Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Overboard ❯ Chapter 2

Chapter 2

One minute and forty-five seconds later saw Heero Yuy, deafeningly silent and shaking with fury, heaving himself onto the wharf and storming, shirtless, off to his truck, streaming a trail of salty water, without his toolbox, and still completely ignoring Duo, who stood rooted to the deck, watching him in appalled and uncharacteristic silence, one hand frozen white to the guard rail, the other pressed to his kiss-marked lips.

Twenty minutes later saw Duo Maxwell, awash with hot and cold running embarrassment, and various other inexplicable feelings, finally freed from the guard rail, and searching frantically through the streets of Darke’s Cove for Heero, who was nowhere to be found.

Two hours later saw Duo, finally defeated, trudging up the gangplank to the Look Now, tired and aching in places that he hadn’t known that he could ache, and steadfastly refusing to look down at the shifting shadow in the sand that was the last resting place of Heero Yuy’s toolbox.



+++



Numbly Duo dropped onto his berth and planted his elbows on his knees, hands dangling loosely between them. He’d ask Hilde. She should have the guy’s phone number and…geezus … could she be any longer with Relena?

Somehow, he had to find Carpenter-dude, and apologise, and… and… do… something… Offer to pay for his tools and stuff. Yeah! That was it. For sure. It was going to cost the guy a fortune to replace it all.

He dropped his head into his hands, trying to shut out the memory of the afternoon, but it kept running through his mind like a bad movie. Over and over and over and…

The schlop of the water, green as glass and churned with bubbles, closing over the guy’s head…that hideous moment, captured in freeze-frame, as he plummeted from the gangplank…his eyes like black holes as he glared white-faced fury from the wharf…his eyes in that moment when Duo had first spun around and seen him… wide and shocked and …wanting …the pellucid blue of Venetian glass…the strength in the capable hand that had pressed against Duo’s shoulder…the heat from his bare chest …the smell of sun-warmed skin…the k…k…

Duo scrubbed his palms over his face and stretched up to a cubby hole, pulling out his sketchbook and trying to lose himself in drawing, only to discover Carpenter-dude’s face looking up at him from the thick, white cartridge paper.

“Holy motherfuckin’ shit!”

He shoved the book roughly back into the bulkhead and flopped backwards onto the bed, flinging his arm over his eyes. If Hilde didn’t get back soon he was gonna…

…do nothing. Much to his surprise, he fell asleep.

When Duo finally awakened, the Look Now was under sail, far north of Darke’s Cove, and shuddering and creaking before a spanking breeze.

Hilde roared with laughter, when he told her the sad tale of his afternoon. “Shit!” She hooted. “Duo you are such an idiot! I would have loved to see that guy fall in the water. Bet it was a scream.”

In retrospect, Duo didn’t think that it was funny at all. Or even at the time, really.

Eventually, she took pity on him and gave him Heero Yuy’s mobile phone number. Heero…that was Carpenter-dude’s name. Duo tasted it in the privacy of his thoughts and thought it quite exotic…a lot like the man himself.

He rang the number, off and on, all afternoon, leaving message after message, nervous at first, then increasingly imploring, until, all too soon, the Look Now moved out of signal range, with still no reply.

“Shit! What the hell kind of a businessman doesn’t answer his freaking phone?” Duo slung the phone into a cubby hole in disgust, and went to join Hilde at the table. “Guy’s a total amateur.” Dimly, he knew that he was protesting too much, but he ignored it and slopped himself a glass of wine.

Shit.



+++



In the dim shadows at the bottom of Darke’s Bay, water finally seeped into plastic casing, and the light on Heero Yuy’s mobile phone blinked out forever, scaring a school of tiny, silvery fish, who banked in the water like a sheet of molten silver and flickered away in search of safer playthings.

Eventually, the phone was covered in shifting sand and barnacles, stark functionality muted in sinuous curves and subtle coralline colours, until many years later Zac Lowe would find it, diving from Trowa Barton’s trawler, and take it home for his little cousin Helen to plant in her sand pit.



+++



Joe Lowe was secretly hoping that his Uncle Heero would buy him a mobile phone for his birthday. It’d be really handy, because then, if Heero was late or something, Joe could ring him up and ask what to make for dinner, or to see if Heero needed the washing bringing in, or all sorts of good stuff. Maybe. And he’d be able to message Mari, the red-haired girl from Introductory Design and Technology, like that loser Pete Williams.

