Chapter Text
Why do things keep taking me by surprise? Why did it never once cross my mind that Captain Yancy 'meet my son the illegal co-pilot' Gray would attempt to dispute the charges Heero made against him? Why, once that stupid return trip from L2 was over and my sleep-deprived bout of paranoia had eased, did I not realize that we were somewhat out-numbered in the 'their word against ours' department?
Gray, his son, the two flight-attendants and even the damn bar-tender were attempting to claim that the whole fiasco was the fault of two 'hot-shot' ex-Gundam pilots with some sort of twisted need to 'play the hero' even if they had to manufacture a crisis to rush into the middle of.
Heero's and my... delay in reporting to the head of security might have turned into a tactical error on our parts. Ms. Kasten, who had been somewhat on the fence in her opinion of us, was rather unsympathetic after that. I think she took our attitude as... well, attitude that lent credence to Gray's hot-shot accusations without us even realizing what was going on.
Somehow, while we'd taken our sweet time getting back to the shuttle port security office, Gray's son Spencer had managed to get in to see his father. I wouldn't have taken Ms. Kasten for a chief with holes that big in her policy... but who knows how the kid managed it. Captain Gray hadn't wasted the opportunity though, because not long after that, the crew of flight fourteen-ten suddenly had a united front and a story they were sticking to. I imagine all that time locked in his cabin during re-entry had given the good Captain plenty of time to think his situation through and he used it to get his shit together.
It got kind of ugly after that. What we had assumed was going to be a miserable day or two filing paperwork and giving statements had turned into more. A lot more. Gray had opted to take the thing to trial, claiming his innocence. He was going to make us work to prove our allegations, the son of a bitch. And the first smoke-screen he'd thrown up was mucking with the shuttle's black box recorder. While Heero and I had been outside his ship, saving his ass... saving his son's ass... saving the asses of his passengers and crew, Yancy-boy had been in the cock-pit applying enough current to the ship's recorder to assure that the thing was wiped and useless. He was claiming it must have happened during the initial impact that had taken out the deceleration vane. It was... an unbelievable story and nobody in their right mind bought it. Unfortunately, Heero and I were alone in that cockpit just as much as Gray was. We'd had just as much opportunity to 'destroy the evidence' as he had. The question hadn't been so much that the evidence had been tampered with, but more... evidence against whom?
That act had utterly crushed whatever spark of sympathy I might have had left for Captain Yancy Gray. It had turned his impromptu panicked embracing of the opportunity to save his career, into something a hell of a lot more... arranged.
In the Preventor business, they call it pre-meditated murder.
Heero hadn't had any damn sympathy for Gray to start with, but finding out about the black-box had sent him into a seething rage. In his mind, somehow, it had all become about me. Gray had tried to murder me. Gray was lying about me. And I don't suppose by now I have to tell you that Heero has a protective streak wider than a four-lane highway?
The result was his using his standing with Une to turn the case into Preventors' business. With all the scrutiny that entailed. Scrutiny that Heero and Wufei were right in the thick off. Not that he'd had to apply a lot of pressure, Commander Une had not been happy with what was being implied about one of her top agents.
My partner was doing his best to keep me the hell out of it, for which I was eternally grateful, but when it was all said and done, two weeks after our Christmas trip to L2 found me pretty much living the life of a bachelor. Heero and Wufei were out of town, dealing with interviews and trial preparations and I was just trying to maintain 'normal' while great chunks of my life were being turned upside down. Again.
Ever wonder just what it is about me that rubs God the wrong way?
And I could cheerfully kick my own ass for starting the whole Winner sister art gallery ball rolling when I had. If I'd had a clue what we were going to be facing in the days and weeks after that stupid trip, I'd have never in a million years made that call to Trowa. But I hadn't, and I had, and I'd been right to equate the woman with a rat terrier, who had been held on a short leash for far too long, and when she'd been given the ok to approach me... no time had been wasted. Had she not been out of town at the time of the initial call, I have little doubt she'd have been on my doorstep that same night.
And somehow, on the day that I ended up going to meet her for the first time, and Heero was gone because of that stupid trial and not able to be with me... I found a whole new reason to hate Captain Gray.
I can't tell you what I expected Aleyah Winner to be like, I really can't. I'd felt somewhat like the woman had been stalking me ever since she'd first been mentioned. Back before she'd been more than 'the watercolor Winner sister'.
I forget sometimes just how damn many of them there are, and by virtue of that fact, the spread in their ages. Not that I think that Daddy Winner didn't cook them up more than one at a time, but when you've got a brood of thirty children... they aren't all going to be from the same decade. I sometimes have trouble getting my head around the fact that 'Quatre's sister' does not necessarily mean of the same damn generation. Half of them were old enough to be his mother.
Aleyah Winner was one of those, probably in her early to mid forties? not that she would dream of telling you her age, and a damn imposing woman.
A scary woman. A woman with a family name that lent her a certain amount of power that she had parleyed into a social circle that she used like clothing, if that makes any sense. I had this feeling that if you took the woman out of that circle; she would just cease to exist.
She was tall for a Winner, her blond hair darker than Quatre's, but shot with gray that she wore with some amount of... I dunno, not quite pride, but almost like a banner, as though making sure that people knew she was of an age to be taken seriously.
I had little doubt that nothing in her wardrobe cost less than one of my paychecks, and I also doubted she bothered to wear any of it more than once. And that included her shoes and ridiculous hats.
She was the polar opposite of everything I was. The classic, clichéd single rich woman. Right down to her little dog.
Her little dog that was keeping me from truly concentrating on the woman's words. The little dog that was wandering about Quatre's sitting room just as though it owned the place. The little dog that Trowa was currently trailing quite unobtrusively.
Maybe it was Trowa to whom I owed the distraction, and not so much the dog, Cocotte. Because it was damn surreal and kind of amusing to watch the doggy dance he was doing. Cocotte sniffed and wandered, sniffed and wandered. Trowa shifted and trailed, shifted and trailed. Cocotte wandered and... squatted. Trowa nudged and then they started all over again.
And while the corner of Quatre's mouth twitched just slightly whenever Cocotte was thwarted, Aleyah seemed to be totally oblivious to the entire Dog Piss Ballet that her own dog was leading.
The whole bizarre thing at least gave me something else to think about besides the kind of sick tightness in my chest as the woman leafed through my portfolio with a detached aloofness that I couldn't read for the life of me.
I'd about given myself an ulcer picking through sketches and trying to decide what to present for her... God, for her interview, I guess you would call it. Because it sure as hell felt like I was interviewing for a job. A lot of my art is... a little too personal to be showing to anybody, much less to be contemplating showing to a lot of anybodies. It had taken me every second of time between Trowa calling to tell me when to be at their house and actually leaving for the appointment, to pick out a set of sketches that didn't leave me cringing. I'd settled on some from the time period right around when Hayden had met Toria, back in the days when he and I had been hanging around together and contemplating a partnership in the trade. Those had been... not bad days. Most of the sketches from then were studies and portraits, some memories and some fanciful stuff. But there wasn't a lot of the darker crap that started surfacing after I'd been out on my own for awhile.
But it was still my art, it was still bits and pieces of... me that she was carefully leafing through with those exquisitely painted nails.
'And where did you say you studied, dear?' she asked as she turned a page to look closer at a portrait of Hayden in free-fall.
I let out a sigh and tried not to let myself rub at the back of my neck. 'Ah... I've never actually been to art school,' I confessed, cringing inwardly and waiting for her to dismiss the whole thing, but her eyes flicked up from the page and she graced me with a look that made me feel decidedly like a side-dish.
'Oh,' she purred thoughtfully. 'Raw talent? I like that.'
I felt the heat rising into my cheeks and I glanced toward Trowa the second she turned her attention back to the sketches, trying to catch some clue from him. When he finished suggesting to Cocotte that she not pee on the floor for the tenth time, he met my gaze and gave me a small smile.
I tried to be reassured by it. Beside me, Quatre delicately cleared his throat. 'Would you care for more tea, Duo?'
I glanced from my full cup to meet his eyes and got a wink that was designed to tell me his support was behind me and not his sister. Or something like that. I honestly wasn't real sure. It was kind of hard to tell, because my 'baby brother' was so damn busy being happy as a little gilded clam over my 'breaking into the art world', that he couldn't stop beaming at me. It made for some damn mixed signals.
'No thanks,' I mumbled, just for appearances sake, because there was certainly no room in the little china cup for more tea. Though it served to make me remember the stuff and I took a sip. I'm not a big fan of tea, I'd have rather had a bottle of soda, and not just for the label I could have been peeling into confetti. But today seemed to be all about appearances. And of course, that thought only served to remind me of how tight my damn collar felt and I found myself reaching to tug at it and made myself stop.
Somewhere in there, I realized I'd missed something and I blinked up to find Aleyah looking at me expectantly.
'Pardon?' I managed.
'Pay attention, dear,' she smiled bemusedly and I felt my face flame. She laughed a dainty little laugh that still managed to chill my blood and said, 'I am so going to enjoy you.'
I fell back on my carp imitation and beside me Quatre sighed with a hint of resignation in it, chiding, 'Aleyah... be nice.'
The woman actually pouted in an almost elegant way... don't ask me how that's done because I couldn't have reproduced the expression if I'd tried, and brushed aside Quatre's warning with a wave of her hand. 'Quatre-pet you are simply no fun at all.'
Quatre didn't bother to reply, and she didn't seem to expect him to. I suspected it was a scene they played out quite often and it made me wonder about her... habits.
'I said,' Aleyah turned her attention back to me. 'If you are paying attention now, darling, that this piece is very interesting. What do you call it?'
I blinked down at the sketch she had it tilted for me to see, showing me a study I'd done of a downed Leo. It was quite detailed in the damage that could be done to metal by a beam scythe. That was the whole focus of the picture actually; how the metal curled just so.
Ok... maybe one or two of the sketches had been a little darker than the others. I did say that some of them were memories, didn't I?
'Call it?' I stammered, looking between her and the sketch.
She gave out with an exasperated little sigh. 'I must have titles, dear,' she informed me somewhat dismissively, as though she had just delegated some task. 'The Frenchman brought an artist in just last month that couldn't title worth diddly. Sweet girl, but absolutely no imagination. We simply can not do the 'untitled-101' thing again so soon. You will have to title.'
She was already turning the page while I was still dealing with the fact that she had just informed me in her non-informative way, that she was going to sponsor me. Quatre made a noise and I glanced at him to see him doing that beaming thing again. Guess he'd gotten the same message I had.
Aleyah was pausing over a study I had done of Toria's hands. It had struck me one day, how different her hands were from some of the women I had happened to meet near the end of the war. Women like Relena with their porcelain skin and manicured nails. Toria had a spacer's hands; calloused and scarred. Blunt-nailed and strong. But no less beautiful in their own way.
I felt my own hands curl around my tea cup.
Suddenly Aleyah turned the page toward me and commanded. 'Name this one.'
I blinked at her in surprise and finally faltered out with, 'Uh? 'Victoria's Hands'?'
The woman actually rolled her eyes at me. 'Oh darling... you suck at this,' I was told in a rather resigned little tone. She turned the sketch back around and swept her gaze over it again. 'Competence,' she said after a moment's consideration. 'We shall title this one 'Competence'.'
I honest to God was surprised that she got that part. I glanced up to meet her eyes and was graced with a tasteful little smirk. 'I shall do the titling, I think,' she said, and there was such an air of command about her that I found myself nodding, still trying to get my brain around the fact that the prim Ms. Winner had just used the word 'suck'.
Then she shut the portfolio with a certain finality. 'These are lovely, pet, but I will need more current work from you.'
It startled me, that she had known somehow that the sketches weren't new. 'I can manage that... I think,' I replied, trying to figure out if I had anything current that was... audience friendly.
'Quatre-love,' she said, almost as though my answer hadn't mattered. 'I want to display that portrait of your charming lover. It is exquisite; you must let me have it.'
I missed the look on Quatre's face, because my attention leapt in Trowa's direction to catch his reaction to the comment. He finished his step in the doggy ballet and looked up to meet not mine, but Quatre's gaze, and he shrugged unconcernedly.
'It's not for sale,' Quatre replied firmly, once he had confirmation that his 'charming lover' didn't mind having his picture trotted out for the art world to see.
'Of course it isn't dear,' Aleyah reassured. 'It's a must to have several pieces labeled as part of a 'private collection'.' She tossed a small wink in her brother's direction. 'I wouldn't sell your precious Trowa.'
Then she was pulling out a massive day-planner and was all business. 'I have a block scheduled in my name at the gallery in two weeks. My potter canceled on me... something to do with her job. I deplore artists with day jobs. You don't have a day job, do you dear?' She never glanced up as she busily made notations and so missed my patented deer-in-headlights routine.
'Aleyah,' Quatre warned, his tone implying a certain amount of exasperation. 'You know he does? I told you about it.'
'Quite right, pet,' she replied, topic already forgotten, or dismissed, or some damn thing. 'No matter... his work is exquisite. I won't miss the opportunity to make him one of mine.'
Whatever look came over my face then was enough that Trowa actually gave in to a snicker. I was lost in visions of Aleyah Winner in a house full of pet artists... all dressed in collars and not much else. Oh God... what had I gotten myself into?
'I just have time to have the pamphlets printed, dear,' she was saying and I tried to focus on the meaning behind her words. Pamphlets? What fucking pamphlets? 'If we get you to the photographer immediately.' She pulled out a business card, jotted something on the back and handed it to me. 'Have yourself at the studio on Monday. I'll handle everything else.'
'But...' I stammered, and stopped, disgusted with myself. Was I going to stammer every damn line I delivered to the woman? 'I have to work, I can't possibly?'
She laughed lightly. 'You do get a lunch hour, don't you darling?' she reached across and tapped delicately at the card in my hand. 'Note the time on the back of the card. Don't worry... Jacques is a wonderful photographer. He'll have you done and back playing with your silly little cars in plenty of time.'
It dawned on me in there somewhere, just how Aleyah Winner got her way in everything, and I had no doubt that she did... she simply kept everyone around her so damn off-balance that they never thought to object to anything.
'Now that that's settled,' she said breezily, making a couple more notes before closing the planner. 'I'm going to need some more pieces from you by the end of the week. Your sketch work is extraordinary, but I would prefer at least two paintings as well; I don't want your scope to seem too... narrow.'
'Paintings?' I queried, refusing to stammer again.
'You do have paintings, don't you?' she pressed. 'I've seen your terribly unorthodox? ship's work, pet, and I simply must have paintings.'
Two paintings by the end of the week? 'That? shouldn't be a problem,' I heard myself saying; suddenly loathe to admit that I didn't have a thing that could be gotten into a gallery, unless she wanted to have the show in a damn hanger somewhere.
'Good,' she smiled, actually looking at me for the first time in a bit. 'And more recent sketches than this; you mustn't hold out on your sponsor.'
I found myself blushing again for some damn reason and all I could do was nod.
'Perfect!' she declared and I felt dismissed. 'I believe that is all I need for the moment. I will see you Monday at Jacques.' Then she was gathering her things and preparing to leave. Trowa looked mildly relieved. Quatre looked like he might bust something grinning. I'd graduated from a deer in headlights, to a bunny-rabbit with a bad leg on a shuttle-field.
But then she gathered up my sketches right along with the rest of her stuff and there was a funny little lurch in the pit of my stomach. 'Uh... what are you??' I began, and she gave me that weird amused little smile I had already decided I was going to be heartily sick of before very long at all.
'Darling,' she informed me in a tone that can only be described as condescending. 'I can't hang sketchpads in a gallery. Things must be matted and framed.'
Well. That certainly made sense, didn't it? Another one of those things that I should have thought of. Another one of those things that rather took me by surprise. Some part of my brain that hadn't been frazzled to death started doing math calculations but even that quickly ground to a halt. I'd never had anything matted and framed... I didn't have a clue. 'Oh,' was the best I could manage.
Somewhere in there, she had stood up and it was the sense of her towering over me that made me stand too. She laughed outright and stepped over to pat me gently on the cheek. 'My dear, you are too adorable for words!' she said and something in her voice wiped away the notion I'd had of her as a rat terrier and changed it to something more akin to a shark. 'You have a sponsor now; let Aleyah take care of everything.'
I was rather grateful that she turned away before I had a chance to actually say yes Ma'am.
Cocotte didn't even have to be called, leaving Trowa's company and darting to her mistress' heel as soon as Aleyah began walking. She gave Quatre one of those proper little hugs, admonishing him to 'take care of his acrobat', and then surprised me by stopping to give Trowa an identical little embrace, though I didn't quite catch what she told him. It made Trowa use his sardonic grin, and I decided I really didn't want to know.
Watching her walk out the door with my portfolio tucked under her arm kind of brought it all home though, and my knees decided I should sit back down on the settee. Trowa stayed with me while Quatre saw her out, and no longer being busy policing the dog, he turned and smiled bemusedly at me. 'So... you going to live?'
I looked up at him and didn't even try to school what must have been a shell-shocked expression. 'Dear God... what have I done?'
'She is rather... overwhelming, isn't she?' he smirked and came to sit in the chair closest to me.
'You did not warn me,' I accused, still staring at the door, still fighting the urge to run after them, snatch my sketches back and tell the scary woman to forget the whole thing. 'I thought we were friends.'
He chuckled and reached out to take one of the little shortbread cookies off the saucer in the middle of the coffee table before sitting back to nibble at it. 'Would you honestly have believed me if I'd tried to describe her?'
I looked his way and finally had to let out a snort. 'I suppose you have a point.'
He quirked me a grin that was meant to be reassuring. 'Duo, as odd as she seems sometimes... she really does know what she's doing.'
'I hope so,' I mumbled, giving in to the urge I'd had all afternoon to rub my hand over my face. 'Because I sure as hell don't.'
When I pulled my hand away from my eyes, I started at the green bottle that had suddenly appeared in front of me and looked up to find Quatre there, grinning down at me. I took the offered soda with a heart-felt sigh. 'Oh God, Quat; I love you!'
Trowa chuckled at me while I uncapped the thing and gulped down several nerve settling mouthfuls. Quatre came around the settee and sat back down beside me. 'Well... you didn't seem to be enjoying your tea.'
'I really don't like tea all that much,' I confessed sheepishly, 'but swilling Mt. Dew in front of your sister seemed... crass, somehow.'
Quatre snorted and shook his head, then surprised me by reaching out and before I knew it, he'd unbuttoned the top button on my band-collar shirt. 'You looked like you were about to strangle a couple of times.'
I gave in to the second urge I'd been having all day and rubbed at the back of my liberated neck. 'Little brother,' I intoned solemnly. 'We have a seriously weird family.'
He laughed with delight, his eyes fairly shining, and I had to work not to look Trowa's way, though I could feel his approving gaze. Making an effort to make Quatre happy was a fairly recent conscious decision of mine.
'Aleyah is...' he said, when his laughter had faded. 'Very dedicated.'
It was my turn to laugh. 'Dedicated?' I asked, a little incredulous. 'That seems a little... tame, for a woman who makes you feel like you've been run over by a steam roller.'
'She gets the job done, Duo,' Trowa told me, then popped the last of his shortbread into his mouth.
'But,' I couldn't help saying, trying to decide which of them to address the question to. 'A photographer? What in the world does she need a... a pamphlet for?'
It was Quatre who answered me, reaching out to pat me gently on the knee, as though he was about to impart the news that I was to be executed at dawn. 'Duo, you do understand that there will be a reception at the opening? When people go to gallery shows, they want to know about the artists. There are usually little informational leaflets that are handed out...' the more he talked, the more I must have looked like I was staring down the barrel of a .45, and he finally petered out and stopped.
'Reception?' I stammered, suddenly understanding that this art world thing might be a hell of a lot more complicated than I'd ever dreamed. 'I don't know anything about...'
'That,' Trowa cut me off calmly. 'Is why you have a sponsor. It is Aleyah's job to know what to do for you. All you have to do is listen to her.'
'Oh God,' I told him, somewhat aghast. 'I'm supposed to trust a woman to handle everything who can't even remember my damn name?'
Quatre let out with a bark of laughter that he tried to stifle and finally managed, 'She does that to everyone, dear; it doesn't mean she can't remember your name.'
I couldn't help the double take and he grinned at me rather unrepentantly. 'I sure hope so,' I grumbled. 'I really don't want to end up with all those pictures labeled as 'by Pet'.'
Trowa chuckled and prodded my foot under the table in a companionable way. 'Stop worrying,' he commanded. 'Now tell us how this trial business is going. Are Heero and Wufei coming back soon?'
I sat back with a heavy sigh, taking the moment to up end my bottle for another couple of swallows. 'Not likely,' I told him. 'They're still in the interview stage. Heero hasn't given up the hope that they can keep this from actually going to any kind of trial.'
'Have they found anything promising?' he questioned, sitting forward to rest his forearms across his knees.
'Nothing he can tell me too much about over the phone,' I reported, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. It was rather eating at me to be side-lined on something that I had as big a stake in as Heero did. But, Heero was the agent. Mechanics, even Preventor mechanics, don't get to go out in the field and do research. 'They were going to get to interview Gray's wife today, I think.'
'I'm sure they'll be coming home soon,' Quatre assured me and I tried my best not to hear the sympathy in his tone.
