Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ In the Arms of the Angel ❯ Duo - 3 ( Chapter 7 )

Part VII

Heero tossed his keys on the table before shrugging his coat off. He raked a hand through his hair as he turned toward the kitchen -- if he didn't eat now, he'd end up shriveling into dust. He opened the refrigerator and leaned against the door, swaying slightly as he unconsciously corrected his overbalance. He stared intently in the fridge with a hand on his hip waiting for some food to jump out at him or make itself known. After a few minutes of the food just staring back at him, he let the door go and turned to the pantry to perform another staring contest. The food won again and he trudged out of the kitchen to plop heavily on the couch. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes as he struggled to press the ache inside him back into its dark corner. To place all of the concerns he had back in their closet. He listened for Duo, but could hear nothing outside of the gentle draft of heated air. It was now into early October -- it had been three months since he had found Duo -- and Heero wondered about Duo's strange mood swings. Surely by now, he could expect Duo to be at least a little more constant in his moods and actions. Heero was never sure one day to the next if he would be sleeping on the couch, or in his bed. He rubbed a hand over his face, raking it through his hair. He heard the bedroom door open.

"Heero?"

"Yeah, in here." Duo walked into the living room with his hair down, still dripping water from an obviously recent shower. Heero smiled tiredly up at him. "Hey, baby." Duo pulled some wet hair away from his face.

"Hey." Heero patted the cushion next to him invitingly and Duo soon sank into the couch beside him. Heero tucked some hair behind Duo's ear, leaving his fingers to softly caress Duo's face.

"How was your day?" Duo shrugged.

"Boring. Yours?" Heero turned his gaze back to the ceiling, the back of his fingers brushing along Duo's cheekbone.

"Tiring." Duo curled up against his side, and he draped his arm over Duo. "You're snuggly today." Duo slipped an arm around his waist as he sighed.

"Just in a cuddly mood, I guess." Heero laid his leg over Duo's knees and he turned so he could lay back on the couch, bringing Duo down with him. He stroked Duo's hair lovingly.

"Anything wrong, baby?" Duo shook his head. "Am I giving you all the attention you need?" Duo looked up at him through his wet bangs.

"Of course." Heero studied Duo's eyes for a moment. He wrinkled his forehead in concern as he noticed that Duo's eyes were polished again. He searched those glassy eyes and found nothing. He rubbed his thumb over Duo's cheek.

"What's wrong, Duo?" Duo's eyebrows pulled together.

"Nothing."

"Are you sure?" Heero's eyes searched one eye and then the other, looking for . . . something. He wasn't sure. He just knew that Duo's eyes were too bright, held too much moisture and not enough expression. Duo pulled away to sit up. Heero stayed on his back, his hand falling to Duo's thigh.

"Nothing is wrong." Heero pushed himself into a sitting position, sliding back to pull his leg out from under Duo. He looked at Duo, still trying to search out a clue -- any clue -- that might explain anything.

"Then tell me why it is that I only occasionally share your bed? Why are you cold to me one day and then all over me the next?" Duo looked away.

"Hormones?" Heero leaned forward to hold Duo's arms, turning Duo's eyes to his face.

"Why, Duo? You are swinging on a pendulum of emotion. You go from loving me to hating me in the same day." Duo's eyes studied his interlocked hands, and Heero ducked his head so he could see Duo's face.

"Do you think that after what you did that I can easily forgive you?" Duo raised his head to look Heero straight in the eye. "Do you think that I can just pick up right where we left off?" Heero jerked back, blinking rapidly.

"But Duo, you act as if you have." Duo shook his head.

"Only because I felt that that's what you wanted." Heero felt like he had been slapped. Duo had been willing, hadn't he? He had asked, begged, pleaded every time for it.

"Duo, I don't want you to do anything that you don't want to do. If you don't want me to sleep with you, then don't ask me until you're ready. This isn't about my pleasure, it's about yours." Duo pulled back, silently telling Heero that he didn't want to be touched. Heero dropped his hands. His insides slowly began plummeting to the ground.

"You just want me for the sex!" Duo stood up, backing away from the couch, pointing at Heero. Heero sat there numb. It was as if someone had depressed a button in his head that turned off any and all feelings. He hardly registered that Duo was screaming at him -- he heard the words, but he couldn't feel a damn thing about them. "If you didn't then you wouldn't have fucked me." Heero stood up, spreading his hands in a pacifying gesture.

"You asked me to make love to you, Duo. I never once 'fucked' you; I've only made love to you. Because you asked!" Heero's voice rose in pitch, shaking as he spoke, afraid that he would lose Duo again. Afraid that he would betray Duo again. Duo turned away from him.

This is what everything boiled down to. It wasn't Duo's moods swings, or that he randomly asked for sex while treating Heero with disdain the rest of the time. It wasn't even rage or pain anymore, it was the fact that, whether Heero wanted to ignore it or not, he had betrayed Duo the day he believed Relena over Duo. With that one act, Heero had cleaved Duo's heart in two. Heero realized that Duo would probably never be with him in the same way again, there would always be animosity there, barring the relationship, fading away the love.

