Title: Seperation
Genre: GW
Pairings: 1x2
Rating: PG

***

    I’m on my way to see him. It must’ve been a good six years since I last saw Heero, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. It never does, you know, and we’ve gone for long periods without seeing one another before. It always seems to be that I feel like I only saw him a few days ago, not nearly long enough to miss him when I’m on the verge of seeing him again.

    When I’m not sure if or when I’ll see him, it seems like ages.

    The last time we met up after such a length of time it was at a conference. The world would never quite let us out of the lime light, even after we all proclaimed quite publicly that we had no wish to be exalted for all our various ‘good deeds’. I think we are all of the mind that what we did during the war, despite our good intentions, was still just what every other soldier was doing. Killing and subversion are still murder, even if they are for a good cause, and I think we all knew, deep down, that what we were doing was just that. Murder.

    Teenage hands stained with blood aren’t the best things to bring hope to the millions they’ve just won the good way for. Since we didn’t decimate the entire culture of our enemies, there was still quite a large group that would like to see us hung or summarily executed for what we did. I bet there still are, but somehow I can forget all of that when I see one of my comrades.

    And yes, the others are just that to me, and more, but in strictly the loosest terms we are all that - comrades in arms. I can trust that when I go to visit Trowa or Wufei or Quatre that if someone raises a hand against me they will be there to back me up, however I handle it at the time. And God knows that Heero would kill whoever it was that tried to strike me, if they managed to do it, and probably for trying to do it as well.

    But I digress.

    As I was saying, the last meeting the two of us had was under similar circumstances. Out of the blue one day in the middle of December I got a phone call from Heero that was very short and to the point.

    “I want to see you,” he said.

“Heero?”

    “What are you doing on Saturday, Duo?”

    I knew it was him at that point. There had been no greeting when I picked up the phone, no pleasantries, no petty conversation. He has always been just like that, direct, to the point. It’s one of the things I admire so much about him, that he can be like that… so straightforward. I find that I have a tendency to walk around things and hope that whoever I’m talking to just picks up on what I mean to get across to them. I mentioned it to Heero once and he said that it was probably just a cultural difference between the Japanese and American ancestry we have in opposition within us. I think I might have minded more if he wasn’t holding me when he said it. His tone was the same blatant and obvious vocalization he always uses to explain things to me and everyone else, but there was a certain fondness to his tone that made me wonder if he meant it as bitingly as it came out at first. On further reflection I think he didn’t.

    “Nothing too special, I suppose, Heero.”

    “Well now you are. Meet me.”

    It wasn’t so much a question as it was a statement. Deep down we both knew I’d be there, wherever it was that he wanted to meet, willing and up for whatever he decided we’d do. At twenty-two I had no qualms about myself or how I felt about Heero, and apparently he had none about whatever twisted relationship we shared because he kept it alive by keeping in touch with me.

    After the wars he was harder to keep track of than that needle in the haystack, and after one time of freaking out about him supposedly ‘leaving’ me, I had gotten used to being the reliable one in whatever it was we were involved in.

    He was the lead of the dance, but I always seemed to know the steps he was missing. He would call, for instance, but just say, “Come over.” It took a while to get him to realize that I wasn’t keeping tabs on his every movement and that he’d have to give me a location to come or go to. Or I’d show up and find that it was an unfurnished place we were going to spend time in… no food and no furniture other than a toilet and a kitchen stove and sink.

    “For how long?”

    That question had become an issue at that point as well because I’d landed a steady job and would have to possibly be calling off if this was to be an extended rendezvous. His end of the line was quiet for a while.

    “Is that so important?”

    “I’ve got a job to go to, Heero.”

    He seemed shocked by that, as though I could be a drifter like he was and live off of the stipends from the war smuggling we did. In retrospect I could’ve, but something just felt more right about spending time in my life tied down somewhere, especially after having such a listless adolescence and early teenage period.

    The stability was something I very much needed in my life at that point, so I made an effort to attain it for myself. I had actually made a down payment on a house, only from my earnings at the jobs I’d had away from the Preventers and since the war. I decided I’d like to try to rely on myself and not what I had left over from being an illegally paid murderer.

    I suppose that on the other hand, Heero was doing what he’d never had the chance to do before and live on the fly. I don’t fault him, didn’t then, and don’t think I ever will. He had done something I’d always had a secret wish that he would do. He was a good friend of mine, despite whatever sordid relationship went on behind the scenes, and I always hated that he was so trapped within himself and his childhood. So I was glad that he was being so light and free with himself, even if I missed him terribly.

    “Two weeks,” Heero’s voice sounded very sure and certain, as though he had made the decision, but in making it he’d turned it into a rule or a law that couldn’t be broken. He remarked to me once, sitting in the window seat, naked, just as the dusk light was fading to the darkness of night after the sunset, that I was his one addiction, and that he couldn’t let himself get too close to me because then he’d never be able to get away. I very much believe him, and not only because Heero is always so serious about everything.

    I had to, you see, because he was the same thing to me.

    But that’s what our last meeting was like, and it was almost six years ago, now that I think about it.

    The phone call this time wasn’t much different. I picked up the phone and was greeted with the familiar near-monotone voice speaking the same familiar and beloved phrase, slightly altered, “I need to see you.”

    His voice is almost desperate, it seems, and as I listened to him without any reply ready, he said, “Duo? You are there, right?”

    “Uh, yes.”

    “Haven’t replaced me? I know it’s been a while.”

    “No, Heero.”

    I hear a relieved sigh and then there’s silence for a long moment. “So where should I meet you?” I asked after I felt the pause had begun to drag out past all usefulness.

    “Actually, I was going to come to you.”

    My heart speeds up as he says that. “You’re coming here?”

    “Room for me there?”

    Glancing needlessly around my living room I answer immediately, “Of course there’s room for you, anytime you want to impose on me, you know I’m waiting.”

    He hesitates and then says, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” before hanging up the phone.

    And so I’m sitting here, in a daze.