounded and he reached down from his perch on the headboard to affectionately tilt Heero’s head up with a hand and grinned down at him. "G’morning, Teishu," he bid him. At first, he simply stared back up at the Angel of Death sitting on the edge of his headboard, and only managed to conjure up a mild wary look.

"Didn’t I tell you to stay out of my bed?" Heero asked as he rolled onto his back, his throat morning-gravelly.

"No, you did not," Shini said pleasantly. "You must have forgotten." His smirk grew smugly and his thumb brushed over the mortal’s face while he wore that confused frown. "And besides, he is not in your bed, now, is he? He can not get in trouble for that, then!" He let out a little laugh and Heero remained still beneath his hand, his eyes growing increasingly confused as they focused on the deity’s face, and the way the bright sunlight fell on it—Sunlight. That familiar sensation of dread he’d experienced many times during his stint with the Shinigami returned to him, shattering the serenity he’d woken up into.

"Shit. What time is it?" he groaned suddenly, sitting up.

The Angel of Death fluttered his wings as he drew his hand back, making an innocent face and tilting his head to the side. "Um—Morning?" he ventured with a shrug.

Heero cranked his head around to look for the clock that usually sat on the bedside table and found that the lamp had been tipped over, the shade knocked to the carpet, and all the other things scattered to the ground as well, from the Shinigami’s wings, he presumed. The clock was on the ground, and the red digits declared it was a generous ten forty-five in the morning, nearly five hours past the mortal’s normal waking our and most definitely late for work. Instantly, an accusing stare fell back on the God of Death, who was still crouched like a massive bird on the edge of his headboard, and he reacted with a startled innocent face.

But Heero was filled with too much dread in his stomach to care at the moment. "Shinigami, did you turn off my alarm?"

"What, you mean that strange sound?" He winced a little to himself. "Why, was it important? It was only making irritating noises, Teishu, and you needed your sleep, so he made it stop." He again made an innocuous face, unsure of what he’d done wrong—after all, the last time he’d been in the mortal realm was long before electricity, let alone the concept of alarm clocks. Heero realized this, but cursed anyway and ripped the blanket off him, shaking his head, grumbling something along the lines of how he was going to loose his job on the account of the troublesome god, and hurriedly snatched up some clothes. He bolted out the door, leaving the confused Shinigami to sit all alone on the headboard and wonder just what an alarm clock was on top of what prompted the strange behavior of his husband. A second later, Heero came back, his hair wetted from beneath the faucet in the tub, and a fresh shirt thrown on, taking Shini by the wrist and tugging him down from his perch.

"Damn it, I’m not leaving you alone in the house," he grumbled. "You’re going to work with me, since you’re the one who made me so late in the first place."

"Mnnh! No, thank you," Shini groaned. "He hates work."

Before the mortal turned the other direction to rush to work, his eyes ran up and down the Shinigami, lingering over the paint-freckled tank top and the sweatpants he wore from the night before. He shrugged helplessly and decided to risk look like he was associating with an unkempt bachelor than spend any more time trying to dress him. He also had to realize, with a little irony, that neither of them was any longer bachelors at all, and his husband was none other than the Thirteenth Son of Shinigami. He huffed a sigh, the one he’d been visited by too much as of late, and said, "It’ll have to do, I guess."

"Oi! Where’s his g’morning kiss?" he protested immediately, resisting when Heero tried to pull him towards the door.

The mortal huffed another rushed sigh before turning around and quickly pressing his lips to Shini’s. He pulled away while simultaneously pulling him along behind him.

The deity grinned a little, despite the fact he had to go to work, something he’d really never done for a day in his divine life, and followed him through the house, snatching up the black cloak from downstairs and pulling on an old pair of shoes as he walked quickly behind him. A g’morning kiss truly did help start the day off on the right foot. A minute after that, Youkai’s engine roared back to life and pealed out of the driveway and onto the emptied morning streets of the quiet Tokyo suburb.

"Ne, Teishu," Shini asked suddenly, breaking from the silence that had occupied them.