'That would be nice,' I replied, taking another drink. 'Because that would mean this mess was over. As it stands now... they're likely going to be on-site until at least the end of the week.'
Quatre didn't respond and I glanced over to see him looking at me with that really bad poker face of his, struggling with words. I wanted to tell him not to bother... the words were pretty well written across his forehead. In glowing green script.
'I'm fine, you mother hen,' I told him firmly. 'I haven't had a psychotic episode in weeks.'
It was rather fun watching him change colors.
But it didn't stop him from jumping all over the subject since I'd technically been the one to broach it. 'You know you're welcome here, if you'd like to stay,' he told me almost breathlessly, afraid I think, that Trowa might shush him. Of the two of them, Trowa seems to have a better understanding of what makes me squirm. 'And if there's anything at all that you need?'
'Just two paintings by the end of the week,' I told him with a bit of a theatric sigh. 'You don't happen to have a couple I could borrow?'
That line made Trowa laugh right out loud, or maybe he was just helping me change the subject, because that had rather been the point to begin with.
Quatre looked a little wide-eyed. 'You mean you don't have...'
'Not unless I could get some old spacer friend to take an acetylene torch to their ship and loan me a section of bulkhead,' I said, and took another swig of soda.
'What are you going to do?' he asked, delivering me my straight line.
'Paint like hell?' I deadpanned, and finally got a laugh out of the both of them. It wasn't hard after that to plead an 'artist's dead-line' and I made my exit. Though I wasn't too surprised that I got walked out to my car by Quatre's 'charming lover'.
'So,' he ventured as we made our way down the front steps. 'You going to tell me what this sudden interest in entering the art circle is all about?'
It hadn't been what I'd been expecting, and he rather caught me by surprise. 'Just broadening my horizons,' I tried, and got a side-long glance for the line and nothing more.
I tried out lasting him, but he's got this way of making me feel guilty as sin when I don't tell him what he wants to know, and by the time we got to my car, I was squirming. 'Look,' I began, not sure just how to explain myself. 'One of my... one of the kids at the Maxwell home was bitten by a dog and she needs plastic surgery, but the insurance won't pay for it. Considers it 'cosmetic'.' I found my hand rubbing over my face and I leaned against the fender, figuring we were in for a long talk. 'When I started thinking about a second job... this seemed like a possibility.'
He regarded me quietly for a moment, and I tried to brace myself for what was coming next, but again he surprised me. 'I thought there was something pushing you into it,' he told me. 'You seem a little... reluctant. I just wanted to make sure that Heero wasn't pressuring you.'
I blinked up at him, grateful as hell that he somehow understood my need to handle this myself, and at the same time, surprised at his suspicions. I snorted. 'Are you kidding? Heero wouldn't pressure me to get out of bed in the morning if I didn't want to.'
Trowa grinned at me and shook his head. 'I should have realized.' Then he seemed to dismiss the topic all together, but finally got around to the one I had been anticipating. He reached out carefully and took hold of the base of my braid, giving me a tiny little shake. It was a gesture he had taken to using when he wanted to guarantee my undivided attention. 'You will call me if you need anything,' he commanded.
'Yes boss,' I replied and graced him with a roll of my eyes.
He didn't let go immediately, giving me that look he's got that makes me feel like he's twice my age, twice my experience, and more than the head taller than me than he actually is. 'I don't care if you just want someone to come and watch bad movies with you. Quatre and I will always have the time.'
I grinned slyly up at him. 'So; you get a 'watch out for Duo' speech from Heero before they left?'
He grinned right back at me, not so much as blushing. 'He didn't have to... it's a standing order.'
I chuckled ruefully and shook my head when he finally let go of me so that I could. 'Sorry Tro, but I don't think I'm going to have the time to be watching movies, good or bad. I wasn't kidding... I don't have a damn thing painted that doesn't come with some sort of structure attached.'
'And you seriously think you can have two paintings done before the end of the week?' he asked me, quirking his eyebrow and managing to look amused more than surprised.
'Don't have a clue,' I said, rather cheekily, I thought. 'Never painted on canvas before.'
He laughed and shook his head, stepping away so that I could open the car door. 'Then I suppose you'd best go find out.'
I climbed in my car, but then hesitated, and he noticed it enough that he didn't immediately shut the door he was holding onto. He didn't speak, only looking at me expectantly until I finally blurted, 'If I can't manage to come up with something, do you think...'
He snorted, not bothering to let me finish. 'Aleyah will have that gallery opening even if she does it with nothing more than what you've already given her. Trust me.'
It was about as disconcerting as it was comforting, but I nodded in acceptance of the information. He shut my car door, stepping back, and I gave him a little wave as I pulled away.
I had left home with a list of things to do a mile long that morning, but somehow my brain had been fried and I couldn't think of a damn one of them.
You know, at that stage of the game I couldn't even freakin' decide if I liked Aleyah Winner or not. She just... intimidated the hell out of me. She was so obviously used to getting her own way, that it grated with me just a bit. But, what she was preparing to do for me was damn generous and that fact was not lost on me. I may be a little uneducated when it comes to the kind of thing that I had just jumped into, but I'm not stupid. Photographers. Pamphlets. Matting and framing. Receptions. These 'gallery shows' were apparently not cheap. And she was rather off-handedly taking care of all of it. Paying for all of it. I guess I was just still having trouble understanding what the woman was getting out of the whole thing. And she was just so... pushy.
It was probably her attitude toward Trowa, and his toward her, that made me reserve my judgment more than anything. She seemed honestly to be at least mildly fond of him, and he seemed to hold her in some kind of regard, even if there was more than a hint of humor in it. I had found, in the last few months, that I respected and trusted Trowa's opinions as much as I did Heero's. Hell; in some things I probably trusted his thoughts more than Heero's. He tended to be more... pragmatic than Heero when it came to things that had to do with me. Less likely to assume that what I wanted was necessarily the best thing.
Somewhat less likely to call the National Guard if I confessed to a headache.
Before I knew it, I'd taken myself back home and was parked in front of my own front steps. I don't recall a lot about the journey there. I dislike when things throw me so much that I fall into 'autopilot' mode; I don't always end up where I intended to go.
But home had been my goal that day, both consciously and sub-consciously apparently, and I took myself inside, mind fairly churning in my skull.
I went to the stereo in the first part of what had become almost a ritual since Heero'd been gone, and queued up my music. I had yet to wire the house the way I had planned to, and knowing that I was most likely going to end up in my studio before long, I just jacked the volume up a touch to be sure I would be able to hear it there.
Then I went into the kitchen and spent my several minutes staring at the portrait of Allison and me that she had given me for Christmas. Sometimes I like to have my goals clearly in mind. Like to put things in their proper perspective.
So maybe Aleyah Winner made me stutter and blush. So maybe she made my mind blank from the sheer power of her personality.
She didn't have shit on the sound of a little girl's voice telling me, 'I got scars, Mr. Duo!'
Then I went upstairs to change out of my dress clothes and into something I didn't care if I got paint all over. The superman cape was only in my imagination. As was the approving nod and slightly feral grin I got from Solo's portrait over my dresser. Though I nodded in return anyway. It was at his elbow that I'd developed my need to guard the children in the first place, after all. He understood. Solo had always understood.
I missed him, sometimes, with a pang that had diminished not overly much through the years. It was a wound that had never quite healed, and that trip to L2 still had it a bit raw. I rubbed a hand over my line of physical scars as I made my way down the stairs, and sighed as I realized that Solo had gotten caught up in the whirlwind of thoughts rushing through my head.
And it was in that frame of mind that I went to stand in front of my brand new, never really used, expensive as holy-hell easel. The canvas was still sitting on it from my one attempt to actually paint at that scale. The attempt that had ended with me covering part of the damn wall in a brain-dump all of whose parts and pieces I had not yet identified. That canvas bore little more than a couple of parallel lines that had meant to frame in Heero's window, before I'd abandoned it all unknowing.
I found my lip caught in my teeth as I worried with the notion that I couldn't paint on anything smaller than a dreadnaught, and wondered what the seemingly unflappable Ms. Winner would do if I showed up with my paintings on sheets of plywood.
I wasted five whole minutes looking at that idea from different angles, before I gave it up and decided it probably wasn't feasible. Then I decided that the first order of business was logically, figuring out what the subject matter was going to be; 'what' before 'how', and all that.
The 'what in the hell...?' thought was enough to bring hamsters scrambling forward from every nook and cranny in the room, little suggestion banners flying. All of them pushing and shoving and jockeying for prime positions to present their ideas to me. Everything from sunsets to still lifes, landscapes to abstracts. I think I groaned out loud.
I sent the ones with the more mundane ideas packing immediately, not even considering about seventy-five percent of them. I somehow didn't think Ms Winner was looking for floral studies or butterflies. She didn't strike me as the landscape type.
And of course, that begged the question; just what type was she? I thought back over the afternoon and tried to remember which sketches had drawn her attention. She hadn't commented on a lot of them, but I could remember her lingering over several, and they all fell into the category of... different. The portrait of Hayden in free-fall; his body moving in a way that would not have been possible anywhere else. The destroyed Leo. Toria's hands. She had commented in some form, on all of those, but when I thought about it, there had been a couple of others that she had looked at just a bit longer than average. There had been a strange thing I'd done of a view of the ocean off one of Howard's ships. It had been just a slice of sea and sky, framed between the legs of Deathscythe, and in the middle of that calm, quiet, view soared a sea gull.
Yeah... I guess it was a given that Aleyah Winner was not going to be satisfied with bowls of fruit.
'Try again, guys,' I muttered to the hamsters and the little buggers did their best to oblige. After ten minutes of staring at the canvas and dismissing hamsters, I decided to go get myself a soda. Maybe the caffeine would engage my brain.
The minute I stepped into the studio doorway, intent on heading down the hall to the kitchen, alarm bells went off in my head and I found myself flattened to the wall. There was someone on my front porch; I could see the movement of shadows through the window. I didn't know whether to curse my music for masking whatever noise I might have picked up out there, or bless it for masking any noise I might have made myself, but either way I used it to my benefit and darted on down the hall to the kitchen door closest to me. I ducked in, silent as a thief and snatched up a butcher knife from the block on the counter, intent on going through the kitchen into the dining room for a glimpse out the window.
That was when the doorbell rang, and it kind of took the wind right out of my sails. I started feeling pretty stupid, and I just stood there blinking for a second. The war was a long damn time over, after all, along with the days of having to go to the corner store armed to the teeth. I wondered at my own over-reaction; it had been a long time since I'd let myself get set off that way. Still... hearing Heero cursing me six ways to Sunday for being 'careless', I crept on in to the dining room and took a look out the window before going to answer the bell.
I decided I didn't need the knife, and left it lying on the dining table while I went to open the front door. No point in traumatizing a couple of kids, after all.
There were two of them, an older boy and a younger girl, siblings by the look of them, and almost as jumpy as I was. I grinned winningly as I opened the door, watching the boy blush and the girl peek around him from where she'd sheltered. 'Can I help you?' I asked, trying to sound as harmless as possible.
The boy cleared his throat self-consciously and drew himself up to his full height. 'Hi we live down the street and my Mom wanted to know if you had a couple of eggs she could borrow because she's in the middle of baking a cake and ran out and it'll be ruined if she has to stop now and go to the store and it's for my Grandma's birthday.'
It took me a second to decipher the run away sentence and while I was working it out, the little girl stepped out from behind her brother and kind of rolled her eyes. 'Introduce us,' she stage whispered in exasperation and her brother blushed even more hotly than he had been.
'Oh yeah,' he muttered, and then a little more firmly. 'I'm Bobby and this is my sister Ruthie. We live down the street in the white house.'
I nodded at them, still feeling the tick of adrenaline fading from my system. 'I'm Duo,' I told him. 'Hang on a second and I'll see if we have any eggs.'
They nodded back at me, almost in tandem, and I could see the eyes of the little girl searching curiously past me. I left them standing on the porch and retreated to the kitchen.
I couldn't help grinning; what a bizarre ass moment... my neighbor had sent her kids over to borrow eggs. It made me want to laugh. I had neighbors. Who did not think twice about knocking on my door. For eggs. I was relieved to actually find some; I hadn't been sure.
I returned to the front door, eggs in hand, and grin toned back down to something that I hoped wouldn't be scary.
'Be careful getting these home,' I warned them as I opened the front door. 'I don't have any more.'
Bobby looked a bit hesitant then, but gravely took the things when I handed them over. 'Thanks a lot,' he told me. 'My Mom will really appreciate it.'
'No problem,' I replied, and was trying to think of something else to say when Ruthie suddenly piped up.
'Don't cut the rose bushes,' she commanded rather imperiously.
'What?' I said, just as her brother hissed at her.
'Ruthie!'
'I heard Mom tell Dad!' she informed him haughtily. 'She said she hoped the new neighbors weren't too stupid to know what the rose bushes were.'
I thought Bobby was going to pass a kidney stone right there on my front porch, and while watching him sputter and hiss and look like he was contemplating strangling his own blood kin was kinda fun... I started worrying about the eggs making it in one piece, and decided to interject something.
'And just where are these rose bushes of your mother's?' I asked, rather proud of the level tone of voice. I would not laugh at the child on our first meeting.
She turned toward the porch swing and pointed in the general direction of a million things. 'They grow all along the fence row. My Mom says that Mrs. Dent planted them all herself and she doesn't want you to cut them down just 'cause you think they're weeds.'
I looked where she was pointing now that I had a general idea of just where that was, and had to grudgingly admit that I really had thought that tangle of vines was just weeds. 'I promise not to cut them down,' I told her solemnly, and that seemed to be enough to make her happy.
'Thanks, Mr. Duo!' she beamed at me. 'I'll tell my Mom!'
If I hadn't been so thrown off guard by her use of the name the kids at Maxwell's called me, I might have suggested that telling her mother about our little conversation might not be the best idea she'd had all day.
'We gotta go,' Bobby prodded, obviously just wanting her to shut the hell up. 'Mom needs these eggs.'
'Ok,' Ruthie agreed and turned to jump down the steps, stopping at the bottom to wave back at me. I returned the wave and grinned, not able to hide the amusement. She didn't seem to notice. Bobby, an interesting shade of red, muttered an apology.
'Don't worry about it,' I waved him off. 'I really didn't know they were roses.'
He looked relieved and unbent enough to tell me, 'They're yellow ones... my Mom's favorite. Mrs. Dent used to let Mom come over and cut some.'
'Your Mom used to know the lady who lived here?' I asked, my interest piqued despite myself.
'Yeah,' he told me. 'Mom says they used to be friends.'
'Well,' I smiled at him. 'Your mother is more than welcome to come over and cut all the roses she wants when they bloom again. And if there's anything else I should know about, I wouldn't mind hearing about it.'
'Cool!' he grinned, and looked like he might have said more, but Ruthie gave him an exasperated, rather theatric sigh.
'I thought you said we had to go?' she demanded, hands on hips and all but tapping her foot.
'All right? all right!' Bobby returned, and then they were leaving.
I just stood in the door for a minute, watching them walk off down the street, and tried to stop grinning.
It rather hit me all at once then... we lived in suburbia.
I, Duo Maxwell, product of the colonies, ex-Gundam pilot, ex-Spacer, ex-terrorist... was gonna need a lawn-mower, and would probably be buying Girl Scout cookies before the year was out. I managed to get the front door shut before I burst out laughing.
What a totally fucked up concept.
I retrieved the butcher knife on my way through the dining room and put it away with a pang of guilt, wondering what those poor kids would have done had I actually answered the door with it in my hand. I'm sure it would have been the last time their mother sent them over to 'the new neighbor's' place. I stopped to get my bottle of soda out of the fridge and then wandered back to my studio.
God; kids are so... adaptable. No, that wasn't quite what I meant. Accepting? A little closer, but still not quite right. Maybe there just isn't a word.
Bobby looked to be about thirteen or so. Looked like he probably played baseball or soccer or stuff like that. Probably had to be made to do his homework and had to take out the trash to get a little bit of an allowance that he probably spent on video games and candy. A lot of probablys, but you know what I mean; just an average, run-of-the-mill kid.
If you happened to have an even semi-normal family life. If you had somebody who made you do that trash thing, and withheld that allowance when you didn't, and showed up at all your ball games and cheered even when it was only a base-hit and not a homerun. The kind of kid who didn't think twice about knocking on a total stranger's door.
Davey was thirteen too, or had been, not all that long ago. Could not have been less like Bobby if he tried. Davey would probably have balked at knocking on my door, but would have made Ruthie wait on the side-walk had he gone through with it, and would never have expected those eggs without giving something in return. If Bobby was the 'this is what thirteen looks like' yardstick, then Davey came off looking seventeen at least.
And then there was me. By thirteen, I'd been training to fly a Gundam into the middle of a war. I'd have laughed out loud at the notion of going up to some complete stranger and asking for eggs. I would never have bothered because I could not have been convinced there was any point. Might have stolen them, had I really wanted them, but would not have bothered to ask. By that same yardstick, I suppose I would have looked a little bit like... thirty? A slightly jaded thirty?
You see what I'm trying to say? All those kids... all the same age... and how much more different could they possibly be? Made by circumstances into... whatever the hell they had to be. Whatever the hell they could be.
Damn. One little 'Mr. Duo', and look where my brain was off too.
But I found my brush in my hand and my paints on my pallet, in a room suddenly devoid of helpful little banner-toting fur balls, so I just went with it.
Wonder what Heero had been when he was thirteen?
Wonder why I couldn't quite let go of the hurt that he wasn't willing to tell me?
Then I wondered what Aleyah Winner had been like at thirteen and I think I broke my brain. I don't think the woman had ever been less than thirty-five. Had probably sprung full-blown from her poor father's forehead, like some trendy Athena, spouting cultured opinions on the poor man's décor.
I had to sigh, realizing that somewhere down inside I'd pretty much made up my mind that I wasn't all that fond of the woman, even while my conscious self tried to convince me that she wasn't so bad.
But really, it was all about Allison, and how I felt over the whole thing shouldn't enter into it. This was all for Allison's sake... my little Alley-cat.
And that thought brought my conscious brain into contact with the part that had been painting all afternoon and I blinked the canvas into focus for the first time in... quite a few hours, it seemed.
Sometimes -- every once in a great while -- I get a little bit nervous over my ability to do things without really noticing. If you understand what I mean? Not that I'm not aware... I'm just not always aware.
It was Allison's face looking back at me. Staring back at me. Or most of her face. The bits of window frame that had been on the canvas from before had metamorphed into a half open closet door. Inside the closet, it was black as pitch, and outside it was very bright and sunny. My Alley-cat was caught between, sitting in the dark with her face half obscured with that fall of chin-length, cropped hair, the light illuminating the unblemished half of her face... and the tear track running down her cheek.
That Superman cape got kind of restrictive then, because I choked just a bit.
'One'a yours?' Solo asked near my ear and I nodded.
'Yeah,' I told him, with a certain amount of pride behind the pain.
'Ya gonna let her down twice?' he pressed, in that way he had that minced no words.
'Fuck, no,' I growled and he chuckled as he faded away.
'At's my Rat-boy,' he approved, and there was the breeze of a punch on my shoulder that never connected.
'Fuck, no,' I repeated, not able to tear my gaze from Allison's, but it was mostly for my own reassurance.
When the phone rang a second time, I jumped like it was a shot, set aside my pallet and brush, and ran for the kitchen phone.
The fading daylight registered with me enough that I realized it might actually be Heero, and I snatched the receiver up with a 'Hello?' that managed to sound not only breathless, but kinda hopeful.
'Duo?' his well-loved, much-needed voice came, sounding somehow both happy to hear me and concerned all at the same time. 'Are you all right?'
'I was...' I tried to explain, still seeing that child's piercing gaze boring through me. 'I was painting... I don't think I heard the phone right away... I...'
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Did I interrupt? I can call back later?'
'No!' I exclaimed, a little more vehemently than I'd either intended, or was probably wise. 'No? I was done. I... please don't go, ok?' Then I started thinking a little more clearly, started wondering about where he was and who he was with. 'Uh... where are you, anyway?'
He somehow seemed to keep up with my sporadic thoughts, and soothed, 'It's all right; we came back to our room for the night and Wufei is in the shower. Now tell me what's wrong?'
I sighed, swallowed, and made a conscious effort to drag my sorry brain back into the here and now. 'Nothing's really wrong,' I told him, pleased that my voice had steadied. 'I just... miss the holy hell out of you is all.'
He chuckled softly. 'I miss you too. But are you sure everything is ok?'
'Just been a weird day,' I sighed, aware on some level how much I was relaxing just from the sound of his voice. 'I got to meet Quatre's art-blooded sister.'
'That was today?' he asked, and I could hear the trace of guilt behind a weariness that I was suddenly very aware of. 'Damn. I wanted to be there with you. How did it go?'
'Well,' I chuckled, trying to sound a little less needy. A little more together. 'Let's just say that I am apparently poised on the brink of a gallery début.'
'She's going to sponsor you?' he asked, and a bit of excitement crept into his voice. I imagined the smile and things were a little better. I suddenly felt the need to sit down and took the handset with me to the living room couch.
'Sponsor me?' I quipped. 'At one point I was afraid she was going to abduct me... Heero, that woman is seriously scary.'
He laughed, and it was a good sound. 'She does usually get what she wants,' he agreed.
