Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Songs On The Radio ❯ Should've Known Better ( Chapter 2 )

A/N: This is the second song from Duo's PoV. I've already got four pages of song four done and the outline for part three done.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing and the lyrics belong to `Should've Known Better' by Richard Marx

 

Songs On The Radio

Should've Known Better- Duo

 

The lone figure curled up in the uncomfortable plastic booth was the poster child for the heart break hotel, his usually silky and shiny hair was dull and limp and barely holding up in its habitual braided style. Dark smudges looked like bruises under tired violet eyes set into a pale, saddened face.

A few of the nightshift workers at the Second Cup speculated on whether Duo Maxwell was an actual customer or the lost soul of a broken hearted lover, waiting for his true love to find him again and make him whole.

Duo safely assumed this was thought up by the younger and more impressionable employees as the older ones tended to give him these knowing, looks of understanding, pity or sympathy.

A lone whisper escaped from unusually silent lips.

“Heero......”

“Another sleepless night I can't explain
Somebody said they heard me call your name.
The radio won't let you leave my mind
I know it's over but I don't know why.”

The sound of a man's straining voice filled the near empty cafe as Duo glared half heartedly at the shallow pool of coffee left at the bottom of his mug. Just what he needed now, music he could actually relate to. Where the hell were those bubble-gum-pop-princess-girl-power bands when he needed them?

With a disgruntled sigh, the mug was slammed down with a bit more force than necessary before Duo gave it a slight shove away from his tired, caffeine-high body. Dim eyes watched in casual consideration as the mug rolled onto its side from the shove and slipped over the edge of the table to shatter with a delicate tinkling sound.

The young girl at the cash made to hurry over to sweep up the mess, her face set in a scowl but someone held her back as almost timidly Duo peeked over the table's top to stare at the broken glass in fascination.

It was useless now, in a million pieces. Some big some small, others clumps while little shards hid dangerously among the mess. Heero would have liked its ambiguity. He seemed to like things broken into delicate dangerous shards; he'd kept Duo's heart with him even after he'd shattered it like the ex-pilot had tapped danced all over it in Wing. And then smacked it with Wing Zero's beam cannon.

Without a thought, Duo reached down and picked out one of the larger shards of glass. It was a bit slippery but the edges were smooth and sharp. Resting it on the table, he picked up another piece and looked at them. They had to fit together somehow. Maybe he could......

“Damn!” Duo hissed suddenly, dropping the piece to grab his hand. The pieces had slipped when he tried to push them back together, cutting a rather large gash in the middle of his palm.

The blood welled up and slowly ran down his wrist to drop- drip, drip, drip- onto the white table top. The scowling girl from the counter rushed over with the first aid kit and a broom in hand, rambling out questions and advice as she tried to open the kit and sweep up the glass at the same time.

Duo ignored her to look at the mess with a bitter smile. Figures he'd try to put his metaphorical heart back together and only end up bleeding and in pain.

“Should've known better than to fall in love with you
Now love is just a faded memory.
Should've known better
Now I'm a prisoner to this pain
And my heart still aches for you.”

For what felt like the millionth time, the what-ifs and the questions of what he'd done wrong flitted through Duo's mind. They'd waited nearly a decade to get together, had been through so much to let something like this tear them apart but......

He wouldn't go back to him. Not like this.

Things had been, in their own way, perfect in the beginning. They were finally together and the sex was amazing; it didn't matter that Heero hadn't said those three little words uttered by Duo in a moment of weak relief, perhaps it would take time. Take things slowly and build from there.

Months progressed and they decided to turn Duo's old bedroom into a home office, even 'christened' the new desk before Heero put The Laptop on it. Little things changed to show their new found love for each other and to express their relationship to outsiders. Heero had erased the answering machine greeting that had the caller pressing 1 for Heero and 2 for Duo to simply say that this was Heero's and Duo's home, together. Deal with it.

They'd painted the living room blue, added Duo's name to the cable bill, which had previously been Heero's responsibility while Duo took care of groceries.

Then Heero had changed. He'd never said those words, much to Duo's disappointment, but the random bouts of possessiveness and passion in which the Japanese man had guarded Duo always countered those rising doubts, always told him that Heero felt something important for the braided man.

Duo snorted as he calmly took the First Aid kit from the frazzled waitress and flicked it open with a practiced ease, his mind lost in thoughts of yesterdays.

His childhood on L2 had left Duo without any sort of public education but life on the streets was better than any Psychology and Human Behavior course offered by the best universities. He'd seen Heero's kind of behavior before on the streets and it wasn't something to look forward to.