"You know I asked you not to call me that anymore." A certain impatient tone had returned to Heero’s voice and a bluntness to his speech, but he had never been overly agreeable in the morning and the fact that he was monstrously, dangerously late for work on his first day back from a vacation did not brighten his day up any more. He wore a general sullen look that morning as he glared hatefully up at the stoplight that had stopped him at the current intersection, willing it to either change immediately or else suffer a horrible death. Unfortunately, it did not work and there he sat, his tension growing as the seconds ticked by. If there were one thing that could make him completely impossible to deal with, it would be losing this job and he was pretty close to doing just that.

"He does not mean to, he is sorry," the deity answered, frightened by the harsh tone. Perhaps he’d just grown too attached to the sweeter, laid-back Heero he’d sat with on the roof the other night, but still he did not like it when he got to such a point. As he sat on the back of the motorcycle, his arms still ringed around the mortal’s waist, he made a exasperated expression, pouting at the back of his husband’s head.

"Yeah, I know you are," Heero muttered, his fierce blue stare still fixed on the headlight. "But all the apologies in the world doesn’t change the fact, and it doesn’t change this goddamned light to green, now does it?" His foot supporting them on the pavement tapped impatiently.

"No, he guesses it does not," he sighed in return, glancing over to the car that was waiting at the intersection beside them. He caught the glance of the quaint-looking woman sitting in the passenger seat and smiled brightly at her, waving at her enthusiastically when she paid attention to him, his face lighting up.

He was not aware that it was because of his strange appearance—though she did not know she was being hailed by a God of Death, most mortals could still sense something amiss about him—and she awkwardly smiled in return, sort of raising her hand as well. That caused Shini to beam in return and Heero momentarily glanced over to see just what the hell he was doing now, and accidentally turned that glare on the poor woman. She started a little before Heero turned his attention back to the streetlight, which incidentally had just turned green after an eternity, and the motorcycle gunned ahead, jolting forward suddenly. As they thundered away, Shini was once again clamped happily around his disgruntled husband and, those facts unknown to the woman, she could have sworn she saw a whip of thin black wagging from underneath the gothic-looking cloak he wore. But shortly after that, the car she was riding in turned and sped off to its own corner of Tokyo.

While Youkai rumbled on, the Shinigami sitting behind the mortal was busy turning his head from side to side, eager to absorb all that he could—after all, it’d been centuries since he’d seen any of the beauty of Earth and many more years since he’d since Tokyo, and there was no telling how long it would be before he would see it again. Through his unruly bangs dancing every which way in the wind as Heero maneuvered his way around traffic, edging over the line into illegally sometimes, Shini eyes raked along the skyline, absolutely awed when he came in few of the sky scrapers and the seemingly endless concrete jungle of bright signs, bustling shops, and electronic billboards. The last time he’d had a glance at civilization, it been long before the idea for establishing colonies in space was even imagined and back when mail had been carried pony from pony across the American West. The modern city amazed him; it was near the equivalent of dropping one of the creatures from Alice’s Wonderland into the actual world.

Deeper into the city, now fully flanked by traffic on all sides, they hit a green light as Heero took a smooth turn onto a less crowded road. The speedometer needle was bobbing a little higher than it should have been, but Shini wouldn’t have noticed and anyway, he was gaping up at the metallic giants around him. His eyes suddenly wandered past the immediate buildings and alighted on a distant, but very much familiar, figure. His arms tightened around Heero’s waist suddenly and he felt some of the air running out of him from the sheer force of it.

"Hey! He knows that one! He’s seen that before!" he chirped proudly, jabbing a finger at the lofty red and white tower to show his mortal husband. "That is the Eiffel Tower, he knows! Ha, see? He does know of something mortal!"

Glancing up briefly from the road, Heero caught sight of what the Shinigami was pointing out, snorted to himself, and turned his head back around, chuckling in his helmet. "No, it’s not," he said smugly, noting with a little smirk how the deity’s arms twitched unhappily around his waist when he said that and he gave an automatic indignant snort.