'No shit,' I muttered and then decided I didn't want to talk about it anymore. I leaned my head back against the cushions and sighed. 'Hey, wasn't today the day you were going to interview Mrs. Gray?'
'I can't tell you too much,' Heero said, but I could hear a certain feral tone in his voice. 'But let me just say this... it's the Ex-Mrs. Gray.'
'Oh that has to be good,' I speculated. 'Right? I mean... she probably isn't too disposed to defend the man if they aren't married any more. Though... that may mean she doesn't know very much, I suppose.'
There was an uncomfortable silence and then he finally said, 'Duo, love... you know I can't?'
I sighed, a little dejectedly, and cut him off. 'I know... I know. I'm sorry; I shouldn't ask. It's just...'
'Frustrating?' he supplied, a touch of his humor back.
'Yeah,' I agreed. 'Frustrating.' I suddenly felt the press of the day on my shoulders and turned to sit sideways, stretching my legs out on the couch.
'You sound tired,' Heero said.
'So do you,' I replied and made him chuckle.
'I guess I'm getting frustrated too,' he confessed. 'I didn't think it was going to take this long.'
It made me want to ask a million damn questions that I knew he couldn't answer over an open line, so I just bit my tongue.
'I just want to come home,' he suddenly told me, and the quality of his voice had changed. I imagined that he was lying down too.
'How much longer, do you think?' I ventured, proud of the fact that I didn't let it sound petulant.
'Depends on whether I... we can keep it from going to trial,' he told me, and sounded irritated. 'Honest to God, Duo... I expected one of them to crack before now, but they're sticking to that damn story like a pack of ticks!'
'It'll be ok,' I soothed. 'Lies are lies no matter how well they're told... somebody will make a mistake eventually. Maybe letting it go to trial isn't such a bad idea; the pressure might just make somebody slip up.' That comment was greeted with nothing but dead-air and I stared at the ceiling for a minute, waiting for him to speak.
'I just didn't want you to have to testify, love,' he said softly, and I could almost feel his concern. I closed my eyes and smiled.
'If I have to, I have to,' I reassured. 'I won't let that bastard get away with this... I don't care what I have to do.'
'I know,' he sighed. 'Doesn't change the fact that I don't want you to have to.'
Damn, but he sounded so tired. 'My white knight,' I murmured and got to listen to him rumble a laugh.
'Does that make you my damsel in distress?' he asked and I didn't have to imagine the wry little smile.
'Hardly,' I snorted, and then we were quiet for a moment. 'You know I love you... right?' I asked softly.
'I do know,' he replied, voice fading. 'And I love you?'
I heard him drifting off and I just let him, lying there on the couch listening to the gentle sound of his breathing until Wufei came and picked up the phone.
'Maxwell?' he asked softly.
'How'd you guess?' I chuckled.
'Well, I was hoping he didn't fall asleep talking to the Commander,' Wufei quipped, his voice so soft it was hard to hear him.
I let him win the soft chuckle, but then had to ask, 'Is everything all right?' I didn't have to tell my lover's partner just how unlike Heero this was.
'He's just pining for you,' Wufei tried, but I wouldn't let it pass.
'Wufei,' I warned and heard him sigh.
'He just wants this... very badly,' he told me. 'And can't quite keep his fingers out of any part of the investigation.'
I had to sigh, knowing how Heero got. He never quite trusted that things he wasn't keeping an eye on were getting done properly.
'Fei,' I asked softly, 'you'll take care of him for me?'
There was an uncomfortable moment of quiet in which I wondered that I'd actually said that, and then Wufei told me, 'Of course I will, my friend. As best I can.'
'Thanks,' was pretty much all that needed to be said to that, and we bid each other good night.
I was not disposed to move, feeling as content as I had all day, and just curled there around the memory of Heero's voice and went to sleep. I hadn't been sleeping all that well myself, since he'd been gone. Too many long hours to do not much of anything but think. And remember. And brood.
I had gotten to the point where I never bothered to turn the stereo off unless I was actually leaving the house.
I remember reflecting, just as I dozed off, that Heero would not have been pleased to come home and find me there.
I'm not sure just what woke me Sunday morning, my belly telling me I'd skipped dinner the night before, my bladder telling me I needed to take a hike upstairs, or just that pinch you get from sleeping in your clothes. There was just a vague awareness that I wished I could roll over and go back to sleep, followed by the resignation that it wasn't going to happen.
Bladder won over my other concerns and while I was in the bathroom anyway, I decided I needed to shower and change out of the clothes I'd just slept in. With those two irritations tended to, I went down to find some breakfast.
Through the majority of my years piloting and living on my own, I had subsisted on 'Spacer food' or what amounted to military rations. Most spacers stock them; they are inexpensive, nutritionally balanced, have an incredible shelf live and take no preparation what so ever. The perfect food.
Unless you're talking to Heero. Somehow or other, in his mind, the things equate to my 'not taking care of myself'. Which made no sense at all, if you asked me, but there was just no arguing with him about it. Just because the stuff doesn't always taste good, doesn't mean it isn't good for you. I don't get it, but Heero hates seeing me eat it. So I had rather gotten out of the habit of maintaining a stock, something that I seriously regretted at times like that, when Heero wasn't around anyway. I hated wasting a couple of damn hours out of each day cooking and eating. It was just so ridiculously inefficient.
It crossed my mind that morning, as I stood with the refrigerator door open, eating lunch meat straight from the deli package, that I should get my ass down to the space port while Heero was gone and stock up on my rations. It was the best opportunity I was likely to get. Maybe I could even buy a case and stash it in the basement somewhere. I swear I suspected he'd thrown some of my last batch out, because I just didn't think I'd gone through them that fast.
Thinking of the basement made me think of laundry and I decided I should probably do a couple of loads. While washing dishes had not been an issue because I wasn't dirtying them, I was still wearing clothes.
Once the washer was going, I decided to just go ahead and gather the trash up to set out for the next day's pickup, and it was while I was standing by the curb with the bag in my hand, looking at the fence row and debating walking out to look at the rumored rose bushes, that I finally had to admit to myself that I was stalling going back into my studio. I sighed, set the trash down and made myself go in the house.
I hadn't had much chance to really study my latest work before the phone had rung the previous night, and decided I needed to go face whatever my twisted little psyche had dealt me this time.
Though I managed to kill another ten minutes cursing myself for forgetting, again, to clean up my brushes and pallet. At the rate I was going through brushes, I was going to have to start stocking disposable ones. Maybe I should just learn to paint with my fingers and be done with it.
But then it was just me and Allison's portrait and I had to meet that unhappy gaze.
My first, rather knee-jerk reaction was to paint the hell over the damn thing. She certainly wouldn't have thanked me for painting her like that. But then a thoughtful little hamster with one of those silly barrettes on, wandered up and titled the damn thing and that was that... it was somehow protected.
'Lost Faith' his banner read, and I thought about smashing him under the pallet. Aleyah would be proud; I'd titled one all by myself. Well... me and the hamster.
I sighed out loud and muttered, 'Great. Just great.'
Then I thought about it some more. No one would have a clue who she was. Probably not even some of the people who knew her. It was a very dark and shadowed painting; part of her face obscured in hair and darkness. But it was a powerful piece... even I could feel it, and I'm something of a rather hard to please critic. Not that I was pleased with the damn thing in any way, but I could kind of look at it and tell Ms. Winner would be delighted with it.
It would make a somewhat appropriate centerpiece. Though no one would understand just how fitting. Except Heero. I knew he would understand. I could imagine him in the room with me then, looking at the painting and slipping his arm around me from behind, settling his chin on my shoulder to softly ask if I was all right.
Made me shiver almost hard enough to give myself whiplash.
I took the picture off the easel and set it aside, placing a new canvas in its place. I'd just freakin' decide later what the hell to do with the damn thing. It seemed odd that there was no fate available for it between trash and art gallery.
I alternated my morning between staring at the blank canvas and chores, before I gave it the hell up; frustration is an even uglier beast than guilt. At almost noon exactly, I threw my head back and yelled, 'Fuck this!' at the ceiling, went to get my coat and got the hell out of the house. Another five minutes and I'd have been painting the dismembered corpses of all the people who were currently frustrating me, starting with Ms. Aleyah Winner and finishing with Captain Gray.
I don't remember making the decision to follow through on my earlier thought to go out and buy ration bars, but that's what I suddenly found myself doing. Guess just driving around was too self-indulgent and my conscience needed something for me to be accomplishing.
Believe it or not, in my previous life, I had been a fairly organized, hard-working person.
McMurphy's place is open twenty-four/seven with the exception of a couple of holidays. McMurphy himself works a kind of second shift, coming in around noon and leaving sometime in the evening. It sometimes seemed sporadic, but at the same time, in perfect sync with the guy who covered the night shift. Spacers just don't keep hours regular enough to try running a business that revolves around them, on any kind of ground-bounder schedule. Ships launch when ships launch; you eat when you're hungry and socialize when you can. It's just the way of the trade and McMurphy understands that.
So I had no fear of not being able to get what I wanted on a Sunday afternoon. It had actually been one of the harder adjustments I'd had to make when I went from pilot to invalid and then mechanic. Learning to think in terms of day/night and weekday/weekend. I just expected what I needed to be available when I needed it.
You don't appreciate the little things until you have to work around not having them.
Though pulling into McMurphy's lot, I will freely admit that I was somewhat relieved to find it not all that crowded. I'd done a lot of thinking on that trip to L2, when I'd been coherent enough for it. I'd thought about my past, about old friends, and about how I was letting a lot of things I used to cherish slip away. So while coming to McMurphy's place was something of a conscious effort... I can't say I was wildly excited about the prospect of running into a dozen people I knew who would want to 'catch up'. Baby-steps, Dr. Webster used to tell me. Just walking into the place felt like about a dozen of them.
I parked and got out of my car, walking across the lot with that 'girding of the loins' feeling. Ever wonder about that phrase? Just where in the hell does it come from? It always generates the oddest damn mental images for me... but I digress.
Walking through the door of McMurphy's always used to give me a faint feeling of being 'home', somehow. I guess it had just been a constant in the inconstant world of a pilot, but there had always been a strange sense of... sanctuary when coming back after a long trip. Maybe it was just the people; that flash of recognition, the smiles and the waves. People who shared a way of life with you, even if you didn't always know them by name.
It was odd to walk into that same place and feel... uncomfortable. Even though I got the smile and the wave from McMurphy himself.
I gave the room a quick scan as I headed for the bar, and was a little relieved I didn't see anybody I knew all that well. Though I could tell a couple of people recognized me. Whether from the old days, or the evening news? I didn't have a clue.
'Hey, McMurphy,' I grinned as I plopped myself on a stool.
He stuck his fist out, grinning back at me, and we tapped knuckles in greeting. 'Been awhile, Maxwell,' he chided from behind the grin and I ducked my head.
'Been kinda busy,' I muttered and he laughed out loud.
'So I heard,' he said, and made me sigh. Should have known that my L2 exploits were all over the grape vine. It always rather amazed me how news traveled through the trade when you consider how much time people spend out of contact. Or maybe that's what makes them so damn gossipy when they do get together.
'Yeah,' I grumbled. 'My luck has been...'
'Legendarily bad?' he supplied, giving me his Papa bear grin to take the sting out of it as he set a bottle of soda in front of me. I looked from it to him and back again; I hadn't ordered anything. And if I had anything that would have been considered a 'usual' here at McMurphy's... it was beer. He didn't lose that big grin when he met and held my gaze, but there was something there... some understanding. Though I wasn't sure if he understood... or wanted me to.
I didn't comment on it, just accepted the bottle and took a swallow. 'Apparently so,' I responded to his barb and the moment was gone.
He lifted his own bottle of water and gently tapped it against my soda. 'Well, here's to seeing the end of it.'
'Oh, I'll second that!' I readily agreed and we drank on it. It was weirdly comforting to have Papa McMurphy wishing an end to my curse.
'So you gonna tell me about it?' he prodded, leaning against his side of the bar and giving me his undivided attention.
I snorted and shook my head. 'You mean the story isn't all over the place already?'
He chuckled and took another swallow of his water. 'Well... there's gossip and then there's stories... I'd rather hear it from you.'
I raised my leg up, propping it on the next stool over. The stretch in my hamstrings felt kind of good, so I lifted my other leg up to join it. 'I dunno, McMurphy... I wasn't plannin' on being here all day.'
He grinned. 'Long story, is it?'
I let out a gust of a sigh that lost a bit of the teasing. 'Damn long,' I confirmed, and took a swallow of soda while I thought about it. I wasn't sure just how much I could tell anyway, seeing as how there was an investigation going on.
'The word is that Captain Gray and his co-pilot used to be... military,' McMurphy said, his own voice getting more serious. 'Is that what started it?'
I shook my head and took a moment to cross my legs at the ankle while I thought about it. 'No... I don't think so. Well, it wasn't personal at least. Though that stupid ass 'make do' attitude you find in ex-soldiers sometimes, might have been a factor.'
He gave me that cocked-head look that clearly said 'I'm listening' and I sighed.
'Between you and me, Mac,' I told him, and knew that he'd keep it to himself. 'The guy was letting his damn un-licensed kid sit watch unsupervised. That's what started it.'
He whistled softly and shook his head. 'There'd been talk about that guy...' he muttered and it was my turn to do the listening look. He rolled his eyes, 'Veteran pilots don't just suddenly start kissing the spars without there being something up.'
'So people knew?' I asked, caught between hopeful and aghast.
'People guessed,' McMurphy told me, and we both took a minute to take a swallow of our drinks.
I sighed quite despite myself; I suppose it had been a kind of stupid hope that I would just stumble across some bit of information that would help in the investigation.
'Trouble, kid?' he asked me gently and I could only hope the dejection wasn't as strong in my voice as I felt it was.
'The asshole is fighting the charges,' I growled and was almost surprised when my hand found its way up to rub at my eyes. I let it fall back into my lap and turned to meet McMurphy's eyes dead on. 'Keep this to yourself Papa bear... but the guy tried to space us to keep the whole damn thing quiet. He's fighting tooth and nail to turn this around and make us the bad guys.'
McMurphy's eyes narrowed and for a moment I got to see the look that had earned him that 'Papa bear' nickname. 'Surely...' he began, but I cut him off with a shake of my head.
'The whole crew was in on that damn deal with the Captain's son,' I sighed. 'They've all got exposed asses to cover, if you know what I mean.'
He nodded his understanding and absently began rubbing at his beloved oak bar top with the rag that was never far. 'Trade don't speak too highly of the man,' he informed me and I snorted.
'I don't think too highly of him either,' I agreed. 'But I'm kinda tired of the headache he gives me... so what's new around here?'
He chuckled, accepting the change of topic without argument, perhaps understanding that I'd already told him more than I should have. 'You just missed the Musketeers,' he told me, grinning at some memory. 'Smitty's been asking for you since before Christmas. He's so full of himself since that hot-shot singer bought some music off them or some such damn thing. You can't get him to shut up about it.'
I grinned, thankful for the easy course change in the conversation. It had been a long time since I'd talked to people who respected the 'I don't want to talk about that' signs. It was something of a relief. 'He sent me an e-mail about it some time back, but I don't remember much more than he was barely coherent.'
McMurphy laughed out right. 'Not coherent has to be the understatement of the year!' he chortled. 'It's even got him fired up to start that damn band back up again!'
I found it easy to laugh with him and it somehow wasn't so hard to sit with the man and talk about things that didn't really matter. I even ended up ordering lunch while I was there, suddenly finding my appetite not completely gone.
I won't say it wasn't bitter-sweet catching up on the news of people I used to keep in a lot better contact with, but there was some sweet mixed in with the bitter. It wasn't... all that bad.
He made me laugh telling me about Havers and Bernie trying to put a lid on Smitty and his dreams of super-stardom. Made me grin telling stories about Jessie, the evening hostess, finally finding a man she just might get serious about, if the guy survived meeting her three older brothers.
I ate my sirloin tips and salad, barely having to interject a comment now and again to keep him going. He occasionally had to stop to pour a drink or make change, but he always came back and finished whatever story he'd been telling right where he'd left off. It was kinda nice until I stopped to realize that in his own Papa bear way, he was treating me like the guys used to... like he was afraid I'd run off. I was only hearing the good stuff, the funny stories. Like he didn't want to tell me anything that would upset me.
I suppose my grin faltered a little, when I made the connection, and he hesitated in the tale of hiring a new cook.
'You know,' I ventured into his small pause. 'I think I just figured out where all my bad luck is coming from... I must be bearing the brunt of it for the entire trade, because it looks like nothing bad ever happens to anybody else in the solar system.'
His grin wasn't all that repentant, though he gave it the ol' college try, ducking his head and giving me a look that was probably a real killer when the guy was like... ten years old. I snorted in response and he chuckled. 'Come on, Duo... I'm just trying to make sure it's not another six months before you come out to see us again.'
My damn face flamed and it was my turn to duck my head. 'I'm sorry, Mac, it's just been... hard,' I told him, trying to make him see that it wasn't personal by a long damn shot.
All his mirth washed away and he was suddenly wiping the bar again, so he didn't have to look at me while I tucked 'miserable' back behind the mask. 'I know, kid,' he said gently, and there was a whole world of understanding in his expression. 'Guess I'm just tryin' to make it a little less... hard.'
Almost, I just let it go, but somehow with McMurphy I was able to say what I'd never been able to say to the guys. And wasn't that just a strange little notion? 'Making me feel like I'm being handled with kid-gloves doesn't exactly make it any easier, Papa bear,' I said, and since the remnants of my lunch was still in front of me, I picked up the fork and began drawing lines through the last of the salad dressing in the bottom of the bowl.
'Guess it wouldn't,' he said rather genially.
'You make a lousy Pollyanna,' I told him with my cheeky grin, just to put things back on track.
He snorted and took my dirty dishes away from me before I quite got done with the salad dressing space ship sketch. 'Well, nobody likes to hear the bad shit.'
'And nobody likes to feel like they're being shut out, either,' I responded since he'd left me with nothing to distract myself.
'Touché,' he grinned. 'Though it's kinda hard to shut a guy out when he's never around.'
It caught me by surprise and I laughed, understanding that the gloves had just come off. 'I'd hang around more if the food wasn't so damn bad.'
His grin went a notch toward wry. 'I didn't think you came in here for the food?'
'Well it sure as hell ain't your God-awful drinks!' I responded and barely evaded the corner of his rag as it snapped at me.
'Show some respect for your elders, punk!' he mock growled and caught the edge of the rag again, threatening me.
'I give!' I crowed, throwing my hands in the air. McMurphy is deadly with his bar rag, can take a fly off the lip of a beer bottle without leaving a trace of fly behind. My precariously perched ass didn't stand a chance. 'You serve the best damn drinks this side of the parking lot!'
'That's better, Maxwell,' he grinned and then frowned in thought. 'Wait a minute; I serve the only damn drinks this side of the parking lot!'
I snickered at the look on his face and he forgave me my teasing, just as he always did.
After that the stories seemed a little more... balanced. The story about the new cook had a darker underside involving the old cook drinking on the job. Turned out Jessie's older brothers were as touchy as they were over their baby sister because of a weirdo that had been stalking the poor girl after work at night. Nothing Earth-shattering, but obviously more of a slice of life, and not just the sugar-coated snap-shots I'd been getting.
I was rather surprised when I checked my watch, to find that I'd been in the place for over an hour and a half. The next time McMurphy wound a story down to its end, I grinned and asked for what I'd originally come for.
He laughed at me right out loud. 'Can't quite get rid of all those Spacer habits, can ya kid?'
'Who said I was trying to?' I quipped and he chuckled some more, but he also understood that I was ready to go, and went ahead and tallied up the lunch and the box of rations. I finished my bottle of soda while he went to fetch the case for me. I wasn't too surprised when he came out from behind his bar to open the door for me, but I was when he followed me on outside.
There was obviously something on his mind, so I just held my tongue while we walked across the parking lot together. He held the box while I unlocked the trunk and he made me wait until the rations were stowed and the trunk lid shut.
It was really kind of weird seeing McMurphy outside his bar.
'Uh, Duo,' he finally said, rubbing one of his big hands over his chin like he was checking to see if he needed a shave. 'There's something I think I ought to tell you?'
He was so hesitant that I was starting to wonder if I had a bar tab I'd forgotten about or something. Wondered if my fly was open maybe.
'I wasn't sure...' he began, but stumbled to a halt before giving it another try. 'You coming in here today?'
He was seriously creeping me out; I was pretty sure this was worse than me owing him money. 'Just spit it out, Mac... what's wrong?'
He looked at me like he was trying to see something in my eyes, and suddenly blurted, 'Duo... Jock's dead.'
The guy gets absolutely no points for his ability to deliver bad news. I was aware that I had fallen back to lean against my car only when I felt my butt getting cold. 'What?' I stammered, maybe hoping for a different answer. Maybe hoping he'd take it back.
He dropped his gaze to the pavement and sighed heavily. 'I'm sorry, Duo... he finally up and did it. His landlord found the body just yesterday.'
'Ah Jesus,' was the best I could manage, feeling vaguely ill and colder than even the winter air warranted.
McMurphy just looked sick and I had a pang of sympathy, remembering having to be the one to deliver the bad news. It sucks; there's just no good way to say that somebody who shouldn't be... is dead. 'Guess he really freaked himself out when he sobered up and realized just how close he'd come to shooting somebody,' McMurphy told me, his voice kind of distant.
