Title: Separation [4/?]
Genre: GW
Pairings: 1x2
Rating: PG

A/N:I've given up having expectations on how long this story will be, and just started letting it be how long it wants to. So here's part 4, and part 5 is being written as we speak.

***

    Heero fell asleep on the couch a little while ago, and for the last ten minutes I’ve been laying here with my ear pressed against his chest, my body limp, letting the rise and fall of his chest lull me out of conscious thought. But now I can hear his stomach complaining at him, and mine at me in response, and so I slip very carefully out of his lax grip on my waist and head into the kitchen.

    As I make something to eat I glance into the living room at him.

    I wonder how long he’ll stay. There is something in me wanting him not to go at all.

    As the food finishes cooking, I realize he’s turned slightly, and is stirring as he realizes I’ve gone from my comfortable spot on top of him.

    “Duo?” his voice, for a moment, sounds lost and childlike as he calls to me. I’ve never heard him vulnerable to anyone else. Not like that.

    I drop the wooden spoon I’m using to stir the soup when I hear it, and lean out into the doorway to the other room. “Right here, Heero.”

    His eyes, as they meet mine, relax, for a moment I can see tension in them, and then its gone, and he’s just staring at me, devouring me with his eyes.

*

    Dinner is quiet between us. It always is when it is just the two of us dining. Duo doesn’t need to fill the air with words when there’s only me to hear them, and I don’t need him to. Other people, I’ve found, get unnerved by a silent Duo. I have a feeling that he enjoys the silence as much as he ever enjoyed talking, and he seems to be more at peace when he isn’t forced to come up with the entire conversation.

    “Heero…” I look up, and find his eyes are intently on me as we’re both finishing up the meal, plates nearly empty, wine glasses the same.

    “Hai, Duo?” I always revert back to my native language when I get nervous, something I’m still not sure if he’s bothered to pick up on.

*

    Dinner was quiet, but then meals between the two of us often are, when we’re alone. During the war, when other people were around, I always felt the need to talk, to cover the silence with words. But when it is just the two of us, I can be calm, and quiet. There’s something I’ve been wondering, though, and I’m half afraid to say a word about it.

    He’s nervous as I speak up, and so I reach over and lay my hand across his. He doesn’t start, at least not physically, but I can see it in him that I’m making him a little uncomfortable. It’s something I have to know, though, and so I press on.

    “Where have you been?”

    I swallow, once, twice. I hadn’t expected this question, or at least not so soon after my arrival. I glance at the clock, at my wineglass, and the last few morsels of food on my plate in order to avoid his eyes. Those beautiful, merciless eyes of his. He said once that after so long of claiming not to lie, he’s gotten to the point where he can’t. When he looks at me, I can’t either. The hand covering mine squeezes once and Duo stands, gathering our plates and heading over to the sink.

    “It’s all right, I suppose I shouldn’t have asked it,” he speaks with his back turned from me and I stand up abruptly, almost knocking my chair over.

    “No.”

*

    Unchecked, the chair hits the floor. My hands pause in the dish water and I turn to look at him slightly, my hair still loose down my back. “What?”

    “No,” he repeats.

    “Heero?” I glance at him, but he’s crossed to stand behind me, and he gently puts his hands on my shoulders, guiding my hair to fall in a single mass down my back.

    “I don’t want things to be that way.” I drop the dish from my hands, and with a watery thunk it hits the sink.

    “Don’t want things to be what way?” I can hear the tightness, anxiousness in my own voice. This is something we never do, I never push, he never says anything about how many questions I have that go unanswered. His hands tighten a little on my shoulders and he leans forward, pressing his forehead against the back of my neck. I can feel him breathing in my hair and his next words are a little mumbled.

    “I don’t want you to wonder anymore.”

*

    They were the hardest words I’ve ever said to him, but I know that they are also the truest. Carefully, he swivels in my grip so that my drooping head is pressed against his chest instead of his back. Hesitantly he lifts dripping hands to my chin and tilts my head up. For a long moment he studies my face, and I let him, inhaling the mingled scent of dish soap, a tangy lemon, with his own scent, something darker. And then he speaks.

