Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Deadly Beautiful ❯ The Chemicals Between Us ( Chapter 52 )

A/N: Hello, everyone. I can't wait for you all to read this chapter, for Something has finally been Accomplished within. My beta was having fits, it's that nice to read and contemplate. Enjoy.

 

Disclaimer: I own nothing at all. Go team.

 

 

Deadly Beautiful - Chapter 52

 

by danse

 

~*~

 

It figured, Quatre thought, that stress could go so quickly from seeming like a foreign concept to something you put on as easily as your shirt in the morning. Sighing, he rubbed at his eyes with his palms and rolled out of bed. He was still wearing his clothes from yesterday, he noted groggily as he grabbed his shower kit and shuffled to the bathroom.

 

The shower didn't help. The blond teen stumbled back into his bedroom in a towel and sat down heavily on his bed again. He should have been finishing up his packing—his floor was dominated by the open suitcase and box into which he'd recently been putting all of his worldly possessions in preparation to leave this base. Unfortunately, his thoughts were dominated by something else entirely: Duo, who should have called Quatre immediately after completing his mission in Russia, had now been missing-in-action for four days.

 

He looked up forlornly at the phone that still sat on his empty desk. He'd already tried calling Duo's cell phone several times, only to find that it was persistently turned off, or had a dead battery. He had no way of getting ahold of Hilde, with the possible exception of finding Wufei and persuading him to relay a message, though Quatre really didn't think he wanted to send Hilde into a panic or incite her rage, since he didn't know what Duo had told her (if anything) before leaving. There was no one else he could contact, no one else he could talk to.... He blinked suddenly, coming out of a slight daze. That wasn't entirely true, was it?

 

Obeying impulse, he reached for the phone and dialed a number that he would have sworn up and down he'd memorized merely in case of an emergency. He hadn't noted the time; thankfully it was early afternoon in Italy as the phone rang.

 

***

 

Trowa and Heero were facing off on either side of a chessboard, and it was Trowa's move when the phone rang. He sagged in his chair, his hand hovering over two pawns and a rook, and shot a warning look at Heero. “Don't touch anything. I'll know,” he growled, ignoring Heero's snicker as he pushed his chair back and got up to answer the phone.

 

“Pronto,” he said, watching his opponent out of his peripheral vision while he leaned against the kitchen doorframe.

 

There was a short pause. “Hello, Trowa,” a quiet voice finally responded.

 

Trowa's eyebrows nearly disappeared behind his bangs, and he pushed away from the wall. “Quatre? Is that you?” He noticed Heero glancing up at Quatre's name, watching him, and found himself turning away, despite his earlier fears of having the chessboard rearranged for him.

 

“Trowa, we have a problem,” Quatre said hesitantly, before blurting out his next words in a hurried jumble. “I sent Duo out on a solo mission that he should have finished four days ago and he still hasn't contacted me yet and I think something might have happened to him and it's all my fault for sending him because I knew better but I did it anyway!” He paused, presumably for breath, and then sighed into the phone. “Trowa, I'm so sorry I called you out of the blue like this. There's nothing you can do to help right now and I'm just burdening you needlessly, but... I guess I just needed to unload this, I'm sorry.” Quatre was clearly very tired and distressed; he was confusing a lot of his p's and b's as he spoke.

 

Trowa bit his lip, staring hard at the wall. “Quatre, calm down, it's okay. It's good that you called me and I don't mind at all. What's wrong? Duo hasn't contacted you? He was on a mission?”

 

He didn't hear the immediate scrape of Heero's chair against the floor, which would have been a nice warning before he suddenly appeared at Trowa's shoulder, glaring daggers at him. “What was that?” he said.

 

Quatre heard the words over the phone. “Who's that?” he asked.

 

Trowa rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, praying silently to unknown deities as he shoved Heero back out of his personal space a little. After considering the possibilities, he decided to answer Quatre before Heero, thinking that Quatre would probably react a bit less violently to the astounding news in store for him. He turned his attention to the phone and the boy on the other end of the line. “It's Heero,” he said. “He's been staying here with me for a little while.”

 

He decided shortly after the words passed his lips that he might have been wrong in his assessment, because Quatre hit an impressive volume. “Heero what??” he exclaimed. “Heero's alive? How long has he been there? And why didn't you ever say anything? Trowa!”