Close to shooting me, I remembered thinking. 'He finally... he just... I mean, he...'
McMurphy snorted softly, understanding somehow. It was a noise that was almost a laugh but had not one iota of mirth in it. 'It wasn't even a gun,' he told me with the sound of irony in his words. 'He climbed in the damn bathtub, got drunk as a skunk... and slit his wrists.'
I made some noise that caused him to lay his hand on my shoulder.
'I'm sorry, kid,' he said. 'I wasn't sure I was even gonna tell you... but when you walked in today after so long, it seemed like some kind of sign or something.'
It was my turn to snort that mirthless little laugh. 'Yeah,' I sighed. 'My timing has always been... impeccable.'
'I'm real sorry,' he repeated, making me feel like I'd actually been related to Jock or something. Like this should be hitting me harder than other people who'd known him. 'You going to be all right?'
I shook off the shock of it and gave him a wan little smile. 'I'm fine, Mac. It's just... such a hell of a waste is all.'
He nodded, but dropped his hand away. 'Uh... the funeral is going to be Thursday.'
Another thing that took me by surprise. Funeral? Well, of course; even old alcoholic, ex-Spacer wash-outs had to have funerals when they died.
McMurphy didn't wait for me to say anything, just did that thing where he rubbed his hand over his chin again. 'Jock would appreciate it... if you could make it.'
I repressed the urge to rub my own hand over the back of my neck because the two of us would have looked pretty stupid indulging in nervous habits that damn similar at the same time, and resisted telling him that Jock was pretty much beyond appreciating much of anything. 'Can you e-mail me the details?' was what I managed, and it seemed to be the right thing to say because he took his leave and went back into his bar.
I got in my ugly car and took me and my ration bars home, because I really just didn't feel up to much of anything else after that.
I spent most of the drive back to the house trying not to resent Mac for telling me. Trying not to kick my own ass for suddenly having a yen to stock the pantry when I had. Trying not to be mad at Heero for not being home. Trying not to hate Captain Gray any more than I already did.
Guilt was a presence in the back seat, and I knew he was just waiting to take his shot.
Do not ask me how in the hell I had become associated with Jock Nottingham in the first place. There just seems to be something about me that makes me easy to talk to. Or something. Damned if I know. But somehow, from the earliest days of my association with McMurphy's bar, I had been one of the few people who could approach Jock while he was in the middle of one of his episodes, without pissing him off. There was just something about me the guy seemed to kind of like, and he trusted me when I came to talk him out of shooting holes in McMurphy's décor or McMurphy's customers.
Guilt beast got me from under the seat, somehow sneaking up on me from the back.
I could still hear Jock's voice asking me in a resigned kind of way, 'I screwed up this time, didn't I Duo?' Apparently not as bad as I had. We had.
I suppose I couldn't take the fall for this one alone, the whole damn trade had covered and band-aided. We'd all felt sorry for the old guy. Could all see ourselves where he'd ended up. All it took was a bad bit of luck, a dry spell or... an accident. There wasn't a one of us who couldn't look at Jock and say 'there but for the grace of Lady Luck go I?'
And we'd failed to stop the inevitable because not a one of us had been able to get tough with the guy. Though... how the hell do you force a person to do something like give up drinking? You really can't. A person has to want to help themselves before other people can help them. Maybe we really couldn't have done much more than we'd done. I don't know. I don't suppose anyone ever will.
But knowing that didn't do much to stop guilt from gnawing on my ass. Didn't do much for the mood I'd fallen into.
What a fucking damn waste.
I was surprised when I got home to find that I'd forgotten to turn the stereo off. I stood in the middle of the living room for a moment, holding my box of rations, and listened to Bedingfield tell me 'just one more second and I'll be all right' and decided I needed to be more selective in my music choices.
I set the box down on the couch long enough to go to the entertainment center and make some adjustments. I settled on my queue of 'Helio' music. It was a folder of straight up fluff stuff. Nothing that could possibly worsen my depression, because I sure as hell didn't need any help with that.
When I retrieved the box of rations, I decided the hell with it and just put them in the kitchen. I wasn't about to hide the damn things from Heero; if he didn't like them he could just lump them, I wasn't asking him to eat the damn things, after all.
I stood in front of the refrigerator looking at Allison's picture for a moment, listening to them build cities out of rock and roll, and reflecting that I needed to get my head back in line with the job at hand. I only had a week to come up with what my sponsor was looking for, after all. I somehow didn't see Aleyah Winner being all that understanding about me not getting the paintings done because I'd stopped to play ball with my pet beast.
I glanced down at the slavering thing at my feet that was guilt and mentally tossed him that ball. 'Go on,' I told him. 'I'll feel guilty about Jock later... I don't want to be feeling guilty about Allison in a couple of weeks. Jock's long past my helping him anyway.'
He rolled his blood-shot eyes and gave me a look that said, 'Oh please,' quite succinctly, I thought, and padded after me into the studio. He at least went to curl in the corner of the room, out of my way, but not out of sight.
The blank canvas was still there waiting for me, my Superman cape hanging from one corner. I thought I felt Solo's presence, and when I looked, he was perched on the arm of the old sofa. He gave me a silent nod of understanding before fading away like the Cheshire cat... leaving only the feel of his gaze behind.
'I lost another one,' I whispered to him anyway.
'Not one of yours,' his voice told me on a breath of air.
'I know,' I sighed, and picked up a dry brush to stroke over the canvas, as though it would give me ideas. 'But I can't help feeling...'
'Don't,' he said so firmly that I jumped, glancing around to make sure he wasn't really there with me.
I returned the tight nod he'd given me earlier and tried to put it out of my mind. Letting myself listen to the solid beat of the music, trying to let it fill my head with pictures. But somehow leaving my friends behind just because they didn't dance, only gave me visions of black spandex and slashed denim. Perhaps my choice of music hadn't been the best... Maybe there was no music that wouldn't give me thoughts I didn't want...
I let the brush in my hand ghost over the canvas until my eye began to see lines in its wake. But they were still just lines that didn't mean anything.
There was a place on the back of my neck, almost on the back of my shoulder really, that ached to feel Heero's lips brush across it.
I had a sudden flash of memory and realized that had I still been a pilot, I would have been adding Jock's portrait to that long line of dead in the corridor of my Lady Demon. He would have stood right behind that nameless girl that I'd let Jensen kill. Jock wouldn't have liked that overly much; standing for all eternity with a woman.
Though, she was truly gone now, erased with all the rest of them anyway, so I suppose it didn't really matter.
Guess there hadn't been much point in changing music; hadn't made much difference.
But the non-existent lines on the canvas were starting to look like something, so I added the paint to the mix, just to see what would come out. I somehow didn't think it was going to be good. Hopefully, it would at least be presentable.
Ever wonder about last moments like that? Like Jock's? Like that girl's? Hell... like Captain Camden of the good ship Londonderry, if you want to get technical. People shouldn't have to die alone. There should be someone there who at least gives a damn. I think that was the thing that had eaten at me the most, during all those days out there in the dark, at the edge of the universe -- knowing that despite the voices in my head, that I was going to die all alone.
Though, I suppose I'd lived my life up until then relatively alone, so maybe expecting to die any other way was a little... naive.
Made me almost angry with Jock. He'd died all alone -- about as alone as you could get -- but he hadn't had to. A three block walk to McMurphy's and he'd have found a score of people who would have helped. Would have talked with him. Sat with him. Done... what? Something. Someone would have done something.
It's not my fault I couldn't think just what, off the top of my head.
And now there was a funeral of sorts ahead of me, just to add interest to the week. As if I didn't have enough on my plate.
Somewhere in there, I realized what was forming on the canvas under my hands and my brush and my twisted psyche, and I kind of wanted to stop. But sometimes these things are like giving birth... try telling the kid in mid-push that you're rethinking this parenthood thing. The attending physician, at least, will get a laugh out of it.
At least it would be a spacer's funeral, and not one of those morose grounder things. We called it a funeral, out of some ancient habit, but it really wouldn't be. The actual funeral part of things would happen somewhere out between the planets when Jock's ashes were jettisoned out the lock of some courier ship. What Mac had been talking about would be more like a wake. Probably held right there at McMurphy's unless Jock had someplace else he would have preferred. I wondered, of a sudden, just where Jock would end up. Earth orbit? Near one of the colonies? Further out? Most spacers had a preference and it was usually in their will. I had never bothered to specify, because I'd always assumed that I would end up not leaving a corpse behind.
It came to me, all unbidden, that it would be rather appropriate if my ashes were scattered across the belt.
A noise came out of my mouth then that would have brought Heero running from anywhere in the house, had he been home. I decided to stop painting for the time being since my hands were shaking too damn hard to hold the brush anyway. I stepped away from the canvas, staring at its contents as I automatically cleaned my brush out, hands moving on autopilot.
Jensen had been a damn intimidating man, and if the memory of my first sight of him had ever stood a chance of fading from my memory, I'd just seen to it that it would never happen.
The painting was a long way from being done, but there was enough. More than enough really, especially as I found that it was dark out and I was alone with that dark. My pathetic shield of fluffy music suddenly just wasn't enough, and my feet took me into the kitchen where I picked up the phone, dialing Trowa's number without ever consciously knowing I was going to. I was under orders, after all. And if I had ever needed someone to just come and watch bad movies with me... it was then.
See? I'm learning to recognize when I've had enough a little bit before I fall flat on my face.
I listened to the phone ringing, and tried to compose what I was going to say when he answered. It was difficult; every line I came up with just sounded lame. If it hadn't been for the modern technology of caller id, I would have hung up on the second ring; I was just a little bit appalled with myself. And then the phone got picked up, but it was Quatre's voice on the other end and every prepared line I'd half been considering went right out the window.
'Hello?' he said, sounding a bit hesitant, as though he didn't usually answer Trowa's phone. 'Duo?'
'Uh?' I responded wittily. 'I... Hello, Quatre.'
I felt decidedly weird, like I was carrying on some kind of illicit affair with his lover, and had just gotten caught. I couldn't bring myself to ask for Trowa, but was left floundering trying to figure out what to say.
'Is everything all right?' he asked me with a slightly worried tone.
'Yeah!' I blurted. 'Just fine! I...'
'Duo, where are you?' he suddenly interrupted, and I realized his voice was a bit elevated. 'I can hardly hear you over that music.'
'Oh crap!' I told him. 'Hang on a minute.'
I laid the phone down and hurried into the living room to turn the music off. I felt kind of stupid, but it did give me a chance to take a deep breath and get head and mouth in concert, so that by the time I picked the phone up again, I had regained a little equilibrium.
'Sorry about that, Quat,' I told him with a chuckle. 'I had the music up so I could hear it in the back room. I really need to get around to wiring this place for sound.'
'Oh,' he said, and there was an odd quality to his voice. 'Were you... painting?'
'Yeah,' I responded, trying to sound? not frayed. 'That's why I called. I know your sister took the sketches to be framed, but do you think I should do something with the paintings?'
'Oh no,' he was quick to assure. 'Aleyah will take care of it. That's why she needs to have them by the end of this week, so she'll have time before the show. She usually makes sure that everything is matted and framed in the same style.'
'Oh,' I said, brightly, not having carried the topic any further forward in my head. I was lacking anything close to a next line. 'Ok then.'
There was a silence then that was kind of strained. With Trowa, I could have made some lame joke about bad movies and he would have gotten it. I wouldn't have had to just come out and tell him I was feeling lonely and wanted some company. I didn't know what to say to Quatre, short of asking for Trowa, and that just seemed... rude.
'So,' he ventured, after a moment. 'How's it coming? Do you think you'll have the paintings done in time?'
I snorted a mirthless little laugh. 'Oh, at the rate I'm going, I doubt I'll have any trouble at all!'
He hesitated again. 'That's good, isn't it? Why do you sound... unhappy about it?'
Almost, I asked for Trowa, but thankfully my repress hamster made an appearance, sliding valiantly across the kitchen counter to come to a stop in front of me with a huge 'Don't do it!' banner, and I bit down on the words. 'Oh, I guess I was just so nervous about getting done in time that I haven't been doing much of anything else,' I tried, hedging around the rest of the story.
'Oh,' he said helpfully, not doing much toward moving the conversation along.
There was another one of those uncomfortable silences and I suddenly felt this oppressive weight settling over me. The pressure of being alone in the house with? with that portrait of Jensen. It was too quiet. It was too... a lot of things.
'Want to go get some ice cream?' I blurted out and could have bit my own tongue off. On the counter, Francis covered his little face with his paws and just shook his head.
'What?' Quatre asked, and there was as much of hopefulness in his voice as confusion. It made me bull forward instead of retreating.
'I just... suddenly had this urge for some ice cream,' I heard myself saying. 'Want to meet me down at that little place near you guys?'
'Duo,' Quatre said, and the confusion was getting stronger in his tone. 'That's a bit out of the way for you, are you sure?'
'But they've got that caramel and chocolate thing that you can't get anywhere else,' I reasoned, struggling for a way out of what I'd gotten myself into even while I was trying to argue him into it. What in the hell was I thinking?
Oh yeah... that whole human contact thing.
'That... would be nice,' he finally replied, though I could still tell he wasn't entirely convinced that I hadn't lost my mind. But that was ok; I wasn't sure either.
'Great!' I chirped, and cringed at my own voice. 'Meet you there in say... twenty minutes?'
'All right,' he agreed and then we hung up.
I refrained from beating my head on the counter without Francis' help, because he had vanished off to wherever the hell thought hamsters go when they aren't trying to shove their little suggestions up my nose.
I'd say that hadn't exactly gone as planned, but really... I'd had nothing planned when I'd picked up the stupid phone in the first place.
So, damn near eight o'clock on a Sunday evening and I was heading back out to meet Quatre at an ice cream and dessert parlor I wasn't even sure was still open, because I didn't want to sit around my own house with the half-finished portrait of a man I'd killed almost a half a dozen years ago. The man who had given me my first kiss.
I suspect sometimes that I could be the life's work of some psychiatrist looking for uncharted territory in the area of 'issues'.
I got to the restaurant first, surprised to find it still open and unsure if I was pleased by that fact or not. I ordered a soda just so I'd have something to do until Quatre arrived, and settled at a small table within sight of the front door.
I was rather surprised, when I finally sat down and had two seconds to actually feel it, to find just how weary I was. Wouldn't have thought it, considering no more than I'd done all day. Painted a little, done some laundry and gone out to lunch. My, how... exhausting. I would have rolled my eyes at myself if it wouldn't have looked nuts. You should never mock yourself in public.
The tinkle of the little bell over the door made me look up and I blinked to find Trowa ambling toward my table, his hair still damp, and a gentle smile on his face. Guess he hadn't answered his phone because he'd been in the shower. I looked past him, but didn't see his partner.
A picture was trying to form in my head that wasn't particularly attractive.
'Where's Quatre?' I asked as he sat down across from me.
'Well, it's good to see you too, Duo,' he said, the smile growing a little rueful.
I felt my face starting to go hot and I looked down at the table. 'That's not the point, man, and you know it.'
His smile wavered and then abandoned him altogether. 'It's all right. He just stopped and realized that it was my phone you called, and that you needed...'
That utterly made me feel like shit and I felt my shoulders hunching as I cut him off. 'Damn it, Tro... I hurt his feelings, didn't I?'
I caught him a little bit by surprise and it made me feel even worse, that they hadn't expected me to get that part.
'Quatre understands,' he soothed, and sat forward to lean his elbows on the table. 'Duo, what's wrong? And don't give me the ice cream story, because I know you don't really even like it that much.'
God, this was so screwed up. I could imagine poor Quatre sitting back at their house, waiting for Trowa to come home and tell him what was going on. Worrying and stinging from the rejection that it was his lover and not him that I had called on when I needed to talk to somebody. I had that weird-ass feeling again, like I was doing something horribly wrong by being there with Trowa in the first damn place. Why hadn't I ever seen it before?
I don't think I could have turned any darker red.
'I'm sorry,' I mumbled, eyes fixed on where my hands rested on the table between us. 'I didn't mean to... I mean, Quatre caught me by surprise and I didn't know what to say and I...'
Trowa suddenly looked concerned, reaching out and resting a hand on my arm. 'Hey, little brother... what's the matter?'
I flinched at his touch, feeling like a complete idiot, and not at all sure how this had gotten so seriously twisted around. 'Nothing,' I blurted, pushing back from the table and gaining a little space. 'I shouldn't have called... this isn't right, and I'm sorry.'
'Duo?' he asked in confusion, as I stood up to leave.
'Go home to Quatre,' I told him. 'And tell him I'm sorry. Everything's fine... I don't know what came over me.'
He took a second to do the gape-mouthed thing and I mumbled another apology as I did everything but bolt for the exit. He finally called after me, but the door was already shutting behind me, the little bell ringing cheerfully.
Shit. How could I not have seen the kind of pressure I must have been putting on the two of them? Quatre wanted so badly for us to have the relationship we'd had during the war, but I just couldn't help it, there were a million light years between the Chief Executive Officer of Winner Enterprises and an auto mechanic. I didn't know how to talk to him anymore. He was so far above me in station that it wasn't even funny. Not that he talked down to me, but there were things that he just couldn't understand, things that Trowa did understand because he'd lived through the same sort of childhood.
Quatre had the most recognizable surname in the entire Earth sphere. Probably even more well-known than the Peacecraft family. Trowa and Heero and I didn't even fucking know what our real names might have been. Hell, I couldn't even guarantee I'd ever been given one.
What must it feel like that I could freely accept from Trowa, what I didn't know how to accept from him?
It made me feel ill.
I went home because I didn't know where else to go. Had I not been so terrified somewhere down inside of getting sucked down the alcoholic drain like... like Jock, I might have gone back to McMurphy's place. But I suspected with the mood I was in, soda would not have cut it, and I didn't think I could have stopped myself from drinking whatever ended up in front of me.
God, but I wanted Heero to come home.
I had at least remembered to turn the stereo off this time, before leaving the house, so that was the first thing I did. I decided I didn't need any more reminders of Helio and Jensen and that long ago mission, and I hunted through my files, finally settling on my folder of fiddle music. All instrumental; no words... couldn't get depressed from that, could I?
Any more depressed.
Perhaps it was the presence of guilt beast who came to sit with me on the couch that kept me from going upstairs after my bear. One furry thing to hug is as good as another, right?
I had the absurd notion that I wanted to cry, but I wasn't sure if it was for Jock, for that nameless prostitute, for my memories of Jensen, for Allison, or just plain missing Heero. Or maybe Quatre and Trowa, and the feeling that I'd just lost something... precious. And why did that thought fill me with a strange sense of sorrow wrapped around a core of déja! vu?
Or maybe it was just all of it. Too much at once. The dread of what I'd set in motion with Aleyah Winner. The pain of picking the scabs off old wounds and trying to turn the fresh blood into art. The guilt of failing to be there at the right time for Jock. The fear that I had been causing tension between two of my best friends.
I wanted Heero to call... and I was afraid Heero would call. I wanted to hear his voice so damn bad... but I didn't think I could maintain any kind of composure, and he certainly didn't need to be dealing with me in the middle of the mess he was in.
So I just curled up in the corner of our couch, with the afghan and my guilt beast, listening to my fiddles and staring at the wall, waiting for sleep to come and take it all away.
I should not have been as surprised as I was when the knock came on the front door. I really shouldn't have been.
I just sat for a long moment and stared at it in open confusion, just enough off-kilter that I couldn't for the life of me imagine who in the hell was on my front porch. It skittered through my head that it was awfully late for kids to be out selling Girl Scout cookies, and then the door swung open on its own and I was left thinking about how pissed off Heero would have been at me for forgetting to lock it.
'You know what we forgot?' Trowa drawled almost lazily as he and his partner came into my house. 'Drinks. You can't have popcorn without drinks.'
'Well, you know darn well that Duo, of all people, will have soda,' Quatre replied, though he didn't carry the nonchalance off as well as Trowa did.
'Good point, my heart,' Trowa grinned at him. 'Why don't you go get us some while I get the movie started?'
I'm afraid I just kind of blinked at them, like I was watching them on television or something. Listening to them move around my house, just as though we did this all the time, was very surreal.
Trowa finally addressed me as he walked by to turn off the wail and trill of my fiddles. 'I do hope you meant 'bad movie' when you said bad movie, because we tried to find the cheesiest thing on the shelves.'
I watched him load the disk and turn on the television, picking the remote up before moving to the couch that faced the TV. 'Ok,' I said, almost inanely.
Quatre came back into the room carrying three bottles of my soda and went to sit on the same couch with Trowa. only on the other end. 'Come sit with us, Duo, you can't see very well from over there.'
They made me feel like some kind of damn invalid or something, so I tried to get up and move without making it into a big deal, taking the spot they'd left me without protest. Only later did I wonder how much I looked like I was clutching a security blanket as I dragged the afghan with me.
Once I was settled between them, Trowa took the lid off what proved to be a large bowl of popcorn and plopped it in my lap. This, of course, necessitated the both of them shifting close enough to reach it. Then Trowa hit play and started the movie. It truly was awful, some sort of horror flick that wasn't very horrifying and quite predictable besides, that had the two of them snickering and poking fun fairly quickly.