    “So,” his eyes are kind, but there is something almost fearful in them as he continues, “Just where were you, Heero?”

    I open my mouth to answer, but before I can, he leans forward and kisses me, keeping my face locked in place with his gentle hands, and before long the question is forgotten, left behind in the kitchen with a few discarded articles of clothing, while the two of us progress towards the bedroom.

    The only other times I’ve ever let him get away with asking me questions was in my sleep.

    He always thought I was a sound sleeper, after the wars ended, but old habits die hard in that respect. It usually only takes him rolling out of my arms, or shifting position for me to wake up, and whenever he speaks, I’m compelled to listen. The most memorable time, I think, was the night before I left six years ago. He must’ve sensed something about my actions, something that only he could sense, that told him I would be gone for a long while.

**

    I was lying on my stomach, and he worked his way out from underneath me. Carefully, he leaned down and lay himself across my back, pressing his cheek to my spine. I almost fell back asleep, he’s a fitful sleeper and oftentimes changes position, but then he spoke.

    “I don’t know why… but I know you’re going.” He ran feather light strokes of his fingertips along my back, tracing muscles very lightly, reminiscently, “And I’m not quite sure where, but… I’m pretty sure that this may be the last time I’ll see you. Well,” he added absently, as though about to say something else, but he stopped, and then said something else. “Where is it that you go when you’re not with me, Heero?”

    I found it hard to keep up the appearance of sleep.

    “Is there someone else… that you run to?” He seemed to consider that question seriously, his hands paused on my back, and then he answered his own question, “No, I’m most certain that you don’t have someone else… no one serious, at least. If you even get serious,” I thought that was a quibble about me, but then he whispered something else, “If you even get serious… I know that you’re serious about me.”

    I almost broke the charade of being asleep right there, and I was almost scared enough to lie and say that I was seeing someone else. I almost messed up having him there for me, but I didn’t. He settled himself more firmly against my back, as though he were painted on, like he could fuse our skin together, and placed a kiss on my shoulder blade before he continued, “It was like this then, too, that first time. You were just as passionate, and as hot as you were tonight. I thought you were trying to hurt me, but there was also something very tender in your actions. When you touch me… I don’t feel afraid anymore.” He bit his lip and smoothed the hollow between my shoulder blades with his cheek. “I’m not… afraid to die anymore, Heero.” Laying his head down against my spine, he let himself fall back asleep after that. I stayed up a long while, wondering how he knew I was going, when I myself had barely been aware of my intentions before the moment he voiced them.

**

    There have been others, though. I can remember a conversation we had once, at a rare moment when the fighting had paused, and neither of us had a mission. My life was so driven by the mission that he simply became wrapped up as another part of it for a long time. When I had no mission, I was sullen, idle, and angry, it kept Quatre from working too closely with me most of the time, and the lack of control made spending time with me like going to a women’s clothing store for Wufei. Trowa could handle me, but he never managed to improve my mood. The only person I could really stand to be around, in any way, was Duo. At the time, I wondered to myself if it was only because it made him conveniently accessible to me, but some time after I rescued him from that jail cell… I figured out that it was more than that.

    I fought myself a lot about him, after I realized that he was more than just convenient. Little things I remember, times when we were alone and I wasn’t angry at being listless and without occupation, stick out in my mind. He’s curled up against me in his queen sized bed, the covers around us are nesting, and despite the warmth lingering in the air, and the sweat on his brow, and mine, I tug the covers up over us.

    His face, in repose, is the same way that I always remember it. It’s been the same since we were fifteen. I’ve only recently come to accept that I made it to twenty-eight, and that there are people alive that have known me as long as he has. The tick of the bedside clock catches my attention, one of the few noises in the room, aside from his gentle breathing, my eyes stray to it.

    Four in the morning. I’ve been here since sometime after five. He stirs slightly and his eyes open to gaze at me, “Still awake?”

    “Hai,” I say quietly, smoothing his hair.