Mari was at basketball…or maybe ballet…and Joe was at home making pancakes when the scary lady arrived.

Cody loved pancakes.

Somehow, the eggs were too small, or the glass that Joe was using to measure the flour was too big, because the batter was a bit thick. Joe had just slopped more milk into the jug, when he heard a car in the driveway and rushed outside, still holding the spoon and another stripy tea towel, hoping to see Heero. Heero had said that he’d take them to the beach after school, but the shadows were lengthening, and it was looking more and more as if he wasn’t going to make it. Normally, when Heero said that he’d do something, it got done. In triplicate. Something must have happened.

Even so, Joe looked towards the driveway hopefully, dripping batter.

But it wasn’t Heero.

It was a skinny lady, with glasses and a clipboard. And weird, brown hair in two, sort of plaited, bun things.

Joe eyed the clipboard uneasily from the safety of the verandah, as the lady threaded her way warily towards the house, between the hens, which were still out because Joe hadn’t got around to shutting them in yet, and Silas and Zac who were sparring on the lawn. They had a Tae Kwon Do grading next week. Cho dan bo belt. Joe frowned at them. They should be practising their patterns, not sparring, but sparring was way more fun. He stared critically. Silas was still coat-hangering. He’d get a bleeding nose if he didn’t watch out. It put his dirty, great snozz right in the way of Zac’s knee. Ouch. Loser.

Now that Joe wasn’t concentrating on pancakes, he noticed that there seemed to be a lot of noise coming from the roof, and the strange lady had stopped to stare upwards. Rex The Retriever gambolled around her legs, barking excitedly. Joe jumped down the steps, taking all three at once and turned to see what was going on.

Oh heck.

Cody, the idiot, was thundering around all over the roof like a herd of elephants, periodically diving full-length on the tin. Thankfully he’d taken his rollerblades off.

Joe bellowed at him. “Stay on the nails midget!”

Cody took time out from his dive to stick his tongue out at Joe, and then set off helter-skelter, tracking something fast and sinuous along the gutter.

“Don’t hurt him!!!!” Tyler was shrieking at Cody from the oak tree. He was dangling in the gap between the tree and the roof, one bare foot on the big branch, a hand clinging to a smaller branch overhead. He walked his legs out to the very end of the branch and leaned precariously, outstretched arm and leg windmilling to try and reach the roof, his weight dragging the branches down and out, but, no matter how far he leaned, his reaching leg wasn’t quite long enough. It sucked to be short. Joe hoped that he’d be as tall as Heero’s friend Trowa when he grew up.

A twig snapped and Tyler was suddenly scrabbling in midair, dangling from the sagging, overhead branch with both legs kicking. There was a muted shriek from the strange lady and she dropped her clipboard, which was Retrieved and unintentionally slobbered by Rex. He sat down on it happily, tongue hanging out and panting with excitement.

Joe waved the spoon at the oak, incidentally splattering batter on Rex, and the clipboard lady. Rex stretched to lick her shoe politely. “Tyler you loser!!!! You break another arm and Heero will kill you!!!”

Tyler kicked and scrabbled for the branch, twisting slowly in mid-air, too busy to yell back. At that moment there was an ear splitting yell.

“I got it…I got it!!!”

The strange lady yelped and jumped in shock, stumbling backwards and tripping over Rex, who sprang up and growled in annoyance, ears back and tail stiff. She yelped again and sidled in the other direction, momentarily forgetting the tree, the roof, and impending death-by-misadventure.

Cody was climbing triumphantly to his feet, clasping something pale and tan and furry and wriggling to his chest.

“I got it!”

“Give it here!” Tyler let go with one hand, still twisting gently, and waved insistently at Cody. “It’s mine!”

“Duh!” Cody looked at him scornfully, eying the one hand still clamped to the branch. “How’re you gonna hold it?!?”

It was irrelevant. The small, furry object twisted and uncoiled, exploding from Cody’s grasp, and sailed over the gutter, plummeting towards the ground, turning, cat-like, in mid-air, and uncoiling and elongating as it went, into a long, sinuous, furry shape, with red, beady eyes and twitching whiskers.