"Oi! Little storm cloud, rain on his parade, why don’t you?" Shini said unhappily, unwinding a hand from around his husband to knock him on the head once. From behind him, he shot him a childish look and an inch of tongue peeped out in a raspberry. But, nevertheless, he put the arm back around him, though not necessarily to hold on, and looked back up at the tower. He was disappointed and his expression showed it. "You are sure that’s not it? Because he saw it in an authentic photograph, he did! Solo showed him once. It came in the mail."

"No. That’s Tokyo Tower. It’s a rip-off the Eiffel Tower," Heero answered plainly. "That’s in France, Shini."

"He knows, he lived there once." He sighed. "He just forgot, that’s all. It was a very long time ago. He just saw it and thought it was."

"France?" Though he was terribly late, most likely on the verge of unemployment and would probably have to stoop to shuffling through the job pool again if he were any later—all things that, if he sat and thought about them for too long, could make him tear out his hair—he was curious enough about the Shinigami’s past list of caretakers, to know there were others who had suffered the same, and opened his mouth to speak pleasantly to the deity for a change. "When was that?"

"Your mortal year of 1285, but he knows it better as when he was turning a thousand and five. They had just made him leave his home and he could not live in Hell anymore," Shini answered with a mild nostalgic smile as he bent his neck to rest his head on Heero’s shoulder. "His first caretaker lived in France, he remembers. It was so long ago he barely can think of his face, it’s nothing but a blur."

"What was his name?" Heero was listening while simultaneously craning his neck to scan for traffic, about to take the final turn of their journey, barely a mile from his building and already catching sight of it down the road.

"Phillipe."

"That was it?"

"He did not have a last name," the Shinigami answered with a shrug. "He was orphaned, also."

Heero snorted a little morbidly to himself, though he thought with a little irony that the tone was probably lost on the innocent God of Death riding passenger with him on his motorcycle. "Like me, I guess. I’m beginning to see a pattern." He paused to shake his head. "What did this Phillipe do for a living in thirteenth century France, then?"

"Sang songs—he was a troubadour. He’d come back home to Shini with a hat-full of coins and he would carve little wooden dolls for him, but he’s lost them all by now. He died in his sleep in one year. He’d forgotten to finish his last carving for Shini," the Angel of Death finished quietly, doused in a saddening nostalgia. But, as could be expected, the expression did not last long before some semblance of curiosity or a smile would break out and shove the memory troubling him aside for the time being. He lifted his head and ran his eyes up and down the gleaming surface of Heero’s helmet, tilting to the side inquisitively so that his long eartails whipped in the wind over his shoulders. "What do you do for living, Teishu?"

"Photography," he grunted plainly, paying more attention to the road at the time than to what exactly came out of his mouth. He was nearing their destination and getting closer and closer to the unpleasant employer and job endangerment he would be facing inevitably.

"So that’s why you have so many pictures, huh? But Okasan told him that you had been a soldier, right?"

"Yeah," Heero answered dully, momentarily lapsing into memory. "That was a while ago. I stayed away from the military for a long time after my parents died, but eventually I had to, for the money. It wasn’t fun, but at least I never had to go hungry."

"What happened?" The Shinigami picked up cautiously on the subtle tone in the mortal’s voice, a depressing pitch that made his normally monotone voice even more lifeless as he spoke up, unabashedly blunt and dark about the truth. He kept his arms tight around his waist, hoping it could give him some comfort and help to coax him out of his shell a little. Feeling a little brave, he even put his chin on Heero’s tensed-up shoulder.

"I got kicked out with a dishonorable discharge. They had enough respect for my father and enough pity on me for the death of my parents on a military base to print it as an ‘honorable’ one in all the documents, but it really wasn’t. My father’s memory didn’t not make me a troublemaker, I guess." An equally listless snort came a second later. "I used to go into these rages while I was on base and I would go off at any remark. I hospitalized one of them and disfigured a few others I didn’t get along with. I went into depressions at night that would make me angry in the morning, and the cycle would repeat. So I lost my position after I worked years to earn it."