 

About then, Trowa would have gladly traded places with anyone else on the planet, except for possibly Duo, wherever he was. “Yeah,” he responded, “Heero showed up on my doorstep a few weeks ago seeking sanctuary, and he asked me not to say anything to anyone for a while. So that was why I couldn't tell you he was here or alive, because he asked me. You wanna talk to him, Quatre?” He glanced at Heero again, who was looking agitated but displaying a surprising amount of patience for his turn to ask all the questions.

 

“No,” Quatre responded, “that's fine. I'm just more concerned about Duo right now, because I don't even know if he's alive or not anymore... oh, this is all my fault....”

 

“Calm down, Quatre,” Trowa said again, grabbing a kitchen chair and sitting in it. Heero did the same. “Just tell me everything that's going on here, to start with.” So Quatre did. After that, Trowa had to relay it all to Heero, who by that point was looking ready to strangle him with the phone cord for making him wait.

 

“...And he was captured?” Heero asked incredulously, when Trowa had finished.

 

Trowa rubbed his eyes with his hands, the phone cradled under his chin. “Probably captured or killed. Either way, that was his last known location and Quatre hasn't heard from him in four days.”

 

Heero glared at the floor for a minute, chewing his lip, and then suddenly stood up. “I'm going to get him,” he said.

 

Trowa's eyes went wide. “What?”

 

Heero was already at the front door, putting on his shoes and grabbing his jacket from the closet. “I said I'm going after him. I'll be in contact.” There was nothing Trowa could think of to say as the door shut with a quiet click behind Heero. After a few numb seconds of shock, he came to his senses enough to remember the phone again. “Heero's going after him, Quatre,” he said.

 

“Oh, Allah. Is he going to kill him?”

 

“I think he's going to bring him back.”

 

Quatre sighed. “Good.” A pregnant pause followed on his end of the line before he spoke again, his tone foreboding. “Trowa, I just realized something.”

 

“Hmm?” Trowa murmured.

 

“...Duo doesn't know that Heero's still alive.”

 

Trowa's eyes went even wider than they had before, his mouth forming a silent 'o' as he darted a look at the door. It would already be too late to go after Heero. “W-well,” he stammered, “uh, I guess he's probably going to find out soon enough, isn't he?”

 

***

 

 

Duo sat on the bunk in his cramped, damp and dirty little cell, in a bad state of mind and staring at a crack in one of the cinderblocks of the wall opposite him. His hair had been constantly wet for most of the past four days and it felt like ice whenever it touched his skin. There was a faint humming sound coming from somewhere down the hallway that had persisted for the past several hours, and it was really starting to get on his nerves. I thought these cells were soundproof, he thought. Maybe if I started screaming and yelling.... Of course, the OZ guards here seemed to enjoy hearing it, if the twice-daily torture sessions were any indication.

 

Having nothing else to do with his time between the tortures and the tiny meals and the daily ice-cold shower, Duo had started to stare at the crack in the wall and think. He thought about all kinds of things, but mostly the people he knew and what they were probably doing right now—wondering if they thought about him, and if they were trying to find him or had just given him up for dead. Occasionally he thought about Heero, but that was a bad road to go down because it made him angry. He got angry at Heero, himself, Wufei, OZ, God, anyone he could, and then he got depressed. There were a lot of reasons he got worked up about it: not only because he felt somehow like he'd missed his one big chance at happiness, but also because although he generally didn't look at his lifestyle from a normal person's point of view, he couldn't help but feel disgusted at the waste of a life. Sure, Heero had killed people for a living, and so did the rest of them; they all felt much older than they were and didn't think in terms of being teenagers so much as just themselves. Perhaps he could have even had a future ahead of him, but that was all lost now that he was dead, wasn't it? Then again, maybe none of them really had a future. Maybe that was why Duo had volunteered for a mission that had nearly resulted in his own death, and still might. He leaned his head against the wall behind him, squeezing his eyes shut. Maybe all was really lost, after all.

 

***

 

If Duo had fallen asleep while leaning against the wall, he didn't know. It was always dark in his cell, and the passage of time didn't really matter anymore. In any case, the next thing he knew, he had just been startled into awareness with adrenaline pumping through his veins. Fixing his gaze on the tiny, dirty window in the steel door across the room, he took several deep breaths to calm down and tried to figure out what had woken him so suddenly. It had probably been a noise, and it had to have been loud for it to reach him at all in here. As he was glaring at the door, concentrating, he heard a muffled bang from outside. Gunshot! he thought, his eyes going wide. That was it! Someone's shooting! He suddenly didn't know whether to be elated or worried. Was it someone coming to rescue him, or was he going to be killed?