A ferret.

Oh heck.

“GRAB IT SOMEONE!!!!” As one, Tyler and Cody tumbled down the oak tree in hot pursuit, leaves and twigs falling like snow.

There was a thud and a squelching noise from somewhere behind the strange lady. Silas collapsed on the ground, whimpering and holding his bleeding nose, whilst Zac whooped triumphantly, completely oblivious to flying ferrets.

“Hey Joe!! Joe!!!! I did a nutaban!!! JOE!!!!! Check it out!!” He spun and kicked again, a jumping, spinning, roundhouse, narrowly missing Silas.

Joe ignored the kick, flinging the tea towel sidelong at Silas without looking. They really needed to get more tea towels. He glared skywards.

“TYLER!!! If that ferret eats a chicken you’re dead meat! Dead. Got it?”

The ferret’s legs scrabbled and it hit the ground running, only to be scooped up by Zac, as it concertinaed to squeeze under the fence.

“Where’d this thingy come from?” Zac held it up by the scruff of its wriggling neck, and looked back towards Joe, near the steps, wondering what all the fuss was about.

He gaped.

There was a cloud of black smoke pouring out of the open, kitchen window.

“Hey Joe! The house is on fire!”

“Ohhhh heck…!!!”

The pancakes!!!!

Joe flew up the steps and back into the house, door slamming behind him.

With Joe gone, Rex considered himself off-duty. He abandoned the suspicious lady and barrelled across the yard making a beeline for the ferret. He leapt around Zac’s legs barking hoarsely. The ferret gave a sinuous heave and flipped from Zac’s hand, soaring right over the hysterical golden retriever and shooting to safety straight up the nearest, vertical object.

Which happened to be the unfortunate lady.

“GET IT OFF!!!”

Who didn’t like ferrets.

“Get it off get it off get it…!!!!”



+++



Heero Yuy slowly pulled up in his driveway, still lost in thoughts of the pugnacious, carpenter-unfriendly Duo Maxwell. It seemed that Duo’s image had been permanently seared onto the back of his retinas, so that every time he blinked Duo was there, in living colour. Although that didn’t explain why the vision came accompanied by a drift of some orangey fragrance and the hoarse rasping of his breath. And cold salty water hadn’t managed to wash away the tingling sensation where his chest had been branded with the heat of Duo’s hand, or his lips by…

Heero closed his eyes and thumped his head gently on the steering wheel.

Damn damn damn…

…thump…

…Of all the idiotic…thump…infuriating …thump…irrational…thump…not gay…thump thump thump…

Hell and damnation.

After a few moments of pointless, but emotional satisfying, head-banging, he realised that the roaring in his ears was outside his head, not in, and he lifted his head, looking blearily around.

Ohhell and damnation!

He blinked at the chaos in front of his back verandah, thinking wistfully of driving off then slowly climbed out of the pickup.

He frowned. Was something burning?

At the sound of the truck door slamming, everyone whirled to face him then surged towards him in a buffeting wave of sound and motion. He stepped back involuntarily, ending up washed against the pickup door.

“Get it off get it…!”

“Heero…!”

“I 217;ve gotta ferret!!!”

“I did a nutaban!”

“I got stitches!”

“I only left it for a minute!”

He looked from face to face, before finally settling on Joe, as the responsible adult who was not screaming and batting hysterically at wildlife in his hair. First things first.

“Something’s burning.”

“Frypan.” Joe could be very succinct when he chose, a boy after Heero’s own heart. “Pancakes. Sorry Heero. It’s out now.”

“Good boy.”

Next thing.

“Stitches???”

“Cody hit his head on the bus step. Two stitches, but he’s okay now. Right Code?”

Heero sighed with relief and dropped his arm around Cody’s shoulders, giving him a quick squeeze, whilst simultaneously reaching out to ruffle Joe’s hair.

“Good work Joe.”

“Somebody get it off me!!!”

The strange woman was still screaming. Heero wondered why she let her ferret chew her hair, if it bothered her so much. Especially when she’d gone to so much trouble with that weird, Germanic hairstyle, with her brown hair done up in two, knobbly little bumps on either side of her head, as if she thought that she was Brun-thingummybob out of that Wagnerian opera. Maybe she did, judging by the high notes she was hitting. Deafening. Heero reached for the unfortunate ferret.