There could be no heavy silence between them, with the engine still going steadily beneath them as Heero continued down the road, nearing the gleaming building, but with a certain lackluster tone to his expression. Shini gave a sympathetic look to the back of his head and was just about to squeeze his arms around him and give him a word of comfort, when they finally came in full view of their destination, the standard-looking metallic structure, and Heero abruptly gunned the engine and whipped into the underground parking lot beside it. The speed at which they went down the slope put the Shinigami’s stomach up into his throat in a way that wasn’t unpleasant, just a little surprising. He let out a little sound of excitement and gripped tighter as Heero motored down the narrow lane, yellow lights glistening over his helmet.

Ahead there was a little station with large glass windows for checking I.D. with a rather round man sitting in it, idly the time with a small television he’d manage to squeeze in there, displaying some American daytime television show. Approaching the lowered bar hanging across the lane, Heero did not show any signs of slowing down. Instead, he revved the engine as he drove the motorcycle onto the thin strip of cement running along side the lane to prevent the very thing he was doing, and buzzed by the lowered gate without a worry. The man sitting in the chair watched the motorcycle go by in a thundering growl and smiled to himself. He watched Heero and guest turn the corner and disappear, picking up a magazine with a laugh. "Pretty late today, Yuy." He chuckled and changed the channel with his foot.

A rancorous little frown found its way onto Heero’s face and made itself very comfortable there when he came down the hall, trying to be unobtrusive while dragging a dangerously curious deity behind him past the other workers who’d been on time, and found his own work room at the end of the hall packed up into a number of cardboard boxes and shoved outside the door. The stacks of assorted old microwave boxes and others were slathered in duct tape to keep them from falling apart at the seams; every last thing that had sat in his room had been evicted and now moped outside of it. Some piles reached almost as high as his shoulders and they filled the entire end of the hall like a strange sculpture. Heero stood in the center of this, his expression souring with every passing moment, with Shini standing behind him silently, just peering cautiously at the boxes, not knowing their significance because he’d never really learned to read English but realizing whatever it was, it wasn’t making his husband very happy at all.

He let go of the Shinigami’s wrist and stepped over a box marked in sloppy Sharpie scribbling, ‘Negatives,’ and tried the doorknob. It was firmly locked, so he stopped and turned his severe face toward the wall beside the door. Even the stacked windows to the side of the door had been blocked out, Shini noticed, before Heero stepped in front of them, reaching down to the side to the outlet embedded in the wall. He pulled out the loosened bottom screw and swung the plastic panel to reveal a little cranny by the bared socket that should have held a little metal key, but now was very much empty. He slammed it shut, jammed the screw back in, straightened up with a grumble, and looked over at Shini, who’d already given in to his overwhelming curiosity and started sniffing around at the boxes, rattling a few with a tap of the finger.

Heero saved him from the full force of his glare and instead just warned, "Stay here and please just don’t make a mess of anything." The Shinigami straightened up quickly and pulled his hands away from the box labeled, ‘Lenses,’ and clasped them innocently behind his back.

"Of course not," he beamed back obediently, secretly tossing another glance at another promising-looking box.

Not secret enough, because Heero shook his head admonishingly at him. "I mean it, Shinigami. Now, just sit here and, I don’t know—count ceiling tiles or something. I just blew my last chance, apparently, and now I’ve got to go get my job and my goddamned key back, so don’t talk to strangers." He walked past the deity, who promptly mock-saluted and grinned. Heero paused, noticing the wind-tousled, unbrushed state of the Angel of Death’s hair and thinking how he probably looked no more presentable himself, sighed and added. "And don’t take any candy from them, either."

"Right, right," he said, grin widening. "Cross his heart, hope to die, stick a needle in his eye." Once his Teishu had stalked down the hall with all the vexation of the last few days conveniently choosing to exercise itself today and disappeared around a corner, he grinned and revealed the second hand hiding behind his back, index and middle finger entwined impishly, and sat down on the carpet with the first box he saw, tearing at the duct tape and sticking his head inside in curiosity. While he started his long inquisition through his Teishu’s boxed possessions, that mortal was at moment at his supervisor’s office door, with a secretary a little agape as he strolled past the reception desk and snatched the doorknob.