It was... uncomfortable at first, but they made it not so bad with their easy laughter and after a little bit I nibbled at some popcorn. Then a little after that, I managed a joke of my own about the zipper in the monster suit, that made Quatre snicker.
They bracketed me close so that I could feel their body heat, making me aware of just how cold I'd been.
They spoke around me so that it was as obvious as my own neurosis that there was nothing wrong with their relationship. They were as solid as ever, and nothing I might do could touch that.
And when I began to quietly weep somewhere after the monster abducted the girl, they let me, without comment, allowing me to pretend they didn't notice. Making it not quite the horrible thing it might have been. And if the next time Trowa leaned over for a handful of popcorn, he didn't quite straighten up, so that his shoulder was resting against mine, we didn't speak of that either. Any more than it was mentioned when Quatre's leg happened to end up propped against my thigh.
I couldn't have told you if they were tears of mourning, or tears of relief; sorrow or gratitude, but I was hard-pressed to get them stopped before the hysterically tragic end of the movie.
'Well, it was cheesy all right,' I managed as the credits rolled, and the gravely sound of my voice made Trowa hand me my untouched bottle of soda. I took a swallow, and then took another, while I tried to think of things to say.
'Only the best cheesy movies for my big brother,' Quatre dared, and I could feel the ache in his voice for me. Could feel him trying hard to follow Trowa's gentler lead and not just gather me into his arms the way he wanted to. I let my head fall over to rest on his shoulder, an odd reward of sorts, and could fairly feel the tension thrumming through his body.
'T-thanks, guys,' I told them around the lump in my throat.
'Not a problem,' Trowa told me. 'Though next time it would be easier if you just came to us; we have a better television set.'
It was a mild reprimand and we all knew it. I felt Quatre go very still as we headed into that area that he's never quite gotten about Trowa's relationship with me. Quatre can't catch that balance between bluntly direct, and the space I seem to have to have.
'Flaunting your entertainment system, are we?' I tried, though it fell a little flat.
'If you've got it, flaunt it,' Trowa murmured, letting me turn it aside, knowing that his message had been delivered.
I snorted softly, feeling like the face I had put on for them was a fragile thing and not quite stable yet. I took a breath, soaking in their presence and just tried to let the memories fade away. 'Wouldn't have thought you were the flaunting type,' I said, a little happier with the sound of my voice.
'Are you kidding?' Quatre interjected, though he didn't sound too sure of himself, too sure of his welcome. 'I thought you saw his circus act once?'
It was a marvelous effort, on his part, to enter into the arena of our strange dancing around topics, and I rewarded him with a bark of surprised laughter. 'I guess you have a point there, Quat.'
Trowa gave him a raised eyebrow look that was meant to seem put upon, but even I could read the quiet approval in it. I took another swallow of my soda while I concentrated on not blushing. But then Trowa turned that look my way and I could kind of tell he wasn't going to let me off scot-free after my little restaurant scene. I think I sighed. 'Quatre tells me you were painting this afternoon... got anything you can share yet?'
I'd forgotten I'd mentioned that. I guess I should have realized they would be fishing for clues to the reason behind my mood, and what better indicator than the shit I spewed out on paper and canvas? I was sure I sighed that second time.
'In the studio,' I told them with a certain amount of resignation in it.
'Do you...' Quatre asked, ever the solicitous one, 'mind if we look?'
I snorted and rubbed a hand over my face. 'Might as well, since I'm contemplating showing the damn things to the world. If I can't show them to you... I'm not going to be able to give them to your sister.'
That made them share a look that I pretended not to see. I meant to stay on the couch with my afghan, my soda and my beast, but found I couldn't. When they went off to the back room, I trailed along behind them, though I just ended up leaning in the doorway, not taking the step down into the studio.
Jensen captured Quatre's attention immediately, and though Trowa stopped to look at him, he was the one who noticed Allison's portrait leaning against the counter and went to pick it up. I realized with a bit of a start, that Trowa understood just what he was looking at. I was surprised and pleased and embarrassed to see the picture... move him. Was surprised to see his eyes go soft and sad, as he forgot for a moment that he'd come into my room looking for something other than what he'd found.
I was so absorbed with watching Trowa, that it caught me even more by surprise to suddenly find Quatre wrapped around me and realized that he somehow knew just who in the hell's portrait he'd been studying. 'If I could go back and change just one thing during the war,' he whispered to me fiercely. 'It would be that damn mission.'
It swept me back a hundred years, to those days when he and I had been each other's support system, when we had hugged and touched each other because no one else would. I wrapped him close and something took control of my tongue, making me ask him, just as though he might have an answer, 'Why can't I get that son of a bitch out of my head, Quat? After all these years... why won't he leave me alone?'
In the back of my head, a deep voice purred, 'Will you let me taste you?' and I shuddered almost violently.
'Because,' he told me gently, even as he was hugging me almost fiercely. 'However briefly, he held power over you.'
It rather took my breath away, making me remember things best forgot.
I let Quatre hold me until Trowa came and made me ease off, because I was clutching his lover tight enough to bruise.
'Sorry,' I muttered, suddenly feeling trapped with the two of them so far inside my personal space, and I retreated to the living room with them following after me. I went to fetch my bottle of half-finished soda and took a swallow, standing with the coffee table between us. It was enough to tell Trowa I needed some space, and I saw him touch Quatre's arm in a manner that spoke to me of pre-arranged signals again. It gave me that wild animal feeling, which I hate, but I suppose it was warranted. It was in Quatre's eyes to come and offer himself on the alter of my need for touch again, but I was afraid of where that would lead, and I let the unspoken offer go.
'If you... would like,' Trowa said, picking his words carefully, because he had an understanding of how much I hated to use that word, 'need'. That word was only ok with Heero... and then only sometimes. 'We could avail ourselves of your spare room?'
It was so cautiously offered, that it made me feel doubly bad, both nuts and stupid. Lovely combination. I huffed a sigh and rubbed a hand over the back of my neck so that I didn't have to look right at him. 'I'm all right, guys,' I told them, trying for some of Trowa's bluntness. 'I'm really sorry that I bothered you... it was stupid of me to let that damn painting get to me. I was just feeling a little... weird.'
'You're never a bother, Duo,' Quatre had to tell me, though I saw him glance at Trowa after he'd spoken, as if unsure if he should have. But Trowa backed him up with a reassurance that was as much for Quatre as for me.
'Of course you aren't.'
And before I could even think about what kind of reply to make to them, Quatre bulled forward, not looking at Trowa as he spoke. I had a feeling like he was deviating from the guidelines he'd been handed. 'And it was not stupid of you to get upset; what happened that night was... awful.'
I ducked my head even further, feeling my shoulders wanting to hunch and waited for Trowa to shut his partner up, but it didn't happen. 'It was no big deal, Quat. It was just part of the mission...'
'Bull,' he growled, and came on around the table to get at me. Quatre's always been a 'hands-on' kind of talker. 'Duo... why do you always belittle what happened?'
I watched in a certain strange fascination as he took my bottle from my hands and set it aside. I looked over his shoulder for Trowa, but my normal protector was strangely staying out of it. 'It was a simple undercover mission... I just did what I had to... no big deal...'
He gave me a look that made me feel kind of stupid. Like he'd just asked me to plot a course to L1 and my calculations had brought us out somewhere around Venus. 'It was a big deal. I saw you that night... I heard you in there throwing up. Don't lie to me.'
He sounded vaguely... pissed, and I found myself blushing. 'Nothing happened...' I tried, but couldn't continue in the face of the look I got.
He took hold of my upper arms and refused to let me look away. 'It doesn't matter how far it went or not? what matters is how it made you feel.'
Violated? Filthy? Heart-sick? Nauseous? Degraded? All of the above?
I tried on a rueful little grin. 'Well, I like to think it matters just a little bit that it didn't go as far as he'd intended.'
The line only got me frowned at. 'Duo, you have to understand that while you might have physically put yourself in danger... you were the one in control from the start. He might have held the power for a while, but you were the one who came out on top. You bested him. He's dead... and you're not.'
And I suppose that's all that things come down to in the end.
Jensen was dead... and I was not.
That prostitute was dead... and I was not.
James Camden was dead... and I was not.
Captain Gray's second was dead... and I was not.
Jock was dead... and I was not.
'I guess it can't all be just luck, can it?' I heard myself say and was surprised when Quatre actually laughed at me. Or maybe it was for me.
'No,' he agreed. 'I think there's something more than luck at work here.'
Somewhere in the vicinity of Trowa's direction, there was a soft little sound. Something between a cough and a throat clearing, and Quatre let go of me with a mildly frustrated sigh. Trowa has always been the hit and run type; get in, deliver the message, and get the hell out. It helped redeem him; I'd been a little peeved that he'd let Quatre go as far as he had without intervening.
Which gave me an odd twinge that I just didn't feel like pursuing right then.
But Quatre couldn't quite let it go entirely, no matter his obvious intentions to follow Trowa's lead. I suppose I can't blame him too much, I was the one who'd sat with them and bawled like a baby over a guy in a rubber monster suit, after all. 'Duo,' he asked, voice soft as though he were afraid of getting in trouble. 'Come home with us?'
I snorted and reached out to tousle his hair. 'I'm fine... really I am,' I told him, and maybe it was my ability to touch without clutching, that let him back down with nothing more than a sigh and a nod.
When he looked Trowa's way next, it was with more of a pleading look, than one seeking guidance. Maybe he thought Trowa would have better luck getting me to go get fawned on all night.
But Trowa seemed to understand that I'd gotten whatever in the hell it was I'd needed from them when I'd called, and that it was time for the graceful exit. He's very good at exits; has quite the flair for them. He gathered up his movie, his half empty popcorn bowl, and his frustrated partner and got them moving toward my front door.
At the last moment, he stopped and gave me a hard look, making me feel evaluated and weighed against some imaginary chart. 'Duo,' he said sternly, commanding my attention. I cringed, waiting for whatever was coming, and was surprised when he simply said, 'Remember to lock up this time.'
We shared a grin and then they were gone. I was rather pleased with myself that I was able to wait until they'd actually pulled away before I went back and turned on the stereo. I went ahead and queued up my night music, deciding that I might as well get my butt to bed since the next morning was a work day. Wouldn't do to get fired from my day job over attendance issues, before I even knew if the night job was going to pay off or not.
Since it was a work night, I crawled into the guest bed where I had the alarm set up, feeling vaguely bad that Heero hadn't been able to call. Not that he'd been calling every night by a long shot, but I missed it whenever he couldn't.
What? Why the guest bed, you ask? Because our bed smelled like Heero, and sleeping there only made me... want things. Things I couldn't have, or do anything about until he came home. I was tired of cold showers and morning jogs. Besides, I didn't think it was good for my karma to wake up every morning from a restless sleep, cursing Captain Gray to the appropriate circle of Hell. I think it was ok to curse him for attempted murder, or even stupidity, but I'm not sure it was appropriate to curse him just because I was horny.
Not that sleeping elsewhere solved everything, it just removed one bit of stimuli from the equation. And no, we're not going to talk about my inability to change the damn sheets.
Though, if I were honest with myself, I had enough on my mind that night that I doubt it would have been a problem. But I'd already effectively moved into the guest room, and everything was set up there. My star-field blanket was waiting for me, as was my retired co-pilot, and I did my best as I lay down with them, to keep my mind on the monster movie we'd watched and not on Quatre's words. Not on the new paintings. Not on McMurphy's news. Not on my fast approaching dead-line. Not on the possibility of an upcoming trial.
Sleep was a long time claiming me, and the dreams were many and varied. Ranging from the predictable rehashing of memories, to a strange one of Heero being thrown over the shoulder of a slightly more frightening than the Hollywood version monster, and carried off into some dark swamp.
When the alarm went off in the morning, I was rather less than happy with it, but somewhat ready to stop wrestling with the sheets.
I rose and trudged through the first bit of morning ritual on auto-pilot, washing up, doing my hair, and dressing before wandering downstairs to poke at the contents of our fridge. I was pleasantly reminded of the previous day's acquisition, when I saw the box on the counter, and was happy to open it. Rations just took all the damn work out of eating -- there was no choice to be made, no preparation to worry with, just open the package and eat. It made life so simple, and saved time besides.
It saved so much time, in fact, that I found my feet carrying me down the hall to my studio, where I stood in front of Jensen's portrait, chewing and staring.
I would still need to finish the background of city street, night sky and blowing snow... but the portrait of the man was pretty much complete. I wondered idly how Quatre had known almost instantly who he was; I had not thought that either he or Heero had gotten much of a look at any of the three soldiers before we'd all gone to ground and started trading bullets.
It was an intimidating picture of an intimidating man, striding down the street with his drover's coat swirling about him in the wind, his eyes locked unerringly on the viewer. I made myself not shiver, and did my best to stare him down until it just felt... nuts, and I stopped.
I could hear Quatre's reassurances again, echoing through my head and it made me grin, suddenly remembering a line from an old movie. 'You have no power over me,' I told the canvas and then snickered self-consciously.
'S'true, rat-boy,' Solo would have told me. 'I thought ya was a goner, but ya came out on top.'
'I suppose that's so,' I told the air, and leaned in a little to study the face in front of me. 'Maybe I didn't save that girl's life, you son of a bitch... but I stopped you.'
'Damn straight,' Solo agreed, and I took another bite of breakfast.
I had to wonder, not for the first time, just how damn many people that slime-ball had killed. I knew from the transmitter we'd planted on him not long before his untimely demise, that he'd taken a good half a dozen into that warehouse with the intent to rape and murder. Me included. I was pretty sure I was the only one to get away.
And that had only been while he'd been stationed in that place, on that assignment. It was kind of depressing that no one would ever know.
But Quatre had been right. 'You are dead, and despite your best efforts... you didn't get me.'
I decided it was time to leave for work before he started answering me. He was as much a 'ghost' as any of the rest of my voices, after all. Sure as hell didn't need to get that started.
As I stopped by the front door to fish my keys out of the dish sitting there on the little table, I caught sight of the scars I'd gained that night, and a stray thought filtered through from God only knows where...
Maybe I'd paid the price for not saving that girl...
It was an odd idea that kept me company on the drive to work.
Work. Isn't it amazing how, even when you feel like you're in the middle of some kind of damn crisis, that work and all of life's normal things have to keep right on going? You still have to go to the grocery and pay the bills. Still have to do laundry and dishes. Still have to bring in the mail and take out the trash. Even when your head is so full of hamsters with signs telling you about all the things you aren't getting done, that you don't know where to start.
What? Everybody doesn't have hamsters in their head?
Things at the garage had settled some since the holidays, the routine reestablished, or something. And as screwed up as the rest of my life was at that point, I was rather glad of that much at least. That that part of my day held a certain amount of normalcy.
You know, I really do not understand how it happened that the crew of guys I work with have become so... protective of me. I really don't. But somehow, when I wasn't paying any attention, I turned into some kind of damn garage mascot or something.
Oh, I suppose that isn't fair, though that's how it feels sometimes.
It's just very damn weird considering how much my being an ex-Gundam pilot had thrown people off at first. I suspect that Griff had taken some flack for hiring me in the first place, and I've often wondered if he'd been pressured to do it or not. He's never said and I haven't wanted to ask, because we all know where that pressure would have come from. But other than my health issues, and that one little disappearing act, I don't think I've given the guy any reason to regret hiring me. I'm more than qualified. I guess that's what got the guys past dealing with my history.
I have yet to figure out what got them past dealing with the fact that I sleep with a guy. It was not something I had ever meant to become public knowledge, but there were apparently rumors even before I'd done that swan dive in the middle of the garage and woken up to find myself in Heero's lap. I suppose if there'd been any doubts left about the state of our relationship... that had pretty much put them to rest. It had rather surprised me that nobody seemed to mind. It's another thing I don't question.
I was half way through changing out a starter on a transport vehicle when I suddenly remembered that damn appointment with the photographer. I guess all that crap about Jock, and then the guys with the movie, had run it completely out of my mind. For a brief moment I was moved to hurl the screwdriver in my hand across the room, but thought better of it; it makes people stare.
Great. Just what I wanted to be doing on my lunch hour. Or any other hour, for that matter. I had to close my eyes and concentrate to dredge up the address that had been on the card. Not all that far from the Preventor's building; doable on a lunch hour, but I had to wonder what Aleyah was going to say when I showed up in my Preventor grays, because I hadn't thought to bring any other clothes. Maybe she'd just say the hell with it and not bother with the picture at all? I can't say that would break my heart, because I wasn't altogether comfortable with it in the first place. I had not anticipated being so high profile in this whole thing. An art show should be about the art, right? What the hell did I have to do with it?
Oh shut up.
I guess I grimaced or otherwise looked 'not happy', because Giles felt compelled to ask, 'Hey Maxwell; swallow some grease, or what?'
I looked up and found him standing beside the truck I was working on, grinning at me, though there was open curiosity on his face.
It made me try harder to school my own expression, and I grinned back. 'Nah, I just remembered something I have to do at lunch.'
He gave it a heartbeat to see if I would elaborate, but when I didn't, he let it go. 'You hear from Yuy and Chang?'
It took me a second to change gears and he got the heavy sigh he probably wouldn't have heard if he hadn't taken me by surprise. 'Yeah; I've talked to them a couple of times. Not that they can frickin' tell me anything.'
He gave me a sympathetic little nod and leaned on the fender, watching me work. 'Rumor has it that it might go to trial,' he ventured.
That much wasn't any huge secret, so I nodded. 'If that asshole Gray has his way.' But I couldn't resist adding, 'Though Heero's fighting it tooth and nail.'
Giles gave me a grin that was just a bit predatory and I grinned back. He was quiet for a second before he asked, 'You doin' ok, man?'
It made me glance up at him, unsure of his reasoning. Was there something about the way I looked? The way I was acting? 'I'm all right,' I assured him, but the confusion must have been plain in my voice, because he shrugged.
'You just had a pretty rough couple of weeks.'
I snorted and shook my head, bending back to the task at hand. 'I'm hoping this will be a better year.'
He chuckled and seemed to drop the subject, giving me a once over where I sat on the fender and shook his head. 'Never understood how you could work like that,' he grumbled and straightened.
I gave him a wide grin. 'I'm still young, old man.'
He didn't take the bait, only laughing as he turned to go back to work.
The rest of the morning sped by, only because I didn't want it to.
When lunch time rolled around, I washed up a little more than normal before heading out, wishing I could have gotten rid of the butterflies in my stomach along with the grease. It was weird going around to get the car instead of just walking over to Andover like normal. I wondered if anybody noticed, but wasn't about to try explaining anything. If everything went the way Aleyah had said, I'd be back at work with time to spare. And I had little doubt that anything Aleyah Winner planned went off without a hitch. It wouldn't dare not.
The photographer's wasn't hard to find, probably less then ten minutes from the office, but in a neighborhood that positively made me cringe. Dear Lord, I felt funny even driving my little Chevy anywhere near the place.
I'm guessing the area was considered one of those 'historic' places. The damn streets were even brick instead of pavement, for a stretch of about five blocks. There were ornamental trees everywhere and flower boxes which would be overflowing in the spring. The Christmas lights and wreaths were still in place at this time of year though, and as I carefully parked on a side street, out of sight of anything, the word that came to mind was 'trendy'.
It fairly screamed Aleyah Winner's name.
The place was easy to find, right in the center of the cobbled area, and I wondered if Aleyah had picked it because of the location, or if she'd made the guy move here. The tasteful sign above the door simply said Jacques' in a script that somehow even felt French. I quailed as I pushed the door open and wondered what kind of impression it would make if I threw up in the middle of the guy's lobby.
It was probably the shock of looking around and finding myself not in a lobby that stifled the urge. For about ten seconds, I was convinced that I'd accidentally walked into somebody's living room, and I froze, preparing to retreat as fast as my legs would carry me.
But then Aleyah appeared and all thought fled. Not just thoughts of being in the wrong place, but all thought. The woman is just a freakin' force of nature. And she had that damn dog with her, following at her heel like its nose was tied to her shoe.
'There you are, darling!' she called as she came sailing into the room, waving me to follow her without preamble. 'We don't want to keep Jacques waiting!'
She chattered at me as we went down the hall, questions I wasn't meant to answer, comments I wasn't meant to have an opinion about. Just Aleyah filling the place with noise until we entered into the afore-mentioned Jacques' domain. She segued right from asking if I'd had trouble finding the place to introductions. Introductions of the Aleyah type. 'Jacques, this is Duo. Now tell me... the red or the black?'
The man in question glanced up at us from making some adjustment to his camera, seeming totally nonplussed with the woman. He gave me a smile of greeting and then a once over that was more like twice, and left me feeling like he'd stripped me and felt me up. 'Oh, the black, Cherie,' he said with a heavy French accent. 'With the leather.'
'Pardon me?' I managed, remembering my resolve to not just stutter at the woman; she enjoyed it too damn much.
They shared an amused little laugh and Aleyah took my arm as Jacques went back to his adjustments. 'I can't possibly have your portrait done in that,' she informed me, dismissing my clothes with a disdainful little sniff, and led me off in an entirely new direction, dog still in tow.
I followed her into a room that was obviously supposed to be a dressing room, but was bigger than Heero's and my guest room. It had better décor too. There was a bench with several sacks sitting on it, and Aleyah went straight to them, obviously searching for something. Leaving me standing in the middle of the room to gawk around like a tourist in the big city for the first time. It was a beautiful room, but left me feeling like I shouldn't touch anything. I had a hunch that there wasn't a piece of furniture in the place that I could have paid for with less than a half dozen pay checks.