Tyler was tugging insistently at his jeans leg, jiggling from foot to foot.

“It’s a ferret! It’s my ferret. Make her give it back! Please!!! Coop gave it to me. They’ve got heaps of ’em out at McKinnon’s place!”

Tyler’s ferret. Oh merry blooming heck. Heero went to slip off his shirt, then realised that he wasn’t wearing one…how could he have forgotten?…and took the blood-stained tea towel from Silas, wrapping it over his hand, and slowly approaching the ferret. Bitey little monsters.

“I can see it’s a ferret. McKinnon’s place is a zoo.” Full of feral animals, including six-year old Aaron Cooper, who lived there with his grandmother, while his father, and his father’s junkie, hooker girlfriend, were in jail, following an axe murder that had thrilled the entire community. But you really couldn’t blame Aaron for that. Heero untangled the ferret from the woman’s neck and tucked it into the crook of his arm, shading its pinkly opalescent eyes with his hand. He scratched gently behind its ears.

“Can I keep it please Heero? Please please please please please!!! Promise I’ll look after it. Its name’s Fez.” That was obviously the clincher from Tyler’s point of view.

The ferret stretched out gently under Heero’s fingers like a warm, furry snake, eyes closing. “It’s a he.”

“I know,” said Tyler proudly. “It’s got a…”

“MIS-TER YUY!!!” The strange woman’s glasses hung askew from one ear, caught in the remains of that elaborate hairdo, and she disentangled them in an attempt to straighten them out, peering at him myopically. “Mr Yuy! This is a mad-house. I’ve tried to give you the benefit of the doubt but these children are running completely wild! On top of everything else! The Child Welfare Department will not like this at all!! I’m sorry but this will all have to go in my report!!!”

She didn’t sound very sorry. She sounded a lot like a Colonel sending her troops off to war and discovering that their bayonets were still in the wash with their second-best muskets. Her words fired at Heero with the staccato ring of nails firing from an electric nail gun. Into his coffin.

However, the full Colonel-coffin effect was lost on Heero, who’s brain had stopped working half-way through her sentence, overloaded with adrenalin and panic.

Child Welfare.

Oh crap!!! Crap, crap, double overhead crap!!! He went stiff with apprehension, and dropped the ferret, its skitter of claws and annoyed squeak loud in the sudden, deafening silence, as the older boys shifted to range themselves behind him. Tyler, only five, and way too young to remember unexpected visits and knocks on doors in the middle of the night, was a bit slower than the others, but was not too young to sense the change in atmosphere, and crab-walked around behind Heero, still gripping his pants leg. He scooped up Fez in-transit, and glared at the scary lady, as he clung to Heero.

Heero stood like a rock, their very own, personal, Rock of Gibraltar, or like a mountain that would not be moved, not even for Mohammed, and stared impassively at the unhappily unkempt lady from Welfare, his face a mask of inscrutability. Inside he shook like a leaf. Child Welfare! He’d had enough of Child Welfare to last a lifetime, first after his parent’s death and, then, worse, when his brother died. He never wanted to see them again. Not now, not ever! Whatever.

Silently, he gritted his teeth, a tiny muscle bunching in his jaw that only his friend Trowa would have noticed, probably with misgiving. Welfare. He’d fooled them when he was sixteen and he sure as heck wasn’t letting them take his family now. Not now that he was twenty, with a life, and a business, and, finally, the legal right to protect them. Whatever it took.

Anything.

Heero Yuy would do it to protect his family.

The woman was still talking. Heero buried four-years-old anguish and tuned in again. Focus idiot! What was that?

“…always a problem with single parent families.”

Single parent families. Okaaay. He could do this. He unclenched his jaw and smiled calmly at Brun-whatsimajig.

“I’m so sorry that my partner can’t be here to meet you. They’re not here right now. If only we’d known that you were coming…” He left his sentence dangling, hoping that she would assume that…‘if only they’d known that she were coming’…things would be different.

Which they would. They would all have nicked off. Yuys and Lowes vanishing in a puff of smoke and a truckload of paperwork. However. Life was not that kind

“May I offer you a cup of tea?” Distract. Divert. Heero ruled his face with iron calm, and breathed, and talked, and led the way calmly towards the kitchen. “Maybe we could organise another time.” Dissemble.