    “What’s wrong?”

    “Nothing,” comes my quick reply. “Just thinking.”

    Duo nods, sleepily, and shifts his position, turning to lay on half the bed, a little away from me. He can always sense when I need a little separation. And this is definitely one of those times. I knew when I came here that it was for good. I knew that walking through the door would mean never going back, but some little doubt of him, and if he’d changed after so many years apart. People have grown apart in less time, and together in more.

    But no, as far as I can tell, he’s still the same as he was when I last saw him. A little older, a little harder - both his body and his outlook, I think. Taxes would do that to someone, a job, a house… things I avoided that he’s embraced. He never had the stringent training that I had before becoming a pilot, so he’s learning such things, the kind taught by discipline and attention to detail, that I learned the hard way.

    I wish life could’ve been the thing to teach me those things, and not Dr. J. I wish I could’ve learned them… with him.

    My eyes stray over to him, the outline of his body under the sheets and blankets, the slightly tangled cascade of hair disappearing down beneath the sheets. He’s kept that, since I knew him then, just as he’s kept me. The idea of such a ridiculous pair of possessions being so important to him is a little disconcerting, but comforting and very Duo as well.

    I can still remember the conversation that made his words so important to me, that night six years ago, when he said, ‘I’m not afraid to die anymore, Heero.’ It was during the first war, before the little girl rose to power, and before I blew up the falling star… I don’t remember where we were, or what had happened just before then, I just know that the two of us were there, and… it was before I had taken him for the first time, before I claimed him…

**

    Duo reclined on the bed.

    “What would you do if you could do anything in the world right now?”

    I lay down next to him.

    “Duo, do you ever wonder what would happen if you died in the morning? Like if you didn’t wake up and never opened your eyes again?”

    “No.”

    “I do.”

    “Why’s that?”

    “I am afraid that I’ll live my life and never know what it means to be human. Sometimes I step out of myself and realize that there isn’t anything I can do about my training now, not by myself. I’m afraid… to die, like this, Duo. And when I feel the weight of that fact, I understand that I’m never going to feel comfortable with anyone.”

    “What about me?”

    I pondered a moment. “Other than you.”

    Duo settled more completely into the soft mattress. “At least I know that much,” he said, closing his eyes.

    “What do you mean by that?”

    Duo glanced at me, a sidelong query. “It’s good to know that we’re friends at least. I wasn’t really sure, before.”

    I did not respond, but my hand wandered across the space between them to take Duo’s. Duo flushed slightly, and turned his head to stare at me, I felt him move on the mattress, but he only found that his companion’s eyes were closed. He turned his own head back to look up at the ceiling. “We’re all scared of that, Heero, every one of us. I know… I know I am. I may act tough about it, call myself ‘The God of Death’ and all that… but it’s more of a curse than I make it out to be. I call myself that because it seems to me that death follows me like I’m a plague. I’ve never really known how to be ashamed of myself… so I decided I might as well be proud of it.”

    “But…” he continued, and I listened raptly, opening my eyes to watch his profile as he spoke, “I’m just as scared of dying without… any meaning as you are. It’s… I guess it’s why I fight so hard. I want to know that when I’m gone, someone’s life will have been impacted by mine.” He chuckled softly to himself. “That’s silly, isn’t it?”

    I didn’t respond.

**

    Right before I claimed him.

    I hadn’t thought that any of them could really understand how I felt, and yet, in those few minutes, Duo had opened up to me and told me just how similar we all really were. More importantly, how similar the two of us were, and, I felt, by not yanking his hand out of mine, he was telling me something else too. And so, following the only sound advice I’d ever gotten from Odin Lowe, I did just what he’d told me to.

    I acted on my emotions.

    Staring at him now, in the darkness, one pale, bare shoulder exposed to the slight chill of the room, his soft, wonderful hair between us, tickling my skin, I let my fingers tangle in his hair a little. I have not regretted a minute of what happened since that day.

    And that’s why, now that I know how to live, I intend to live what time I have with him.