 

Either way it would be an escape, he decided.

 

Thirty seconds later, someone was outside the cell. He couldn't see who it was, but he saw the top of their head through the high window, and he heard a muffled scraping from around where he knew the padlock was. Another gunshot hit the door and with a few more loud bangs, the door flew open. Duo squinted in the sudden shaft of light, trying to see details in the silhouette standing in his prison. Whoever it was, they were pointing the gun at him. He put his hands up in the air hesitantly, still unable to make out any details. The person spoke before he could think of anything to say.

 

“Duo, you dumbass.”

 

The blood drained from Duo's face, and the thought occurred to him inappropriately that he finally understood the meaning of the phrase, 'You look like you've seen a ghost'.

 

No. It can't be. It can't be. Heero is dead. I'm hallucinating.

 

Ghost or not, Heero continued to point the gun at him. “I should put one between your eyes. How could you be so stupid and careless as to get captured alive? You've made yourself a liability to the group and possibly put everyone in danger!”

 

Clearly, it was Heero in the flesh. Still not completely sure if he was dreaming or not, Duo decided to roll with it. Infuriated, he put his hands higher in the air, looking right at Heero. “All right. Do it. Shoot me.”

 

Heero continued to glare at him, looking like he was having an internal conflict about whether he actually should or not.

 

Duo persisted. “You said it yourself, I'm a liability and a danger. Just plug me and get your peace of mind.”

 

Heero sighed and lowered his gun. “Get up. We're going.”

 

Duo lowered his hands a little, squinting sideways at the other boy. “Excuse me?” he asked.

 

Heero stalked over to the cot and hauled Duo up by the arm. “Move your ass, Maxwell,” he growled, “before I break both your legs and drag you out.”

 

Duo followed obediently, doing his best to ignore the fact that Heero had just grabbed his arm in a spot where he had a very purple bruise forming from yesterday. Taking a deep breath, he put everything else, including the pain, aside to focus on getting out of there alive and in one piece.

 

***

 

Four hours later, they were sneaking the dirty, bruised, and utterly exhausted Duo up a fire escape to the third floor of a hotel in some Russian town Duo had never heard of. Heero unlocked the door to his room, half-turning his head to talk to Duo as he entered and walked toward the small table next to the window.

 

“You've got a few hours of safety to sleep; I suggest you use them before we have to hit the road.” He pulled his ever-present gun from the pocket of his coat and put it on the table with the room key, unzipping his warm coat and shrugging it off before turning to see that Duo was standing silently in the middle of the room, not having moved for several heartbeats. He was staring intently at Heero.

 

Heero's eyes widened slightly, and he gave Duo an apprehensive look. “Are you okay?” he asked hesitantly. He had no idea what to do if the answer wasn't, 'yes'.

 

As if he'd flipped a switch, Duo came to life all of a sudden. “You!” he said loudly, pointing an accusing finger at Heero, who flinched. “You Goddamned son of a fucking bitch, what are you doing here? You were dead!” His voice rose steadily to a crescendo by the last word, and his expression was somewhere between shocked and livid.

 

Heero gaped, not having expected this at all. “Well... obviously that wasn't true,” he said, completely at a loss for anything intelligent to say.

 

He had no time to react before Duo had closed the short distance between them and grabbed Heero by the shirt collar, twisting it and slamming him up against the wall, a few scant inches from the large window with its scenic view. “Well, I thought it was! For a fucking month, I thought it was! And the worst part,” Duo snarled, “is that obviously someone else knew you were alive, and they were able to tell you where the fuck I was. I am not impressed!”

 

Heero could tell; he was starting to feel a lack of oxygen due to the grip Duo had on his collar, and his feet were no longer entirely on the floor. Feeling a bit afraid in spite of himself, he pinched one of Duo's pressure points enough to make him flinch and let go, putting a little distance between them. Although he didn't like having his back against the wall, he didn't dare move in case Duo saw and came after him.