He didn’t know what he was going to do this time, but he would come up with something.

Whatever it took.



+++



While Heero Yuy offered the lady from Child Welfare green tea, or Chai if she’d rather, in Sara’s wildflower wedding-present china that they never used, and forgot most of the time, because it was on a top shelf so that Tyler and Cody couldn’t reach it, Duo sloshed moselle into Polish crystal, and wondered what it would take to get Hilde and he back to a place where they liked each other again. Probably about three years and six hundred kilometres. They’d definitely liked each other in college, otherwise they wouldn’t have started a business together. A very successful business. And they probably wouldn’t have slept together. Although that had started rather earlier. And they sure as heck wouldn’t be sitting here glaring at each other across a table littered with tall, green bottles.

Hilde had been drinking steadily since mid-afternoon. She liked to drink wine, it was sophisticated she thought, but ironically she didn’t really like the taste, so chose sweet, fruity moselles and rhine reislings wherever possible. Sometimes a gordo. But absolutely never beer.

Duo swiped a hand distractedly through his fringe, which was dangling annoyingly into his eyes. “Are you really sure about this? I mean… Look at us. We fight all the time.”

Hilde looked at him pityingly. “Don’t be silly Duo. All couples fight. It’s normal.”

Hell. Really? He supposed he would have to take her word for it. He didn’t remember much about normal, or couples, or familes.

Hilde swayed across the table and patted his hand in a gesture that was meant to be comforting. “Don’t worry so much. When we have a baby things’ll be different. You’ll see.”

There it was again. That word. Duo’s heart started to pound again in complete and utter panic. Baby.

She was always like this after she’d talked to her old Summer Camp friend, Relena. All babies and happy families, and getting a dog. Actually, a dog would have been great, one of those big, slobbery, retriever things, except that their apartment didn’t allow pets. Which was somehow Duo’s fault. As was the fact that they didn’t have the other major shopping items on Hilde’s wish-list-for-life either. Like babies. And weddings. Shit.

Not that Relena had this life-altering stuff either. Except possibly the dog. Duo was a bit vague on that bit. Sometimes Little Miss R seemed to have lots of dogs. Once he could have sworn it was a whale, to hear Hilde talk, although that was dumb. He must have misheard.

But what old buddy, old pal Relena did have was some poor guy on a string and she wanted every-one else to be as happy as she and bozo were. Actually, to be fair to Relena, and the unfortunate Bozo, Duo had never actually met her, living half a country away, just said ‘Hello yes I’ll get her’ a number of times on the phone. She was probably a very nice girl. And he probably should have gone with Hilde to meet her. He’d meant to. But, by the time they finally made it to Darke’s Cove, he’d had to get away from Hilde before he rang her neck. Ten days stuck together in a boat was just too long. He just hadn’t felt up to being Hilde’s happy, little boyfriend for the afternoon, making happy, little chit chat about unsecured notes and house-hunting and babies.

Babies. Pound pound. Baby baby baby baby baby…

Crap. She was really serious this time.

He wasn’t ready for this. He wasn’t old enough, he wasn’t settled enough, he wasn’t rich enough…he wasn’t ready enough. Distractedly he hitched up his baggy, old, black, track suit pants, still bare-chested and bare-toed after soaking up the sun that afternoon.

The peace that he’d felt earlier that day had all completely drained away, oozing out between his bare toes, down through oak decking, and hull, and fifty fathoms deep, into the cold bedrock of Whale Banks.

Earlier… Much earlier.

Before Carpenter-dude.

Heero Yuy.

Even now, his name resonated in Duo’s head like the clap of waves meeting, bursting upward in a sheet of foam.

For an instant, all that he could see was his face, and the look in those wondering blue eyes, when he’d first seen him.

He twirled his glass in his fingers, sloshing, not drinking, and wondered what phantoms Hilde saw, as she stared morosely into her glass.

He felt a moment of panic.

What if it was him?