"Excuse me," she blurted quickly, her pen dropping from her hand onto the opened appointment book, cradling the phone against her neck with the other. "Yuy-san, you can’t just barge in! Takamura-sama is taking his early lunch break at the moment."

Heero didn’t hesitate as he pushed the door open, shooting an answer over his shoulder. "Good. With his mouth full, he might actually listen for a change."

He came across the sight of his superior, obviously taken aback by the sudden entrance but his calm, stone-faced expression did not change even as he was caught with a clump of rice halfway up to his mouth. Heero gave him a standard unreadable and unmovable stare while he shut the door, locked it with a twist of his hand, and stood before the man in charge with a challenge in his eye. He bowed stiffly, out of sheer ceremony, to the man wiping the rice grains from his upper lip, and even then it was so indignant it was hardly a movement at all. He remained silent, his eyes dark and seething enough to let Takamura know he’d better explain himself, and quick. As sharp as the look was, the man took his time in politely putting his chopsticks down, pushing the bowl to the side, and folding his hands on the table.

His eyes ran up and down the young man before him and spoke finally, unrushed. "Even with your native blood, Yuy-san, you still have the awful temper on par with that of the foolish Americans themselves. You only have your father to blame for that, you know."

"Righteous anger knows no country borders, Takamura-sama," he replied in a distinct monotone, though his eyes were silently aflame. "I’d like to request as to why you ordered all my things to suddenly get shoved out into the hallway, supervisor. Please, indulge me."

"Once you get rid of your anger, yes, Yuy-san." He cooed back calmly, hands still folded on the tabletop. When Heero’s dark-blue eyes began to get their daggers at the ready and he realized he would not compromise that, Takamura smiled minimally and extended a hand. "Take a seat, then, please. Or would you rather me just come out and tell you that you’re fired while you’re on your feet, Yuy-san?"

With that, Heero did sit himself down in the chair he stood beside, but the stubborn look in his eye didn’t lessen as he did so.

"Good," Takamura sighed, secretly relieved he’d gotten the young man to settle a little. He was not a stupid employer; he’d hired the young Japanese man knowing fully of his capacity for outbursts when under extreme cases of stress and how he’d bloodied the faces of men twice his size and strength in a matter of seconds. He hesitated before speaking up. After all, he wanted to word things just right to avoid starting him up into another dangerous state.

"You’re very late," he stated after a moment’s silence.

"Yes," Heero ground out. He kept silent after that.

"Care to explain yourself, Yuy-san?"

The generally pissed expression lulled for a moment. The corner of his lip hooked in tiny, aberrant smirk, but it soon disappeared. "It’s a very, very long story. I’d prefer not to."

"You have time. You are fired, after all. No need to hurry back to work just yet," the older man answered.

"You have no reason to fire me, Takamura-sama," Heero said, a certain growl forming.

"On the contrary, Yuy-san, I have had the evidence for a time now, and I’m just now putting this into enforcement. You don’t have the authority to be arguing with me about your worth at a time like this." Unfolding his heavily lined hands, he found his thin-rimmed glasses and put them on. "You may be the most skilled of all my employees, but talent alone cannot excuse you forever. On top of the issue of your irrelevant and abstract work, and the fact you refuse to sell half of your photographs, you have begun a practice of absenteeism that I cannot condone. In the last year, you alone have been the one to double our figures of absences."

"You got a copy of my physician’s orders; you know all of those days were legitimate."

"Yes, yes they were," Takamura said, sitting impeccably straight. "It is my right to exercise my authority critically on whomever I chose, no matter if the reasons are legitimate. In the end, I basically may fire you for any reason I choose. Was that not your understanding?"

"I understand," Heero growled, back into a corner again.