Cocotte and I shared a look and I couldn't help thinking that the dog seemed more at home in place than I did.
'Ah!' Aleyah finally declared in triumph and turned toward me with several articles of clothing, all black, draped over her arm. 'Hold still, pet,' I was instructed and I had a horrible moment of fearing that she intended to dress me herself. But she only held up first one and then another shirt to my chest, cocking her head and humming to herself as she decided just how she wanted me dressed.
My butterflies had morphed into something with a bit more attitude, and I'm sure the look on my face made it quite plain to her what I was starting to fear. Not that she tried to reassure me in any way; I think she was enjoying having me so far off kilter that I couldn't even think how to inquire just what in the hell she was doing. There were just too damn many questions running around in my head to settle on just one. Where the hell had these clothes come from, how had she determined what size I wore, had she actually bought the damn things just for me, she wasn't expecting me to keep the things after this photography thing was done, was she, and mostly? please God, she was planning on leaving the room before I actually had to change... wasn't she?
I was starting to feel like a nonentity. More like a doll, than a person, and maybe she sensed some of that, because she finally took pity on me, patting my arm and telling me, 'Don't fret, dear; you're going to do just fine.'
'This is just...' I managed. 'A bit more than I was expecting.'
'Just leave everything to Aleyah,' she told me with a strange little wink, and suddenly seemed to have made her choices, because she handed me several articles of clothing, returning the rest to the bench. 'Now then, pet,' she told me airily. 'Put that on and just open the door when you're finished. Dorleen will be right in.'
'Dorleen?' I parroted, and got my cheek patted for the effort.
'Make-up, dear,' I was told, and then Aleyah breezed out before I could sputter a reply to that. I suppose it was just as well, the best I could come up with was the rather overused, 'What?!' and it probably would have made her laugh at me again.
I was getting a little tired of being the woman's personal entertainment committee.
I looked at the clothes dangling from my arm, looked around the room, and couldn't find a place that I felt like I could sit my mechanic's ass down, so I changed just standing there. The new clothes I laid across a chair, and my own dirty clothes I piled on the floor on one of the empty sacks.
It was a pair of tailored black slacks that fit me like someone had measured me six ways to Sunday without my knowing it, and a black turtleneck that was made out of some sort of material I'd never felt before. Kind of like silk, only not, and it clung to me in a way that made me uncomfortable. Aleyah had not produced a pair of shoes, and the only thing I had were my grungy steel-toed work boots, which looked worse than ridiculous since they were tan, so I simply went in my stocking-feet. I assumed that the picture wasn't going to be full length. I had to prod myself with the reminder that I had to get back to work, before I was able to go open the damn door. I wanted nothing so much as I wanted to throw my own clothes back on and go running for the hills.
Not for the first time and not for the last, it crossed my mind to wonder just what in the hell I'd gotten myself into.
I'd barely touched the doorknob, when a petite little dark-haired woman, presumably the expected 'Dorleen' was upon me, Aleyah in tow.
'Oh, darling,' Aleyah gushed in her refined way, 'you look exquisite.'
'Just look at his bone structure!' the assumed Dorleen exclaimed and they both laughed in delight as my face turned beet red. Even the stupid dog looked amused.
Dorleen ushered me toward a side-door that proved to hide an elaborate bathroom roughly the size of Houston. There were more lights than used on the average Broadway stage and enough sinks that all three of us could have washed our hands at the same time without even touching elbows. I had always considered Quatre's bathrooms to be rather opulent, but I decided that day that the poor guy was actually pretty sedate in his décor.
There was also the biggest damn make-up case I'd ever seen and that was where I finally balked. 'Ok Aleyah, this is going just a little bit too far...'
It got me the strangest little smile I'd seen on her face yet. It was one I found a little scary. Dorleen just looked as though I'd insulted her professionally. Something was exchanged between the two of them in what I took to be rapid fire French, and they shared a laugh. The smattering of French that I know is better suited to back alleys and bars. I didn't understand a word of what was said.
I was back to feeling like that doll, because Dorleen proceeded to open her case just as though I'd never spoken.
'Don't fuss so, darling,' Aleyah soothed. 'You are so uptight! We just need to take a bit of the shine off that freshly scrubbed face.'
It threw me, that she had been able to tell that, and it bought them the two seconds it took for Dorleen to begin dusting powder across my skin. And at that point it didn't seem to be worth the effort of arguing further. Though I couldn't contain the heavy sigh.
In that moment I suspect that there wasn't a man alive who had ever gone head to head with Aleyah Winner and come out on top. Trying to go against what the woman wanted was akin to standing in front of an avalanche and screaming 'stop'. It just wasn't going to happen. I simply set my goal to getting back to work on time and let the rest of it go. Just went with the flow.
They didn't over do it, I don't think, or else Dorleen just worked very fast. I didn't bother trying to follow it. I was just suddenly very tired and beyond fighting them. What the hell difference was it going to make? Let them have their fucking picture and be damned to all of it. While Dorleen worked and Aleyah kibitzed, I pulled up a mental image of Allison's painting back in my studio and reminded myself why I was even there.
It had nothing to do with Aleyah, it had nothing to do with Jacques, it had nothing to do with Dorleen, and it certainly had nothing to do with me.
When they were done, Dorleen disappeared and I followed Aleyah back out to Jacques' studio, Cocotte dancing along at our heels. Lights had been turned on and the man in question was waiting with an air that made me feel like he didn't normally have to stand around that long. He gave me the once over again, running his eyes over me in a way that I suspect would have made Heero step between us. Maybe would even have made him growl.
Oddly... I would have liked that just then.
'Black was the perfect choice, Cherie,' he told Aleyah, just as though it had been her call, and she preened under his praise.
'What now?' I asked, cutting across their mutual admiration society and Jacques turned to look at me with a faint little frown.
'Now you do as I say and let Jacques make you beautiful,' he told me, his accent thick enough to cut with a knife.
I refrained from rolling my eyes, and just went to stand where he indicated with a flick of manicured fingers.
Dorleen reappeared, carrying something that Aleyah had obviously asked for and I found myself being handed a black leather jacket. It was covered in silver snaps and zippers and it made me blink. For a moment, the thing reminded me so much of the one I'd bought myself right after the war that I almost turned it over to check the lining, but as my fingers really registered what I was feeling, I knew from the quality of the leather that it was probably ten times as expensive as the one I'd owned back then.
But it still made me remember.
I shrugged into it with a vague, twisted sense of deja vu that really wasn't helping with my mood.
Jacques made a tsking sound at that point and gestured my way with those long fingers of his again. 'There is a... lump, my sweet,' he said to Aleyah. 'It will show.'
I looked to see where he was pointing and realized it was my cross under the turtleneck. The damn sweater clung so damn much, that the necklace was showing. I fumbled it out, ready to offer to take it off for the duration, when Jacques smiled widely.
'Perfect!' he crowed, and Dorleen, whose job description must be official fusser, came and arranged the thing on my chest just as though I wouldn't know how to do it myself.
After that it was something of a haze. I was posed like a damn mannequin; sitting, leaning, standing. Behind me, I heard backdrops come down and retract. All I could think about was getting out of the damn hot jacket and getting the hell back to work.
I might have known that Aleyah had told me whatever she'd needed to to get me to meet the appointment. Getting back to work in 'plenty of time' was hopeless before Jacques was half done.
I was to the point of telling them that I was damn well leaving, when Jacques informed the room in general that we only had 'one more' shot to take.
I was parked on a stool and it was fairly obvious that he was going for a close-up where most of the rest of the pictures had been half body shots. They sat me down, fussed with the jacket, the braid and the cross and then I was told to bring my right hand up to my face.
I balked. Ok, I'd balked before, but this time I flat refused. It was like I'd just reached my limit of things I could deal with. Kick me. Punch me. Spit on me. I'll roll with it. But apparently asking to photograph my scars was too much.
Aleyah looked annoyed, her face taking on that set that spoke to me of bodies of uncooperative people buried in her backyard. But Jacques, accent suddenly not so damn thick, quietly said, 'Cherie,' in a gently warning tone, and she backed down. Just like that.
I have to admit I was surprised to see it.
He turned back to me then and calmly gave me another set of instructions that had my hands where they belonged; out of frame. When that last shot was taken, he gave me a smile that seemed more genuine than the ones I'd been getting, and dismissed me.
I didn't wait to be shown back to the dressing room, fairly jogging there on my own. I left the new clothes lying folded on the bench and struggled back into my own clothes as fast as I could. I did take the time to use the well appointed bathroom to wash my face until 'well scrubbed' was an under-statement.
Like I'm going to walk into a garage full of mechanics with fucking make-up on my face.
I didn't wait to be shown the way out either, I knew the route now, and while I felt a little bit like a damn rabbit running for its bolt-hole, I really didn't care.
Aleyah caught me just as I hit the front door, and stopped me about the only way I think she could have at that point.
'Duo?'
Not 'dear', not 'darling', not 'pet'. My name. I had not been entirely convinced she knew it.
I stopped; hand on the knob to the front door.
'Yes?' I said quietly.
The fact that I didn't just run on out must have been enough for her, because the slight hesitation in her voice was gone before I was even sure I'd heard it, and she was all her usual airy self. 'The pictures are going to be wonderful, dear! Jacques was so pleased to work with you. I'm sure I'm going to have quite the time deciding which one to use.'
'Do you?' I asked, level-head trying to reassert itself over the rabbit, 'need me to do anything else?'
She laughed lightly, making me feel stupid somehow, though she seemed genuinely pleased with me and not really mocking. 'Just come up with my paintings, darling.'
I sighed, and fought the urge to run a hand through my hair. I was still feeling a bit touchy about those hands, and the one not engaged in trying to open the door, was currently stuffed in my jacket pocket. 'I've actually got something,' I told her. 'But I'm not sure...'
'Wonderful!' she said, cutting me off before I could finish. 'Shall we come out to your studio to collect them?'
It took me a moment to figure out she meant herself and the dog.
'Well... I'm not quite done with one of them,' I stammered, cursing myself, and lost to that need I seemed to have to fiddle with something. My hand came out of hiding and rubbed over the back of my neck.
'Something fresh for the opening?' she questioned, though her voice was suddenly distracted, and before I quite knew what she was doing, she'd caught my hand in hers, before I could get it tucked away again.
I blushed darkly, but made myself hold still while she looked.
'You have strong hands,' she suddenly told me, looking up at me, but not immediately letting go. 'I see no reason to hide them.'
My brain registered that in the conversational court, it was my turn twice over, but I couldn't think what to say to either remark and just stared at her. She dropped my hand with an enigmatic little smile and said, 'I should like to see these paintings of yours. I'll be out on Friday,' and she smiled a bit more. 'After work... of course.'
'O-of course,' I said and she turned and walked away, so I did too.
If a leprechaun had popped up at that point and offered me the chance to go back in time, undoing that phone call to Trowa that had started the art ball rolling somewhat out of control down my hill, and had only asked my right arm in exchange for this favor? I'm not at all sure I would have said no.
I am not overly fond of humiliation. I have never dealt with it well, and this whole situation was just one damn bit of embarrassment after another. I don't like not having a clear path. I don't like not knowing exactly what is expected of me, or what I should be doing. It smacks of being out of control, which rather pushes a great deal of my buttons.
I spent the drive back to work wondering if I would ever get it all figured out. Wondering if I would ever lose the feeling that I was being highly entertaining to a whole lot of people. Not to even mention the dog.
I was late, of course, and despite my fervent prayers, that fact did not go unnoticed by Griff who informed the majority of the northern hemisphere, at his usual volume, 'Maxwell! You're late!'
'Sorry!' I called, heading for my tool box and trying not to make eye contact. 'I'll work over to make it up!'
Griff has been a little more... attentive to his mechanics since the day he'd damn near lost one under an engine block, and I'd passed out on him. He gets twitchy when things aren't going exactly by the numbers, so I got to see God ignore the second part of my plea, as my boss made his way across the bay toward me.
I managed to stop with just the heavy sigh, keeping the curse words behind my teeth.
'Don't huff at me, kid,' he grumbled as he drew near, making me cringe. I will never get used to the man's uncanny sense of hearing. 'You don't have to make up a lousy half an hour... you never take a whole damn lunch hour anyway.'
I blinked at him and said, 'Thanks, boss-man. I was just trying to run some errands and wasn't counting on how long it would take.'
He shrugged, the subject obviously already forgotten, but continued to stand there looking at me. 'You doin' ok?'
'Huh?' I said brightly, wondering what in the hell had brought this on.
'You look...' he told me, cocking his head and looking me over. 'A hell of a lot like you did the day you tried to give me a heart attack.'
Somewhere behind me, somebody snickered and Griff cast a glare that way that only made a second voice laugh at the plight of the first offender.
'I'm ok,' I told him while he wasn't actually looking at me.
It was pretty damned uncomfortable while we just stared at each other for a minute and then he growled, 'See you don't do anything that'll give me more gray hairs.'
'I'll, uh, do my best,' I managed and he finally turned and walked away.
I'm pretty sure the guy deliberately never does what you think he's going to, just to make people crazy.
I turned back to my tool box, only to find that the first snickerer had been Giles and he was still there, grinning at me widely.
'What the hell was that all about?' I asked him, since he obviously wasn't going to go away.
'Who knows?' he grinned. 'Maybe he just figured that with your run of luck lately, you'd gone and got hit by a truck or something.'
I snorted, leafing through my work orders, looking for something interesting enough to keep my mind occupied through the afternoon. 'I've been told my luck has become 'legendarily bad'.'
He laughed, planting a hand on his hip and shaking his head at me. 'Well, you've managed to give the whole garage something to talk about once or twice now.'
I glanced up from the papers in my hand and gave him a look that was supposed to quail his humor, but only ended up making him grin. 'I'm so glad I'm able to entertain you guys,' I drawled, and he laughed again. I went back to my work orders, but he just kept standing there. Like he wanted something, but couldn't quite figure out how to ask.
'Hey Duo,' he suddenly blurted. 'You know... Yuy's a pretty good guy.'
I forgot all about work orders, and looked up at him, totally baffled about what he was going on about. 'What?' I asked, blinking stupidly.
Giles ducked his head and rubbed at the back of his neck. Looking at the floor, I suspect, to hide the color rising to his face. I wondered suddenly if it was a nervous habit he'd unconsciously picked up from me, if it was the other way around, or if we'd developed it independently. 'I just... well, he's pretty well liked around here... I mean...' I thought the guy was going to rupture something, and it suddenly dawned on me what in the hell we were talking about.
The rumor mill had finally gotten around to knocking right the fuck on my door.
'Chang's a pretty good guy, too,' I told him, a little colder than I'd intended, but it served to let him know I knew exactly what we were discussing.
'Oh,' he said, and the blush escalated. Too late, I realized what that had sounded like, and I out-did his damn blush by a couple hundred watts.
'Look, Giles,' I told him, struggling to keep my bad mood from sliding over into 'pissed off'. 'Not that my home life is anybody's God damn business, but Wufei did not get his black eye from Heero. It had nothing to do with my relationship. Wufei is Heero's partner and a good friend of mine... I'd appreciate it if he stopped getting the cold shoulder for something he didn't fucking do in the first place.'
I don't get irritated enough to get in people's faces very often. I'd be willing to bet it hadn't happened on the job more than twice. So I'll be honest and admit that I fully expected Giles to tuck-tail and get out of my vicinity.
I didn't expect him to give me a lop-sided grin and ask, 'So just how did he get the black eye?'
You may insert my stupid carp imitation at that point, because I indulged in it right up until blurting, 'It was my fault.'
Well shit.
Giles' lop-sided grin grew until it lopped both ways. 'You did it?' he asked, sounding rather incredulous.
I took two deep breaths and put my work orders down to fumble the bottle of aspirin out of my tool box. 'Yeah,' I growled. 'We had a... misunderstanding and I lost my damn temper, ok?'
He snickered and I gaped at him. 'Hey,' he shrugged. 'It's just kinda funny; hot-shot elite agent getting cold-cocked by a mechanic.'
I stared at him for a second and had to wonder if I'd just made things better or worse. 'You have a seriously screwed up sense of humor,' I told him and he chuckled again, but finally turned and went back to work, curiosity apparently satisfied. I dry swallowed two aspirin and put the bottle back.
I could not get my head around the fact that one of my co-workers had just... that Giles had apparently...
I think I had just narrowly escaped a lecture about cheating on my boy-friend from a fellow mechanic. How totally screwed up was that?
I was so flustered, I just grabbed the top work order and ended up spending the next couple of hours trouble-shooting an electrical problem that ended up being a bad processor chip. Damn thing shouldn't have taken me half as long as it did, but I couldn't seem to concentrate for shit.
I couldn't decide if I wanted to think about my paintings, worry about Jock's wake, be embarrassed about the trip to the photographers, mortified about the conversation with Giles, or just freakin' miss Heero.
I couldn't get the memory of Aleyah holding my hand and looking at my scars out of my head. The woman was... damn hard to understand. Not as flighty as she pretended to be, but still irritating, none the less. There were a lot of layers there, and I wondered if anybody had ever gotten all the way to the bottom. I wondered if I'd even scratched the surface.
I looked ahead at my week and had to sigh thinking about it. I had Jock's funeral to deal with on Thursday. Aleyah was coming to my damn house on Friday to pick up paintings that didn't entirely exist yet. That only left me three days free to come up with everything she'd asked me for, and I hadn't even taken the time to think about the more current sketches she'd insisted on.
It made for a damn long afternoon, and I was beat by the time quitting time rolled around. I was pleased with myself that I had enough brain cells left to remember that I was low on soda and I stopped at the store on the way home. I had one for dinner, in company of a ration bar, and it felt like the good old days.
The phone rang while I was still eating and I frowned at it, it was a bit early for Heero, so I assumed it was Quatre or Trowa checking up on me. Teach me to get all needy in front of the Winner-hen.
I reluctantly went to answer it and was surprised to hear Heero's voice.
'Hello, love,' he said after I'd picked up, and managed to make it almost a caress.
'Hey!' I responded, and I'm sure he could hear the relief in my voice. 'You're early? is everything all right?'
'Just fine,' he assured me. 'In fact... I was calling to let you know we're going to be wrapping up here probably sometime tomorrow, and we're planning on coming home. We can do some of the paperwork from there before we have to go back out for... well, we'll talk about that when I get home.'
'God!' I blurted. 'You mean it? When do you think you'll be in?'
'Probably sometime Wednesday,' he said, and I could tell he'd caught the edge to my voice. 'Is... everything all right, Duo?'
I hesitated on asking what I wanted to know, afraid that he'd change his plans to accommodate me. The case, and what he was doing, were far too important for me to muck with it for the sake of a little moral support. 'How long do you think you'll be home?' I asked instead, hedging around the issue.
'A few days, at least,' he said, starting to sound a little concerned. 'What is it, love? What's wrong?'
I sighed and regretted it; it always sounds so loud over the phone. 'I... have something I have to do Thursday night, and it would be... nice if you could maybe go with me...'
'Anything you want,' he told me. 'You know that. What is it... something to do with the gallery?'
'Uh, no,' I had to say, sounding a bit wan even to my own ears. 'A funeral... sort of thing.'
There was a moment's silence on the line while he digested that, and he finally asked, pushing past all the obvious questions, 'Duo... are you all right?'
I answered the obvious question to avoid the one he'd actually asked. 'Do you remember that guy from McMurphy's? The one with the gun?'
He managed not to snort at me, but it was there in the tone of his voice. 'Of course.'
'Well,' I sighed and thought about taking the phone to the living room where I could sit down, but was afraid of losing another night falling asleep there. 'He... passed away. There's going to be a kind of... wake, and I probably ought to go.'
God, hadn't that sounded pathetic. Could I have been any more obvious about the fact that I didn't want to go? Made me feel like a real shit; Jock hadn't called a lot of people 'friend', but I was probably on that short list. And here I didn't even want to go to his send off.
'I'll be there,' he promised, and there was a quality to his voice that told me how much he wanted to come and hold me. It helped at the same time it made me feel guilty for worrying him.
I took a firmer grip on my mood and my voice and told him warmly. 'Only if it doesn't interfere with the investigation. If you're going to be here anyway, I'd love to have you go with me, but if not... don't worry about it. It's not that big a deal. I mean...'
'I know,' he said, and really did know somehow, what I was trying to say.
'Enough of that then,' I replied, making a serious effort to lighten up. 'Tell me what you can about your super secret investigation. Tease me with just enough information to drive me crazy.'
The chuckle he gave me was... very forced. 'More interviews tomorrow, followed by an afternoon of digging through old files. We're... going up to the records center at the Romefeller archives. I want a look at Gray and Hill's military history.'
'But,' I stammered, blinking at the kitchen wall. 'Those records were sealed after the war. You can't...'
'I can now,' he said, his voice an almost feral growl, and I had to wonder what strings he'd pulled, what favors he'd called in to get that kind of clearance.
It took me a second to think past the part where Heero wasn't within a hundred miles of where I'd thought he was, to the other part. 'Heero... you shouldn't be telling me this kind of stuff over the phone.'