Duo remembered the moment he had connected Heero's possessive nature with that of the pimps of L2 with vivid clarity. One of the runners, kids straight out of school who wanted to ease into the Preventers by delivering message and getting coffees, had made some jokingly suggestive remark when Duo almost ran into him, knocking the younger man on his ass.

Heero had punched him for it not a second later before latching onto Duo's braid and dragging him back to their office for a wild make-out session.

The unwanted feeling of being a cheap, dirty possession filled Duo's chest as he remembered that day and the others that followed. Standing abruptly, he nearly knocked over a bus boy making his rounds cleaning the tables. A large tip was scattered over the table as Duo left the cafe to seek shelter in his car.

It was nothing special, black and shiny from being new but completely forgettable in appearance.

“A bit too much like me sometimes.” Duo muttered to himself as he unlocked the door and got in.

For a moment, the violet eyed man sat there, staring at the steering wheel with distant eyes. The day he'd left Heero had been the last straw. He'd almost killed a man, a frighteningly straight one at that, for simply laughing with Duo. When Heero had proclaimed that he was 'Mine', a rush of excitement and fear, more of the latter than the first, had told Duo he had to leave. To Get Out. To run.

It didn't help that Heero had then called him a slut.

The car hummed to life, the digital clock showing the time, two thirty seven in the morning, with a series of dashes before the radio clicked on.

“There was no risk that I wouldn't take
Not a promise that I didn't make.
All I asked was that you just hold on
And now I'm wondering what I did wrong.”

The road was dark and silent as Duo drove home. No use remembering the bad memories of the past and letting them fuck with his head. He had work tomorrow and training newbies or not, it wouldn't do any good for the self-proclaimed bomb expert to fuck up and cut the red wire instead of the blue.

Or maybe it was the blue wire instead of the red. Duo snorted under his breath before reciting the stupid little saying he'd made to make surviving a bomb a bit easier.

“If you're an idiot and cut the red, the clock's not important; you're already dead.” He shook his head angrily. Heero would have called him a baka and tugged playfully, or as playful as Heero gets, on his braid.

Back to him again. Duo felt like his thoughts kept dancing around one thing, in a little circle like that kid's game Ring Around The Rosie. Every thought, every observation, every memory linked with Heero somehow. His early morning meal of Cheerios even began to mockingly spell out the name 'Heero' even when the bowl was filled to the rim with only Os.

He saw the Japanese pilot in crowds when Duo had to dine out with his friends in the Bomb Squad and the color blue was a constant bittersweet reminder. The braided Preventer couldn't eat or even look at Japanese cuisine, pizza made him angry and beaches made him want to cry.

And big boys don't cry.

“Should've known better than to fall in love with you

Now love is just a faded memory.
Should've known better
now I'm a prisoner to this pain
And my heart still aches for you.”

Silvery light from the full moon made the dashboard glow eerily as Duo glared at the nothing in particular in front of him. His new apartment was nearly an hour's drive from his current cafe refuge, a long drive so late in the night especially on a work night, as Duo felt a spark of desolate irritation well up inside him.

Nights like these were one of the few constants in his life now, he thought bitterly. Since he'd left Heero, sleep had been fleeting and unbearable without that familiar warmth of his lover's body beside him, to chase away the night terrors and just be there. No one was around to brush his hair after a long mission, to share peaceful silences with and steal morning cups of coffee from.

Quatre, after a long and explosive rant on how completely stupid he thought Duo and Heero were being, had suggested a dog to keep him company. Duo had found out, after the fact, that he was fucking allergic. The same had rang true for cats, birds, hamsters, ferrets and other damn furry animals. Snakes were too much of a hassle for a Preventer and Duo's goldfish kept on dying. Anything bigger than that clogged up the toilet during the funeral.

As usual, anything Shinigami loved left him, either by pushing him away or dying. The Humane Society was beginning to get suspicious of the number of pets that had passed on in Duo's care. His relationship with Heero seemed to be another one of those things he'd killed.

“Fuck fuckity fuck! Not everything in my damn life has to do with Heero Fucking Yuy!” He said, nearly shouting as he slammed a hand down on the steering wheel. The car didn't jerk or lurch as Duo's grip was still steady from piloting one of six weapons of mass destruction in his teens.

It hurt to think about Heero. To speak about him, hear about him, to remember him. Quatre always thought Duo needed to know how the Japanese man was doing whenever he phoned and it had taken the blond a while, no one could say Quatre Raberba Winner wasn't stubborn, but he had stopped mentioning their fellow pilot when Duo continued to hang up on him the moment the 'Hee' in Heero was spoken.

Quatre had also become of the belief that Duo could even know when Heero's name was being thought.