"Good," his supervisor said, not moving to adjust his glasses even as he glanced down at his desk and pulled a sheet of paper in front of him. "Now, back to the issue at hand. You indeed have a stress-syndrome, Yuy-san, but to myself, it is nothing more than a simple case of mental karoshi, deterioration in the work ethic brought on by emotional stress and overwork. I accept it, but I do not pity you for it. You are far too talented—though a little misguided—to let this get in your way, I believe. You did manage to get through the three men holding you back to severely injure Private Naroki of your division the week of your discharge; I don’t think a little sleeplessness could really stop you."

Heero’s stare fixated on that unchanging calm, lined face darkened a little. He did not want to loose this job. "If you say I’m so talented, Takamura-sama, why are you so eager to dispose of me, then?"

"I am not. I regret it, but it is a decision for the best. I granted you a two-week vacation, Yuy-san, and you repay me immediately with a severe tardiness. This is discipline."

"Why strike the dog if you’re only going to shoot him?" Heero quipped back, unfazed by his supervisor’s own stare to fight the sentence.

"Yuy-san, I will not stoop to repeat myself. You have failed me in more than one way, and your highly uncommercial work is another topic of concern I, but I do not have the time nor the patience to do so now, so I’ll ask you to suffice with the reason I’ve given you. You should be so lucky to get a reason, after rudely interrupting me and disrespecting my secretary, that is."

A little throbbing vein returned just above Heero’s eye, one that ran straight into his brain and filled it with all the promptly updated stress. He’d had enough with superior authorities snubbing him in the last week to practically go berserk, and loosing his job on top of the binding proposal shoved onto him by Iria did not help that feeling. He was about to stand and protest his sentence, a very un-Japanese quality, when both men paused, hearing another commotion coming from the secretary as someone passed her without permission, going into the supervisor’s office. A second later, Heero turned to see the familiar brunet head of the Shinigami poking in through the cracked door, a large glossy photo clutched in one hand.

"Teishu, you did not tell him that you had such beautiful pictures!" Shini said, running a hand along the laminated surface of the photopaper and hardly paying attention to anything else.

Though he’d grown used to the name and hardly registered the true meaning of it, Heero was the only one, and to hear the strange young man standing in the door address him as husband startled the supervisor a little, though it only showed in a puzzled, furrowed face.

"I told you to stop calling me that!" Heero hissed beneath his breath, walking quickly toward the door towards the awed deity, taking on color like a sinking ship takes on water. "And I told you specifically to stay put—and you promised me you would! Hope to die, remember that?"

Shini brightened up inevitably as his mortal husband came closer, taking him by the shoulder and about to turn him out of the room. He laughed. "He cannot die, silly. Besides, you are too unhappy, Heero, you know? You should relax. Nothing bad happened because of him yet, see?" he pointed out, still admiring the photograph even as he was about to be pushed away from the office door. He caught a glimpse of the aged man sitting behind the business desk, watching the scene with a sharp eye, and lifted up the black and white print. "Have you seen it? It’s wonderful, huh?"

Heero took the photo out of his hand and gave him a look.

"Oi, Heero—!"

"Excuse me," Takamura suddenly spoke up, interrupting the imminent dispute between the two. Heero turned his head to look at his supervisor again, and soon saw that there was a familiar little key sitting in his open palm, extended across the table. He put it down on his desk and withdrew, folding his hands back into their former, stately position. The uncompromising look still remained, in all its difficult glory, but his words implied something beside the stiff expression he wore as he said flatly, "Clever hiding place, Yuy-san, but you’ll need to find a better one this time. Don’t disappoint me again and get to cleaning up that mess outside your office, please. And tomorrow, I expect you here precisely on time."

Heero suddenly had nothing to retort with and remained still, surprised by the abrupt turn, and Shini turned a grin toward him. "See? Nothing bad, partn’r," he drawled, nudging his husband with an elbow.

Karoshi = death by overwork; a word that could have only been created by the Japanese.

AN: I will not say it, I will not complain about how late updating I am. I try durn hard, dammit! Just can’t convince myself of that fact, though. -_-. Sorry to bitch about myself. The title is one of my fave R.E.M. songs off Automatic for the People. Getting closer to the finale of this first arc! And if I don't post by the 14th, Happy Valentine's Day.