+++



The Look Now shuddered and plunged down the face of a wave. Wind keened and thrummed in the rigging. It whipped around the door of the wheelhouse, tossing a sheaf of papers, and the blonde helmsman stood, and dragged the door shut. It was going to be a thick night. He thought regretfully of a warm bed in Darke’s Cove, and fished his violin out of an overhead locker, bare foot braced comfortably on the helm, steering with the ease of long familiarity. He had a duet to practice

Far out at sea, the rising wind was driving the water before it. Serried banks of silver hills surged relentlessly towards the land, smooth and churning, shifting rocks and wreckage across the ocean floor, with a subterranean groaning and scraping heard only by the whales and dolphins, the rolling masses of water finally striking the submerged cliffs of the rising continental shelf at Whale Banks, and lifting inexorably skywards.



+++



Absently Duo noted that the sea was picking up. He braced himself against the sink feeling the deck canting beneath his bare feet as the Look Now climbed out of a trough, timbers creaking.

She pitched, and he blinked. He must’ve zoned out for a while. Hilde’s head was pillowed on her arms amongst the litter on the table. Duo thought about leaving her there, and then sighed, and hauled her up, arms flopped around his neck, and man-handled her backwards to her berth and tipped her onto it, shoes and all. That chore accomplished, he clattered the loose bottles into the sink then stood there lost in thought, arms braced against the rocking movement, automatically counting the clinking bottles…one…two…three…four green bottles…and if one green bottle should accidently fall…smash.

A baby.

He felt sick. His stomach rolled with the swell of the ocean, protesting the sweet and sour tang of stale wine. Moselle really didn’t agree with him. Or something. A baby. Every couple’s dream. Hilde and he, raising a child. Together. For the next…eighteen years? Probably. Or even longer, really, because children needed brothers and sisters and…. At least eighteen years. And it was way too hot in here. The air in the cabin was stuffy and stifling. He really needed some fresh air.

He’d go up and badger Q for a while. The violin had stopped. Things must be getting rough up there.

The Look Now rolled, timbers creaking, and a book slid off the spare berth with a crash. He stowed it in a cubby hole and then lurched up on deck, humming Q’s melody as he went. After ten days, he knew it off by heart.

He peered into salty darkness, mouth open to the buffeting wind, clinging to the railing with one hand, his free arm wrapped tightly around his rebellious stomach. Twinkling lights blinked distantly on the heaving belly of the ocean, appearing and disappearing. Other boats. Fishermen probably. Beneath his feet the deck canted as the Look Now surged up, and up again, and he clung to the streaming deck with his bare toes as he struggled to organise his thoughts. Twinkling lights. A baby. No more fighting. Or, maybe, endless rounds of more fighting. A family of his own. It was just what he’d always wanted. Wasn’t it?

It was. Really. Just…not…not…

The Look Now’s bows lifted high above the crest of the wave, shuddering and quivering for an endless moment.

…not…

In a swooping arc the bows sliced down into the water.

…with Hilde.

Displaced water rained down across the bows, smacking onto the deck like gunshot, and the boat danced down the other side of the wave.

Not with Hilde.

It was like a door opening and sunshine streaming in. He did not want Hilde to have his baby. She had been his good friend, and maybe would be again, but he did not want to be tied to her, ’till death did they part, with a cute little chain of flesh, and blood, and feelings.

Tomorrow he would tell her. He had to. The sooner the better.

His shoulders sagged, limp with relief.

The Look Now shuddered and smacked hard into the trough and his head spun, his knees buckling. His stomach churned again and this time it was serious. He lurched urgently sideways and doubled up limply over the railing, gripping, white-knuckled, against the ceaseless suck and surge of the ocean. The yacht was climbing again. Gasping he opened his eyes, fighting the giddiness, and gradually the sparks of fire that danced before his eyes slowed and dimmed; except for one single spark, of gold, glimmering against the hull.

Holy freaking shit! Mum’s cross! The chain had broken!

His cross, weighted with 18 carat gold and a whole burden of memory, caught on a slim cleat above the ocean, and swaying erratically with each roll of the skittish Look Now.

The yacht hung motionless at the top of the wave and Duo lunged for the chain, half-over the railing, arm out-stretched, blinded with spray. Look Now bucked like a restless horse and plunged down into the trough, timbers creaking. His fingers clamped around the cold metal. At that moment his treacherous stomach chose to heave within him and he doubled over again, coughing up bile, feeling curiously weightless.

A surge and a shuddering, corkscrewing roll and he was over the side, striking his head on the gunwale as he slid, sucked quietly down into vast, heaving blackness.