'I... know,' he sighed, sounding frustrated and tired. He wanted so badly to give me something, some comfort, some reassurance.
'Just your voice is enough,' I told him softly, and hoped he'd understand.
'Damn it, but I miss you,' he blurted, and I'm not sure he meant to. His stress was a palpable thing.
'Me too,' I soothed.
'Duo-love,' he said then, his voice telling me how tied up in knots he was. 'Is there something...' But there was suddenly another voice in the background and he cut off whatever he'd been about to say. It was Wufei, and for a moment I was afraid that Heero was going to snap his partner in half over the interruption.
'Hey,' I called to him, cutting across the almost heated words he was trying not to let the phone pick up. 'Heero... calm down, lover. Everything is ok. I'm fine?'
He sighed, a sound that was every bit as loud as I'd been afraid my own sigh had been. 'I... I'm sorry,' he told one of us, I'm not even sure which.
'What's wrong?' I asked him, suddenly sensing something that I didn't understand. 'Heero, why are you so... on edge? Did something happen?'
I couldn't tell if his hesitation was just a hunt for words or not. 'Nothing specific,' he finally sighed. 'Just... not getting anywhere, and I'm running out of time.'
'Listen to me,' I told him firmly. 'If it goes to trial, it fucking goes to trial. We'll rip the guy's lies to shreds on the stand. You have to stop killing yourself trying to protect me from testifying. If it happens... it happens.'
I no longer heard Wufei in the background, but he must have still been close, because Heero lowered his voice and there were hints that he was moving. 'I love you,' he said to me, trying so hard to make me feel it, that I almost could.
'I know you do,' I said, freer than he was to say things. 'So much, that you're not taking care of yourself right now. I love you too, and I don't want you coming home with a damn ulcer.'
He snorted, about all he could manage, but I could feel him pulling it together. 'I'm sorry,' he said again, and I chuckled at him.
'When was the last time you got some exercise?' I prodded. 'When was the last time you ate something that wasn't delivered to your motel room in a paper bag?'
'This morning,' he grumbled in mock indignation. 'We ate out of the vending machine on the way out.'
I laughed, because he needed me too. 'And you talk about me! I want you to take Wufei and go out to eat tonight. A sit down place, with a waitress and the whole bit. And then I want you to go for a run or something. I'd suggest sparring, but I'm afraid you two would kill each other. You understand me?'
'Yes, sir,' he replied, sounding a bit sheepish, but I wondered if it was all for my benefit or not.
'Promise me, Yuy,' I commanded, and got the heavy sigh that told me he'd only been humoring me. 'Look, asshole... I worry about you too, ok?'
'Ok,' he murmured, sounding pleased. Sounding sorry. Sounding resigned. 'I promise.'
'Good,' I said and could tell that it came out a little bit smug.
'Duo,' he said then, sounding a little distressed. 'I... have to get going. We have an appointment before dinner.'
'That's ok,' I chuckled, trying to make it easier for him. 'I really need to get back to work myself. I've got three days to come up with a couple of paintings.' Then on a sudden thought, I added, 'and hey; tell Wufei those canvases turned out to be a real life-saver!'
'I will,' he replied. 'It will... please him.'
'Love you, husband-mine,' I told him warmly. 'And everything is fine.'
He hesitated, and there was a ton of unasked questions hanging in the air between us. 'I love you too,' he finally said. 'I'll see you Wednesday.'
Then the goodbyes, and then the hanging up. It was hard to sever that connection, and I found myself sighing when I settled the phone back into its cradle. But I hadn't been lying; I really did need to get back to my painting.
I polished off the half-eaten ration bar, and had to chuckle as I thought of another benefit to the things... they can't get cold, and then I went upstairs to change clothes. It was time to face what needed doing, and I can't say I was looking forward to it.
Jensen was still in the studio waiting for me, and I swear to God for a minute it seemed the predatory smirk he wore was... smirkier than it had been. I saluted the canvas with the bottle of soda and turned to get out my paints, determined not to let the son of bitch get to me two nights in a row.
I spent a solid hour working on the background, ignoring the man himself the best I could. I blocked in buildings and lined out the sidewalk, putting the skirling snow in the air. But then shadowed figures began to appear in the background. Indistinct... vague... dark...
I stopped painting when I realized they were Jensen's ghosts. I am not completely masochistic, no matter what anybody tells you; I took the half finished canvas off the easel and set it aside. Taking it down to the other end of the counter, far away from Allison and me. I would finish it some other time. When it wasn't quite so dark out. Maybe while Heero was home and I wasn't in our big old house all alone. I really don't need to look for ways to depress myself.
I realized with a start that Heero's call had distracted me when I'd gotten home and I'd never turned on my music. It rather surprised me that I'd gone several hours without the background noise. For a moment, I was tempted to try continuing without it, but I'd already noticed the silence. Had already let myself feel the unease that comes with those two things... 'alone' and 'silence'. I decided not to push for more, as much trouble as I'd been having, and went to turn on the stereo. Didn't want to be tempted into calling Trowa and Quatre again -- I doubted I'd escape being whisked off to their place two break-downs in a row.
I stood in front of the unit for several long moments, deliberating my choices, almost drawn to put on some battle music, just to see if I could stir up some backbone. But it wasn't that long before bed-time and I'd never in a million years manage to sleep if I let myself do that. Sleep had been elusive enough without my adding to my own problems. Helio's fluff music was obviously out... too many reminders of The Mission in there. Too many reminders of the things I'd already decided to set aside for the night.
I ended up putting on some Norwegian folk music, I liked the guy's voice, but I couldn't understand the words enough to get depressed over the lyrics.
Bolstered by the sounds of another human voice, even if it wasn't really human, and even if I couldn't understand it... I gathered my hamsters and went back to the studio to give it another try.
One more charge up the hill, boys... not ours to reason why.
I placed another blank canvas on the easel without a damn idea in my head, and proceeded to stare at it.
This is probably going to sound stupid, seeing as how I'd already jumped off the cliff in question, but... I don't feel like an artist.
I obviously have a bit of talent. I can't really deny that, and I've never tried, I mean... I'd had people paying me to paint murals in their ships for years. We're talking Spacers here; I must do ok, or they wouldn't hire me.
But this whole notion of filling an art gallery with my pictures was rather daunting. My pictures. Mine and nobody else's. Trying to imagine what this art show was going to be like was just too much to fathom. And headache fodder for another day; I had more than enough for the time being. The show itself was very much on my list of 'things to worry about later'. Why yes, I do the denial thing quite well, actually.
Though, if anything was seeping through that solid wall of denial... it was Ms. Aleyah Winner. The woman unnerved me; I didn't really trust her not to do things that I wasn't going to be overly thrilled about. Like that photo shoot. Hell, she hadn't been my patron for more than a couple of days, and I already felt like she had too damn much control over what was going on.
But she had me over the barrel of my own ignorance. I really couldn't do this without her. She had all the contacts, the clout and the know-how. All I had was a couple of battered old sketch books full of my blood and tears.
I wanted to parley that into something that would get me to my goal of helping Allison, and I couldn't do that without Aleyah's help. So I had to hand over the reins to her and that... rankled.
Or had you never noticed what a damn control freak I am?
I guess I just couldn't believe in all the things Trowa assured me she was getting out of this. It's a little hard for me to get my head around this notion that I am... a marketable commodity. It made it difficult to completely trust the woman when I just wasn't sure what she really wanted from all this.
And thoughts of Aleyah made me remember that brief look of hesitation on her face at Jacques, just before she'd taken my hand. Every time I thought I had her figured out, there was another layer revealed. Another... mask.
I wondered if the woman wore that professional little smile even when she was home alone. Most of the Winner children had a cast to their features that made them very damn similar. I suppose genetic tweaking can do that for you. But sometimes it seemed that Aleyah had worked most of her life to erase that look. Maybe to stand out from all those sisters just a little bit? Not for the first time, I tried to imagine what it had been like growing up in that household, but I really couldn't do it. Sometimes it made me feel an ache in my chest, thinking about it, and sometimes it made me cringe.
I suddenly had an urge to paint the woman's portrait. The notion made me snort; wouldn't that just frost the woman's cookies? I wondered if it would get past that... cool exterior of hers. I wondered if I would get some kind of reaction. The thought intrigued me enough that I found myself opening paint. It might be nice to paint something for a change that didn't want to turn my soul wrong-side out. Even if it wasn't something that would end up in the gallery, it would be nice to just paint.
Nice to put brush to canvas without... bleeding.
I've often wondered what it's like for real artists. Do they have that same disconnection from time that I can have sometimes? Do they come unglued from reality while they work? Not that it's always like that, I'm perfectly capable of just drawing without getting sucked into the Twilight Zone, for God's sake... but I've always wondered. Never met anybody that actually made their living through some sort of art, in order to ask.
Though, I suppose it was entirely possible that might change in a week or so.
It was a disconcerting notion, somehow. A layer to this mess that I hadn't taken into consideration before. While I might very well get some answers to questions that I'd wondered about for years... there was no guarantee that they would be answers I would like.
Hell... maybe I really was some kind of nut case, and I would only get that fact verified.
I listened to the music flowing around me, trying to catch words that made sense, trying to catch meaning without half trying, and just painted. Danse? Dance? Maybe so, it was hard to say. It was voice more than words that mattered, though the mind couldn't help trying. Med? Made? Probably not. Danse, again. And I couldn't help imagining a young Aleyah dancing across a field of green grass dotted with wild flowers. I chuckled at the notion; really just could not see the woman in that setting. She might get dirt on her outfit.
It ended up being a not altogether bad evening. Especially considering the one the night before. Though I have to confess to being a bit pissed with myself when I stepped away from the canvas, and realized it was almost three in the morning. Oooops.
I gave the picture in front of me a critical once over while I cleaned up, and couldn't decide if it was going to get my ass skinned, or not.
It was Aleyah's face all right... all half a dozen of them. Faces... masks... I'm not sure what to call them. The one closest to the foreground was only partly visible as it spiraled toward me, the expression that calm, cool, professional one; perfect smile in place. But it wasn't really a face. There was an edge and it looked almost porcelain in its perfection. The one behind wore an odd little quirk of a grin, almost rakish... almost not. The next was the imperial glare. The next was a vulnerable, hesitant look of almost longing. The next coquettish. The next, that of a young woman, bright eyed and eager. All of them falling outward from the central figure, as though caught and blown away by the wind. Aleyah, walking away through a field of flowers, summer dress blowing about her legs, bare-foot in the grass. She was looking back over her shoulder, laughing freely, hand up to her face to hold her long blond hair away from her eyes. You could see a ribbon between her fingers, just the hint of one, and even I wasn't sure if it was the tie on the final mask or not.
I snorted and shook my head, wondering as I turned out the lights and headed to bed, if it was possible for me to paint anything simple.
Tuesday was something of a bitch, running as I was on about three hours of sleep. I'd had to settle for a quick shower on the run in the morning and my damn hair was still damp when I got home. As usually happens when your senses are suffering from half your brain going on strike until you agree to let it sleep, I had one of those 'can't hang on to anything' days. I dropped more damn tools than I owned, and thought I was going to get ribbed to death by everybody in the garage. It was mildly amusing until Dave started keeping count, and every time something hit the ground, he would call out from where ever he was, 'Was that Maxwell?' and when somebody confirmed it, he would shout out the appropriate number.
The amusement factor waned after about ten.
I can't say for sure if the day dragged so badly just from the brain-dead factor, or if knowing Heero would be home the next day was giving me something to look forward to. I just know I thought it would never be over.
I opted to skip the whole painting issue that evening and instead gathered my sketch pads together, looking for those 'more recent' pieces that Aleyah had insisted on. I sat with them at the kitchen table, eating my ration dinner and making myself drink some juice instead of another soda. I'd been drinking entirely too much of it lately, even by my own standards, and had decided all the caffeine might be a factor in the sleep issues.
Recent sketches. Damn; that was a little bit more difficult than I would have thought. Let's look at what was available; my pre-burned hands, a corpse, Heero asleep in a hospital bed, my starved 'inner child', and Heero asleep in a hotel room.
Ok, how about semi-recent? I ran across the pictures of Wufei's cat and decided those might not be a bad idea, but figured Wufei would kill me for the one that he was actually in. That was the problem with a lot of my work; somebody I knew who would not be thrilled with finding their faces hanging in some gallery, was the subject matter. Though, I suppose I'd handed over that picture of Hayden quick enough. I guess the difference was knowing that Hayden would never see it. I was pretty sure that all the guys would end up going to the gallery before the show was over. They're supportive like that. And as curious as a herd of hyper-active cats.
I ended up not making many decisions, and just hoped that Trowa had been right that Aleyah wouldn't be all that upset if I couldn't come up with a lot more pieces.
By nine o'clock, I could barely keep my eyes open, so I decided to just give my e-mail a quick look and go the hell on to bed.
There was one of those 'You know you're from 'enter the name of your colony here- when...' things from one of the Sweeper crew, a note from McMurphy giving me the details of Jock's wake, and a brief message from Heero telling me he might get home before I did, and to plan on eating together. It was this weird little progression of up/down. The joke was actually kind of funny, the wake news was just depressing, and then I finished off with the high of Heero's note. Guess I should just be glad there wasn't a fourth message.
I took my butt off to bed with Heero's words firmly in the front of my mind and managed to doze off thinking about getting to see him, and not about funerals.
Wednesday dawned early. Ok, maybe it didn't dawn any earlier then normal, but I generally don't sleep more than about five or six hours a night. So I was awake at the God-awful hour of four in the morning. Left me plenty of time to take a nice long run though, chasing away the last of the vaguely erotic images left from my dreams. I was very damn glad that Heero was coming home.
After a more leisurely shower than the one the day before, I got myself ready for work and then went down to the studio to kill the last hour before I had to leave. Aleyah's portrait, such as it was, was finished and I stood it next to Allison's on the counter. Then I retrieved Jensen from his exile at the far end of the room, and set him back on the easel.
Set the painting back on the easel. God, if I wasn't careful, I was going to give the damn thing a personality.
The man and the ghosts of his conquests were not so... disturbing in the daylight. Looking at the picture, I couldn't help wondering what people would think of it. If they would wonder why all the figures in the painting but the one, were so shadowed and indistinct. It almost appeared to have been done to draw the eye to Jensen. As though those around him paled in comparison. But that wasn't quite right either, because there was something frightening about the ghosts despite the fact that Jensen was obviously oblivious to them. On a whim, I got out the paints and scattered a bit more snow about, letting some of it show, muted, through the background figures. The effect was... odd; serving to make Jensen even more of a solid presence. I shivered, put the paints away and went to work.
It occurred to me, during the drive into town, as I passed the exit to the market we used, that I would have to stop and pick something up for dinner on my way home. Heero wasn't likely to enjoy a home-coming meal of ration-bars, not even if we ate them by candle-light. And I already knew he was sick of eating out.
It was actually a kind of pleasant thought; cooking for Heero again. I don't really like cooking all that much, never bothered with it when I was out on my own, but it had been one of the earliest things I'd been able to do for Heero when I'd recovered enough after the accident for it. It had helped me feel like not such a leech. Had given me something to do in the afternoons while I had waited for Heero to come home from work. It had been... a very odd period of my life. I had been rather surprised that the weird, almost domestic feel of it had been... pleasant. After everything Heero had done for me, it was nice to be able to give something in return, no matter that it was such a small thing. At the time, wheeling myself around the kitchen in my chair as I worked, had been damned exhausting, and it hadn't felt like a small thing at all.
But Heero always seemed to enjoy it when I cooked for him, and that had made it worthwhile. It seemed like tonight should be something special and I spent the rest of the drive trying to make up my mind if we had enough ingredients at home for me to manage Sukiyaki or not. I didn't care for it all that much, but in my experimenting with traditional Japanese recipes for Heero, had discovered that he did. I could get the sirloin and snow peas easily enough, but the bamboo shoots and Chinese mushrooms would require a trip to the Asian market. That was a bit out of the way, and I didn't want to be late getting home. Heero would just worry, and that would rather spoil anything special I might have planned. Maybe I'd just stop at the fish market and splurge on something a little more expensive than Mrs. Paul's.
Work was nothing exceptional. Though I was much better rested and not quite so fumble-fingered, I had to endure a bit more teasing until somebody else did something stupid enough to make people forget about me. It pleased me just a bit too much that it ended up being Dave. Poor guy managed to somehow back a car into the oil collector, dumping a couple of gallons of used oil all over the floor. Dave swore somebody moved the thing while his back was turned, but Griff still yelled at him for a good five minutes, and by the time the mess was cleaned up, Dave was the 'joke of the day' instead of me.
And yes, you bet your ass I indulged right along with everybody else.
Wednesday made Tuesday look like a freakin' holiday. I distinctly remember looking up at the clock in the afternoon, convinced that it was time to go home, only to find it was only two.
When quitting time finally did come, it was all I could do to keep myself from running for my car. I had decided not to risk the longer drive and settled on a quick run to the fish market, it was on the way home and not usually all that crowded. I picked up some halibut and some shrimp too, because the guy claimed I 'couldn't find fresher if God dropped it from the sky into my hands, still alive', and then I booked for home.
I can't even tell you if I was relieved I got there first, or disappointed. Then I realized I couldn't start dinner until Heero got there, since I didn't have a clue what time it would be. So the fish went on ice and I went up to change and shower. Didn't want the poor man coming home to a lover who smelled of grease and oil. Nothing quite as off-putting as snuggling up to somebody who stinks.
And then... I went out to sit on the front steps to wait.
Yes, I am pathetic.
I have to admit that this trip had surprised me quite a bit. I had not anticipated missing Heero as much as I had. We'd been together just over a year, and during all that time, had not really been apart more than just a day or so. My trip to L3 and his stay in the hospital being the biggies. And even when he was in the hospital, I'd not been apart from him more than I would have been during a work day.
I honestly don't know how he managed that, because I'd picked up on enough conversations here and there over the course of that year, to figure out that he used to travel on assignment a hell of a lot more. I have no doubt it was because of me, and knowing Heero, he just flat told Commander Une 'no' in no uncertain terms. It was weird and embarrassing if I let myself think about it, which was why I'd never questioned him overly much about it. I just wasn't sure I wanted to know. Even though I kinda did, if you know what I mean. Guess I just didn't want to verify it.
I'd been sitting outside on the cold steps for a good fifteen minutes when I heard the sound of footsteps on the walk. The cadence was odd, and it took Ruthie coming into view for me to figure out it was because she was skipping. She had a digital camera dangling from one mittened hand, and a leash held tight in the other. A little brown, flop-eared dog was on the other end of that leash, dancing around one minute before, and the next behind. Pulling and darting about, generally causing Ruthie to laugh and giggle. I couldn't help smiling, and wondered what in the world she'd come to borrow this time. She was wearing what appeared to be a party dress underneath her coat and when she saw me sitting on the steps, stopped and gave me an exaggerated curtsy, though it was spoiled when the dog pulled her off-balance.
'Mr. Duo!' she called and finished skipping up to the porch. 'You're home!'
'Hello, Miss Ruthie,' I replied, not really sure how to otherwise reply to what had been a statement. That made her laugh some more, the pup sniffing the air in my direction inquisitively, her tail wagging a mile a minute.
'We're having a party!' Ruthie exclaimed, waving the camera at me as though that explained something. 'And Buffy and me are on a hunt!'
'A hunt?' I grinned, not at all sure what kind of party involved running around the neighborhood with a dog and a camera.
'Yep!' she said, and tried to fish something out of her coat pocket to show me. The dog, I'm assuming the afore-mentioned Buffy, was tugging in my direction and making the whole endeavor a bit difficult. I slid down another step, so that I could reach and pet the dog, and Ruthie got a piece of crumbled paper pulled out while the dog was still.
I thought the animal was going to wag its butt right the hell off.
'We're on a scavenger hunt,' I was informed, though the word scavenger lacked a consonant or two, and it took me a second to get it. The list was waved in my face and I didn't even try to read it. 'We gotta find three different kinds of trees! Can we go into your yard?'
I got the whole process then, and wondered how many other little kids were running around the area, mostly just staying out of the house and out of the hair of whoever was throwing this 'party'. Or maybe Ruthie was just on her own hunt.
'We got to take a picture of it!' she explained, and tried to hold the camera up to her face to demonstrate. It became obvious pretty quickly that Buffy wasn't making this chore particularly easy. Ok... Buffy was making the chore almost impossible.
I couldn't help laughing at the whole weird little ballet number they were doing. 'Sure,' I told her. 'But why don't you let me hold the leash while you go take the picture... I think it might be easier.'
She fairly beamed and handed the loop of the leash over in the next instant. 'Cool!' she said, which I took for acceptance, and then she skipped off around the side of the house. Buffy attempted to follow before coming up short on her lead and ended up sitting on the dry grass beside the step looking abandoned. The look of pure confusion was pretty priceless, until she began to bark feverishly, making sure her mistress realized that she'd forgotten something important.
I chuckled and gave the leash a tug. Buffy wasn't a terribly big dog, and she tumbled over my feet, looking up at me uncertainly. 'Hush you,' I grinned and ruffled the ears. The wagging was back, though she looked so damn dewy-eyed that I had to pick her up and set her in my lap. 'Ruthie will be back in a minute,' I explained, and only felt slightly stupid. The dog cocked her head, looking up at my face just as though she understood. It was cute until I figured out she was just plotting the best angle to get at my chin. Dog spit is kind of gross.