 

Duo wasn't finished yet. “So you were alive that whole time, when everyone clearly seemed to think you were not, and yet fuck if you could have been bothered to correct that impression for that entire month! To hell with anyone who just might have given a fuck that you were dead--” Duo had stepped in close again, jabbing a finger very close to Heero's face as he vented; probably everyone in the hotel could hear him. “--You're Heero-fucking-Yuy, you don't need anyone, right? And then all that time later, you think you can just magically appear, guns blazing, at some outpost OZ base in fucknut-nowhere saying you're gonna save my Goddamn life, and you think I'm just going to roll over and accept it all like that redeems you, you arrogant piece of shit? I don't love you that mu--” Duo's rant died in the middle of the word as his brain caught up to his mouth. His eyes widened in horror and his face flushed crimson right down into the dirty, ragged collar of his turtleneck as he apparently realized what he'd just said out loud.

 

Heero's ears were filled with a loud buzzing. They stood there, unmoving, and stared at each other, Duo looking utterly mortified and Heero feeling like someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water all over him. Time escaped them, finding less awkward places to be as Heero's brain started working again, sluggishly. Duo—I—what? He—What did he just say? 'I don't love you that much'. He... then... how much does he?

 

***

 

The room suddenly felt painfully warm. And quiet. Duo could do nothing but stand still, facing the object of his adoration and source of most of his confusion. Heero was still standing against the wall—leaning on it for support?—and his open, slack expression hadn't changed for a few moments now. Oh shit, Duo thought, I've shocked him for life and now he's a vegetable—what will I tell Quatre? He wished the floor would open up and swallow him.

 

Somewhere outside the small, timeless vacuum that was the hotel room, a bell started to chime. As it counted out the hour, time started moving normally for the two boys again. Right about the instant that Duo realized that they were still close enough together that he could see Heero's eyelashes, how long they were and how they outlined his dark eyes in a way that the best of the Renaissance painters could never have hoped to capture the elegance of.... Right about then, Heero started moving closer. His reflexes were at least as fast as Duo's, and all Duo had time to do was blink in surprise as Heero's lips met his.

 

One thing Heero had no experience in was kissing. An important aspect of his personality, though, was that he was a quick learner, and soon, with Duo's help, what had started as a violent, awkward mashing of lips and bumping of noses shifted into something more refined, gentler and more passionate. Duo's eyes slid shut with bliss and he felt warm hands push up into his dirty hair as they teased each other softly with their lips. He didn't realize he was moving at all until his back bumped up against the wall, and he opened his eyes briefly. Heero's tongue darted out to lick Duo's lips, and he opened his mouth obediently, surrendering his sight again in favour of touch.

 

His partner's tongue explored Duo's mouth carefully, playfully, thoroughly, occasionally retreating for air as Heero kissed Duo's jaw line, or nipped at his upper lip. Duo relished the sensations, exploring the hard muscles of Heero's back with his fingertips. Gradually, they got rougher, more forceful, more sensual, and as Heero's hands roamed up and down Duo's sides under his shirt, and their tongues fought for dominance in each other's mouths, and Duo was starting to consider what it would feel like to jump up and straddle Heero's hips as he was pressed into the wallpaper, a small, insistent beeping noise in the background came to his attention.

 

Oh god, Duo thought, trying to distract Heero's attention from the sound with his touches, not now. Ignoreitignoreitignoreit....

 

Of course, Heero didn't ignore it. As if it had suddenly just dawned on him where he was and what he was doing, Heero's back stiffened and he released Duo, moving away quickly and over to the table (it was a couple of feet farther away from the wall than it had been, for some reason) to dig his pager, which was the source of the beeping, out of his coat pocket. As Duo slowly moved away from the warm spot on the wall, looking at Heero nervously, Heero had eyes for nothing but the pager. Duo watched as he clenched his jaw and then unceremoniously stuffed the device into the pocket of his pants, grabbing his gun and coat.

 

“I have to go; get some sleep before you leave,” was all Heero said before he was gone from the room.

 

Duo stared at the door helplessly. What the hell was that? he thought, that familiar feeling of confusion welling up in him again. As he stood alone in the hotel room, the bell somewhere outside chimed another half-hour.

 

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A/N: OMG KISSIES. I wrote that bit in like... January, probably. Maybe sooner. I posted it on my fandom LJ at the time. :D Since this is the point I was aiming for with all available cranial resources on DB, I'm going to go poke at Ombres now, if you read that. Hopefully I'll have a new chapter of that soon, so keep an eye out wherever for bits and pieces.