Almost mechanically, the braided Preventer drove the slowly winding roads, his mind far away in another place. If he were honest, something he claimed to be no matter what, it wasn't just the fact that Heero had come to see Duo as a possession and had called him a two-timing slut from L2 that had made him leave. Name calling wasn't that much of a damn deal; he'd shot Heero when they'd first met! Anything the braided man could have said now would pale in comparison to being shot, not only once but twice. Hell, Heero had knocked him unconscious, after cracking a few ribs, and vulnerable in the middle of enemy terrority during the Barton Uprising.

No, that wasn't the root of the problem. Duo had told him, from the very beginning, what his MO was. Duo Maxwell may run and hide but he never tells a lie. He was never ashamed of that fact, and had told many of it proudly, silently irritated with many, like Heero, thought nothing of it.

Heero's possessive and slightly obsessive swing in personality had terrified Duo somewhere deep down where the scared little kid on the tough streets of L2 still lingered.

So Duo had run.

And Heero didn't follow.

Heero Mission Yuy, the guy who attacked office inventory reports like they were the undead forms of OZ soldiers, had given up on them so easily. Duo vaguely wondered if he'd been replaced with Relena Peacecraft as those feelings of worthlessness and grief returned.

Adding to his embarrassment, angry tears welled up in his wine colored eyes and Duo squeezed them shut.

“It's not fair, dammit! He had no god-damn right still making me feel like this. Fuck! I'm such a dumbass.”

Moisture leaked through his eyelids rebelliously, just enough to pool together at the corner of his lashes and slide regretfully down his cheek.

One tear had broken the vow Duo had made since he was a child, to never cry because big boys DON'T cry, and in the end it wasn't because he was dying or in an immense amount of physical pain but because Heero Yuy, pilot of Wing Zero had broken his heart. The word `pathetic' drifted across his mind at that thought.

The sudden sound of a franticly honking transport truck and the realization that the bright light in his eyes wasn't the moon anymore nearly froze Duo. Instinctively his arms moved to jerk the car out of the way of the enormous truck. The vehicle, un-prepared for such a move, fish-tailed for a moment before Duo gained enough control to gracefully pull to the side of the road.

“I gave you all of my body and soul
Never believing we might lose control
I took my hands off the wheel.
I can't remember if the lies were true
It's been a million years since I touched you.
I thought time might help me win this game
But being away from you is slowly driving me insane.”

Barely a year ago, Duo would have gladly given his first born for that kind of adrenaline rush. It fucking sucked to know he was shaking so badly from fear and not excitement.

Shinigami afraid of Death.

Duo let out a weak, slightly hysterical chuckle at that thought. The world was seriously doomed now.

But it was the truth, and Duo was anything, if not honest.

Then again, it's hard to argue the fact when the violet eyed man couldn't seem to pry his white-knuckled hands off the steering wheel, or take off his seatbelt.

Fear-dried eyes glanced over at the glowing dashed time above the radio. Three thirty in the morning. He'd never get to sleep now, at least not enough to sanely deal with the green agents for the bomb squad without blowing their asses to kingdom come just for the hell of it. Most had come to learn that Duo had two sides when he was forced to wake without at least six hours; manically hyper or dangerously annoyed. He had a feeling today would be a dangerously annoyed kind of day if he didn't phone in sick.

It's not like they really needed him, unless someone other than the Preventers were playing with things that go boom.

Staying parked on the side of the road, mostly because he'd almost killed himself by driving without any distractions before- why chance it now?- Duo flipped open his phone to leave a message with Une.

The fucking phone was dead.

That had always been his problem, keeping the damn thing charged with enough juice. Heero'd never-

That train of thought was quickly derailed as Duo slammed his forehead down on the steering wheel with a growl. Freaking perfect, he'd probably have a bruise the size of 'Scythe there tomorrow. He was definitely not going into work.

The moon shone into the front seat of the car, illuminating everything as the braided Preventer sighed and sat up, staring at the glowing orb in the sky. He loved the view of the moon from Earth; the colonies always made it look like just another piece of dirt while the Earth gave it a mystical appearance. Maybe it was all that damn smog.

His throat tightened as he remembered the very reason why he enjoyed looking at the moon, even as a scrawny fifteen year old terrorist. The edges, right where the bright white hit the midnight blue were the exact color of Heero's eyes.

Dammit, he was crying again!

Duo let that one pissed off thought enter his mind before sagging in his seat. He'd already broken his vow, might as well toss it away to hell now. Thoughts of Heero to keep him company and the moon to keep him remembering, Duo knew he'd look a mess by the time he got him.

It didn't matter though. He wasn't going into work tomorrow.

“Should've known better than to fall in love with you

Now love is just a faded memory.
Should've known better
now I'm a prisoner to this pain
And my heart still aches for you.”