He couldn't even remember what Relena had said to set him off. Knowing her, it could have been anything. And, knowing himself, he had overreacted. Though he knew the cause and the reasons, it still didn't excuse his actions. He had still betrayed the only one he loved. He wanted to hate Relena, wanted to feel betrayed by Duo, but all he could feel was his own stupidity and recklessness that had caused the whole ordeal.

He had fucked up.

There was no way he could fix this.

"Go away." Duo's voice was soft. Heero took a step toward him.

"No." Duo turned to face him, shock and disbelief written over his face. "How can you ask me to abandon my soul? How can you expect me to leave my heart alone? How can you separate me from my breath? I cannot, and will not leave you alone."

"Damnit, Heero!" Duo screamed, "I want to be alone! Leave me be!" Heero shook his head and moved closer to Duo, holding his hands out to invite Duo into an embrace. Heero surprised himself with how calm and collected his voice sounded when inside he was falling apart.

"I can't leave you alone any more than I can leave my life alone. Duo, you are everything to me. I know I fucked up, I died that day! I can't leave you alone unless you say that . . ." Heero's breath hitched and he squeezed his eyes shut. He tried to begin again, but he was only able to whisper, "Unless you tell me that you don't love me." He was unnerved by the haziness in Duo's eyes. He started to panic. There was just something in the way that Duo was standing that spoke volumes. He couldn't point it out, but it was there and he began panting in dread.

"At this point, Heero, I don't know if I love you." Heero was paralyzed. He sank to his knees feeling his stomach lurching and roiling. He swallowed back insistent bile. Duo had promised him that he would always love him, that he would always be there for him. Now, it seemed as if Duo had broken his promise. Tears stung Heero's eyes where they welled up in their unrequited love. It didn't matter anymore that he had failed Duo, it only mattered that Duo was now on the verge of breaking his promise.

"Duo, you can't mean . . . Oh, please tell me that you don't mean that you don't . . . Tell me that you don't mean you don't . . . Tell me that you don't mean that you don't love . . ." Heero couldn't get a coherent sentence out as he whispered his rambling plea. "Tell me . . ." He was crying.

"I don't know what I mean." Heero wrapped his arms around Duo's legs. He gasped in a few breaths, chest hitching painfully. His cheeks were burning with dismal tears. He couldn't remember ever crying in his life until the day he betrayed Duo's love and trust. And since then, he hadn't cried so hard. He couldn't see, his vision blurred by raging tears as they coursed down his face screaming their torment. He tried to blink the tears away; to no avail.

"Then I won't leave you. I died the day I threw you out, and I'll die all over again if I leave. I'm lost without you. I'm nothing." He didn't know if he was whispering or screaming, but he clutched Duo's legs as if he were drowning, and downing he was in his sorrow and despair.

"Do you think that I didn't die? I died too, Heero. I died in the middle of a rainstorm on a fucking bus stop bench. I had no where else to go! You fucking destroyed my life!" Duo screamed, flinging his hands every which way as he towered over Heero, his hair creating an undulating curtain that Heero had to peer through.

"I'm sorry! I don't have any excuses, I made the biggest mistake of my life -- I can't imagine how I could make a bigger one! I tried to find you, but you had disappeared. I search for six months, Duo, running after any possibility that I might find you, my heart dying every time you were not there. I can't undo what I've done, but please! I'm begging you! Please, say that you still love me!" Heero begged, his voice ragged and high. Duo gazed down at him with glazed, unfeeling eyes. The icy fingers of dread coursed through his clutching arms and trembling body as he crouched in front of Duo.

"And what if I said that I didn't?" Duo asked without a shred of emotion in his voice. Heero felt as though the Earth had been yanked out from under his feet, leaving him to fall endlessly into the void. He felt as though he were sitting on the edge of a black hole, swinging his legs over the event horizon, watching in abject horror as his body was ripped apart, molecule by molecule. He was being hacked at by demons, floating down a river of pain to meet up with the claws that would tear his heart into pieces. He felt the apathetic ropes tied around his limbs, ripping him apart. Frigid tendrils of agony crucified him to a wretched cross of palpitating darkness.

He couldn't breathe, air refused to mate with his lungs, as he gasped and choked against Duo's legs. He could not see; his eyes were wide open to the darkness of death as bile bubbled ferociously up his esophagus where he had to force the acid back down to his heaving stomach.

Duo was heading down that path to Heero's destruction. All Heero wanted was to be loved by Duo, to be able to love Duo, and now it seemed as if his one dream was impossible. Not improbable -- impossible. Heero wanted to scream his fury and wail his anguish as he tore out his hair and clawed out Duo's eyes. He had never hated himself more than in this moment, this one instant of realization that he would never be complete, because he failed and was being failed in return.

"Why? . . ." Heero finally managed, "Are you going to say you don't love me?" Heero couldn't look up at Duo to see the lustrous sheen of his unnaturally shining eyes. He could feel Duo's eyes boring into the top of his head as he knelt in front of his love.

"I don't know."