Then I forgot about it when I realized I heard a car coming up the street. We're pretty much the last house on a dead end road. If a car doesn't turn off before it crests our hill, it has to be coming to our place, and I was only expecting one person. I was standing before I realized it.
I know I was grinning like a damn loon the whole time he parked, but I just couldn't help it. I had stood with Buffy in my arms without really thinking about it, but that put her where she could reach my face again and she proceeded to distribute more drool.
'Damn it, Buffy,' I grumbled at her, leaning to put her down. 'You're going to have to learn better than that. That's just gross.'
When I straightened, Heero was almost right in front of me. I was still rubbing my sleeve across my chin and just opening my mouth to say hello when I got a really good look at his face.
For about two damn seconds I would have said 'stricken'. Pale, came to mind. Horrified.
But then it sort of got washed away by this... anger. I'm not sure what else to call it. Between one heartbeat and the next he was just freakin' furious.
'What the fuck is this?' he snarled, but it was obviously one of those rhetorical questions, because he didn't wait for an answer. 'You don't do something this major without talking to me first! What in the hell were you thinking!'
I couldn't do much more than just stare at him. Heero and I have had our fights before, but this was... like nothing I'd ever seen. There was a light in his eyes that wasn't altogether rational, and I have to admit he was scaring me. On about half a dozen different levels.
Buffy, apparently, is not one of those dogs that found a home through her intelligence, because she chose that moment to wander over to sniff at Heero's shoes. Heero made a noise that I couldn't identify, and almost stumbled back a step. 'Get that God damn thing away from me!' he snapped and I figure at that point my eyes had to have been as wide as saucers. I leaned down and snatched the dog up, retreating myself a couple of steps. I had brief thoughts of pod people, and murmured 'Good girl, Buffy,' to the stupid dog, because she'd finally figured out that this was a 'bad thing' and was whining quietly. Words of explanation would not find their way out of my throat. Part of my head was still trying to tell me that the man in front of me could not possibly be Heero, and the rest of me was just standing there staring, perfectly willing to be convinced.
Heero's expression was set in stone; the anger trying to bleed out around the edges, and that was when I heard Ruthie returning from the back yard. I was looking right at Heero and I got to see that expression fade back into the stricken one he'd worn when I'd first seen him. I've never really seen somebody go white as a sheet from up close before, though I pretty well knew what it felt like.
'Got it, Mr. Duo!' Ruthie crowed, and I had to turn away from the sight of Heero to even begin to reply to her.
'T-that's good, kiddo,' I choked out. 'Are you all done then?'
'Almost!' she cheered, fairly bouncing up and down as possession of the dog changed hands. 'You don't have a hamster, do you?'
I almost choked. 'No... sorry,' I managed.
'Darn!' she pouted. 'That's all Buffy and me need to win! A hamster!'
'Better get going then,' I told her, wishing her gone.
'Who was that?' she asked me brightly, and I kind of froze until the word 'was' soaked in a little bit. I whirled around, but Heero was gone. I had a panicked moment before I saw his car was still sitting at the curb and I realized he must have gone into the house.
'My... my roommate,' I said. 'Heero.'
'Oh,' was all she said, and then they were skipping off down the street. 'Bye!'
I can't remember if I told her goodbye or not.
My next conscious thought found me sitting on the damn steps again, staring after Ruthie and the stupid dog, trying to decide what I should be feeling.
Ok, I'm not a total loser. I know that Heero had come home and made a totally wrong assumption based on the evidence of his eyes, and had jumped my shit without asking question one. Well, without asking any questions he had allowed me to answer.
I should be pissed. I should be livid. I was perfectly within my rights to throw a hissy fit in his face the likes of which he'd never seen.
But...
But Heero had never done something like that to me before. Not like that. If our voices had ever been raised, it was usually in sheer exasperation. The only times I could really remember him yelling at me since we'd moved in together, was because I'd done something to scare the shit out of him.
This had been... not altogether coherent. When I had looked into his eyes, it was like he hadn't been looking back at me. He'd honestly scared me.
Physically? I don't know... maybe a little. He'd sure as hell looked like he'd wanted to deck somebody. But mostly... it was just having him unhappy with me. I have issues with that, probably more than is healthy. I'm kind of aware of how much of myself is pinned to Heero, and not to sound all melodramatic and crap, but I really don't know what I'd do without him.
Suicide? I'm not going so far as to say that. I just mean that I really don't know what I would do... where I would go.
So, while some sane part of me wanted to be flaming pissed, most of me was kind of hurting. The sane part said I should go find Heero and see just what the hell was going on, but the rest of me thought staying on the front porch until sometime around spring was a pretty spectacular idea.
I'm not sure the sane part won out so much as I got really cold.
I found him sitting right there on the couch in the living room. He'd made it no farther than that, had not even managed to get his jacket off. He didn't even look up when I shut the front door behind me.
He sat just on the edge of the couch, almost looking poised to bolt. His elbows were on his knees and his head was in his hands, fingers clenched in his hair. If tension were a color, the whole room would have been bathed in black.
I'd been home long enough that the stereo was playing, the Norwegian stuff again, and I listened to it for a bit while I watched him just sit there.
If I had been able to work up any anger while I'd sat on the porch, it would have washed away in that moment. This was my Heero... no matter what had just happened outside.
He didn't even react when I walked across the room to turn off the music. It was damn weird having the house that quiet with someone else in it with me.
Briefly, I toyed with the idea of just going to start dinner and giving him a minute to sort himself out before I tried to talk to him, but I had a bad feeling nobody would eat what I fixed. The fish had been too damn expensive to cook just to throw it away.
After a minute of just watching him do nothing, I finally walked over and sat down on the edge of the coffee table. Not right in front of him, that would have been a bit close under the circumstances, but within touching distance... if he so chose.
'I, uh... guess you figured out it wasn't my dog?' I finally managed, trying for teasing, but not really making it. I got nothing but a tight little nod without him even meeting my eyes. I felt like I'd just served at tennis and nobody bothered to hit the ball back. I watched it roll around on his side of the conversational net and sighed.
I was left unsure if I should prod at him, or just try steering him away from the whole mess. He was starting to scare me in a whole different way than he'd been scaring me before.
But then his hands came away and he finally looked up at me with this... weird-ass expression that I didn't quite know what to make of. His face? his expression? was almost stony. Flat and closed off and frightening and... not like I'd seen in a long, long time. But his eyes... there was something behind those eyes that was just screaming at me, something that was calling out to me until the only thing I could think to do was open my arms.
I really wasn't expecting him to almost crumble into them.
'Don't let me not feel,' he whispered, and though the words didn't make sense, his hands clutching at me spoke a different language, and I gathered him to me in a fierce embrace. He was trembling.
'It's all right,' I told him, not sure if it was, but less sure of what else to tell him.
I knew he wasn't half in control, because he was hurting me. It made me hold on all the tighter; he obviously needed it.
'I'm so sorry,' he finally murmured, voice all twisted round itself.
'Hush,' I soothed. 'It's all right... but, Heero... you've got to give me a clue. You've got to tell me what I did, because God... I don't ever want to do it again.'
He shuddered and I swear, if he could have turned himself into something that would have fit, he'd have crawled into my lap like a child. All I could do was hang on and endure the bite of his fingers on my flesh. 'Wasn't you...' he panted, sounding on the verge of some kind of damn break-down. 'It wasn't you... I'm sorry... please forgive me...'
I kissed the top of his head and told him as firmly as I could, 'You know I'd forgive you anything. I'm not mad... just really confused.'
'I know,' he whispered.
I moved us over to the couch before our combined weight did something bad to the coffee table. Heero went where I took him, as damn docile as a babe in arms; it unnerved me. He's just not normally like that, but he really did seem to need to be held, just needed the contact. Maybe he was drawing some reassurance from my touch; proof that I wasn't angry.
'It's going to take more than a couple of cuss words to get rid of me, Yuy,' I grumbled, trying to make it come out sounding like a threat. He didn't buy it as joke, or threat, and made a noise that was kind of strangled.
We just sat for a bit then. He had himself curled up against my chest, tucked under my chin, and I had to resist a very strong urge to rock him like a child. I stroked my knuckles over his hair instead, while he just seemed to be working out the mechanics of breathing.
'Who...' he finally asked. 'Who was that?'
'Our neighbor,' I told him. 'Ruthie. She came over the other day with her brother to borrow some eggs. She came back today because she was playing some kind of scavenger game and wanted to take a picture of the willow tree.'
He digested that and I let him, deciding that we weren't going to get anywhere if I kept letting him get away with the traumatized silence thing. It took him a bit and I knew he was going to speak before he did, because his fingers suddenly tightened further, digging in almost harshly.
'Tell me...' he blurted and it broke my heart to hear the need in him. To hear how torn up he was... and not understand it.
'Oh course,' I whispered, and stroked the back of my knuckles along his jaw line until he tilted his head up enough for me to kiss him. I meant for it to be soft and gentle; he made it fierce and hungry. 'I love you more than anything, and I always will,' I reassured. 'You know that.'
'I do,' he told me earnestly, looking deep into my eyes, as though still hunting for that reassurance. 'I am so sorry; it caught me off guard... I didn't mean... I...'
I touched a finger ever so gently to his lips and stopped the stumbling rush of words. 'Shhh... no more apologizing. Just please... tell me what's wrong?'
He stilled and settled his head back against my shoulder. 'Later,' he breathed, so softly I almost didn't hear him. 'Please... later...'
What the hell could I say, but, 'Ok'...
I tried not to let it sting. I understood that something had him a bit too raw and he needed his distance first. I remembered how damn hard it had been for me to talk to him about... certain things. But it was hard not to believe that he wouldn't just sweep it all under the rug, and I never would know what the hell it was about neighbor relations and pets that had made my lover look like he wanted to divorce me.
But if he needed to sweep it away, then by God I would let him sweep it away. If he didn't want to talk to me, I would be damned if I would try and pry it out of him. 'I promise not to have the other kids over when you're out of the house any more, Dad,' I teased softly and he managed a little snort of a laugh, but didn't reply.
It was one of those jokes that, under the circumstances, I could make... but he couldn't join in with. But he seemed to relax a little bit, getting the message behind the words that I would let it go if he wanted.
'I don't deserve you,' he told my collar-bone, and it was my turn to snort.
'It's too late in the day to start the I'm not worthy game,' I chuckled and he finally seemed to let go completely, his embrace no longer so desperate, his breathing no longer sounding so ragged.
'I should go get my bag out of the car,' he said, finishing the job of putting himself back together, like some part of him just wanted to pretend the whole thing had never happened. I felt a spark of irritation, that I throttled down fairly easily. I could well relate to that desire. Done more than my fair share of things that I had wanted, at the time, to undo. Had more than one instance of wishing fervently for a time machine.
Who was I to deny him his need to save face?
'Why don't you do that while I start dinner,' I agreed. What I might have wanted here wasn't what was important. 'You probably even have time to get cleaned up, if you'd like... I got some fish at the market and haven't even started yet.'
He sat up and I let him, though it was a conscious effort on my part. He was faintly flushed, and I think he had a hard time meeting my eyes, but he did, reaching out to stroke his fingers over my cheek. 'I missed you,' he ventured and I smiled for him, turning my head to kiss his hand.
'Missed you, too.'
Then he took himself outside and I went to the kitchen. It's a wonder I didn't kill us both with my culinary attempts that night, because I sure as hell didn't have my mind on what I was doing.
It wasn't long before guilt beast was tailing me around as I went from refrigerator to stove to sink. I felt petty and small and like an absolute asshole, but you want to know what I was struggling with the most?
The fact that I had shared... and Heero hadn't.
You know what I mean?
Oh, come on... you really think Heero Yuy tried to rip me a new asshole because he thought I bought a pet without asking him? You can't tell me there wasn't something more to that whole little scene than was on the surface. It had something to do with the dog, but it had just as much to do with the neighbor kid. I'd been looking right at Heero when Ruthie had made her appearance. He'd looked like a Leo had just come stomping out of our back yard.
Something had kicked him in the ass so hard it damn near took his breath away. I'd been looking into the face of a haunted man. I know the look... I've seen it in the mirror often enough.
On that trip to L2... the one that was still so painfully fresh in my memory... Heero had asked me to dish up a large piece of my soul and point out for him all the quaint little flaws. And I had. Maybe not everything, but a hell of a lot. I'd told him things that nobody else in the universe knew. And no, it hadn't been easy.
You tell me he wasn't refusing to share those same kinds of things now.
It's not that I hadn't wanted to tell Heero. It had felt... good, somehow, to give him that piece of myself. But it seemed... tainted now, like telling someone 'I love you' and not hearing it in return.
It was making every defensive tendency I owned want to kick into hyper-drive.
Which made me feel like a real shit.
By the time I'd managed to get something resembling food onto the table, guilt had pretty well gnawed my leg down to the bone.
I had heard Heero moving about the house, bringing his things in and even coming through the kitchen once to take his laundry to the basement. But we hadn't really talked. I'd heard him go up to shower and remembered with a pang my earlier thoughts about not wanting to smell of grease when he came home. Somehow... I doubted that was going to matter much with the frame of mind we seemed to be in.
He came into the kitchen looking freshly washed just as I was pouring the drinks. My own discomfort made me wonder if he'd been avoiding me until he couldn't any more.
Guilt and I'd had a long talk, and we'd decided that I was trying to turn something that should have been about Heero into something that was about me. That seemed just the tiniest bit self-centered, so I was making a solid effort to remove my head from my ass.
The effort was not helped by the realization that I'd unconsciously poured myself a glass of water instead of soda, and had actually remembered to set out my bottle of iron tablets... something I had not managed in days. Obviously, some part of my head did not want Heero to get upset with me again. And that rather left me feeling pathetic.
So I sat down at our kitchen table across from Heero, feeling defensive, lame, and hurt, and smiled brightly. 'So, are you going to give me all the juicy details of the case, now that you're home, or do I have to languish away in ignorance forever?'
He smiled back at me, though there was a quality to it that let me know he understood my effort to move on. Understood, and appreciated.
'We didn't find much at the record's center,' he told me, seeming to jump on the new topic almost eagerly. 'Confirmed that they did both serve, though they were hardly as involved in the war as they tried to imply; they flew messenger ships and never saw a moment's action.'
I snorted, remembering Hill's flippant remarks about 'making do' and being 'veterans'. I'm sure they got a lot of practice doing out-ship work on the little courier jump ships. 'Well,' I mused, looking at the information for other clues. 'I suppose that makes it unlikely that this whole thing is based on some grudge Gray holds against Gundam pilots, since he never fought.'
Heero grunted, cutting into his fish. 'Not likely. Unless it's just unfounded prejudice. We found no record that he or anyone in his immediate family ever saw combat.'
That was about the point were I took my first bite and realized that I'd fucked the fish six ways to Sunday. Overcooked would be an understatement. I chewed slowly, trying to decide if it would actually kill me. It was not only overcooked, but over seasoned, and while I doubted it would harm us, it certainly tasted like shit. And while taste has little or no meaning to me, Heero places some store by it.
I sighed and rose without comment, going to fetch the shrimp from the refrigerator while Heero figured out what I'd done. I hadn't thought the stuff was a contingency plan when I'd bought it, but I was glad it was there. I took his plate of fish away without needing to comment, and sat the shrimp and cocktail sauce down in front of him while he took a couple of swallows of water to wash the taste away.
He looked vaguely guilty, understanding where my distraction had come from, and when I sat back down across from him, he reached out to touch my hand. 'I'm sorry.'
I shrugged, not really wanting to get into it, and picked my fork up again. 'So the military records didn't really pan out, what about the ex-wife?' I prodded, wanting to not dwell on the ruined meal; so far this had not been the world's best homecoming. But I could tell from the look on his face as he saw me start to cut into my fish again, that we weren't done. 'Heero,' I said, interrupting him before he could even get started. 'Just don't. It will make me feel better not to waste it, ok?'
'Duo,' he began, 'it's ruined?'
'It is not ruined,' I heard myself snap. 'Just eat your damn...'
Ok, apparently my efforts at setting shit aside where being relatively unsuccessful. I laid my fork carefully down on the table, because I've got a history of hurling things when I'm getting pissed, and just took a moment to concentrate on shutting up.
Heero was busy looking like he was trying not to implode with frustration.
'Strained' is about the only word that applied.
I suddenly didn't have the stomach for fish, shrimp, or any damn thing else.
'I wish we could start this whole day over,' I told him softly. 'But I don't know how.'
'I don't know what else to say,' he told me, eyes on the table and not me.
Tell me what happened, I wanted to say to him, but if I had to ask? if I had to force it, it was only going to make matters worse.
'I think we're both just tired,' I told him, in an effort to ease the strain, though we both knew I was just talking. 'Can I assume that you don't want to eat any of this any more than I do?'
He looked hesitant for a moment; as though he were afraid I would get my feelings hurt, but then gave me a little nod.
I got up and took it away to wrap up before he had a chance to throw it out. Maybe I could use the fish to make something else later. Soup or something; maybe chowder. Heero let me, sitting at the table and watching me move around him. I think he just flat didn't know what to do.
I was hurt and trying to hide it. He could tell, but either couldn't decide what he should do, or wasn't capable of doing it. It was one of those lose-lose situations. When I had the mess pretty well cleaned up, food put away and the dishes stacked in the sink, I went to him and made him let me sit in his lap.
'I'm trying,' I told him, feeling like I was letting him down because I couldn't put a lid on my feelings. 'It's just been an... odd week.'
He put his arms around me and buried his face against my chest. 'You shouldn't have to be trying. I'm the one... I should...' he floundered to a stop.
I sighed without meaning to, and kissed the top of his head. He straightened and looked up at me, heart in his eyes.
'I'm not...' he began, struggling with it so much it was painful. 'I'm not trying to shut you out. I'm not. It's just so...'
'Hard...' I whispered, smiling gently. 'I know.'
He heaved a sigh so heavy I felt it through his whole body. 'Yeah,' he agreed.
I gathered him against me again, a little surprised at how readily he gave in to it. 'There is nothing you could ever say to me that would make me stop loving you,' I told him, and knew I'd nailed it from the shudder that coursed through him.
I knew that fear well and good. Knew it inside and out. Though it was not something I had ever thought to see echoed in Heero's eyes.
We sat like that until he didn't need to hang on anymore. It was probably as much an excuse as anything when he said he had some reports to type up, but it didn't sting so much somehow. I had the feeling that he was at least trying to work it out in his head, so it was easier to let him.
Besides, I still had my very real excuse of sketch hunting.
He went up to his study and I went out to my studio and we tried to pretend we weren't hiding from the whole damn mess.
I just was not up to working on Jensen's portrait, no matter that Heero was in the house with me again. Off balance as I was, I didn't figure I needed that on top of everything else, so I settled on the old couch with a stack of sketch pads instead.
I was a little disconcerted to feel the need for my music, I normally don't when Heero's home, no matter where he is in the house. But somehow, the silence was as sharp as it had been all week long. I resisted because I didn't want him realizing. Didn't want him knowing how much I still had to fight with the silence. How much it still ate at me to be alone.
So I leafed through my art books in the quiet and it didn't take long before I was cringing thinking about showing them to my 'patron'. I could just imagine the woman titling Froggy's portrait. Felt vaguely horrified at the idea of her seeing the strange portrait of Quatre and Trowa.
Maybe it would be best if I just tried to draw something new? Something specifically for the damn show and stopped trying to find something suitable for public consumption? The thought had barely hit my forebrain when I found a pencil in my hand. She had said 'more recent', you couldn't get any more recent than the moment you lived in. I certainly didn't have the time to do much, but if I came up with anything, it would meet the request and really... that was all I cared about. Make the woman happy, meet the requirements, and get this the hell over with.
Sound like an ungrateful wretch, don't I?
That fact does not escape me. I had set this fiasco in motion with my own little speed-dialing hand, and now that it was too late to stop the avalanche, I was having second thoughts. So it makes me a little pissy -- sue me.
There were just so many things to think about... to worry about. So many things I needed to be doing. I had a Spacer's sendoff to deal with that was scratching at the back of my brain with little claws of dread. There would be people there that I had not dealt with in awhile. There would be alcohol that I used to indulge in without thought, that I was leery of now. And the guilt. Let us not forget the damn guilt. Can't forget what this funeral was all about, after all.
'Damn it, Jock,' I muttered to the air and hoped to God he wasn't one of the ones who would come back to talk to me. Didn't think I could deal with living with that morose voice for the rest of my life.
And those thoughts led back around to time and timing and understanding that Jensen's portrait had to be finished the very night of the wake. Either before hand, or afterward, and I doubted I was going to be up to it when it was all said and done. But Aleyah would be there on Friday and my time was stinking well up. I had to sigh, thinking that Heero coming home was going to make this harder, because he would not put up with my staying awake until the wee hours to do the work when I had to get up for my actual job the next day.
And of course, that thought came full circle to the little drama we had enacted on our front lawn and I wondered if I could get any more depressed.
Then I looked into the eyes of the kid on the paper in front of me and decided that I had barely scratched the surface.
It was probably me, though thankfully, that fact was not as obvious as some of my other self-portraits. For simplicities sake I will refer to the portrait as though it really was of some other child and not another damn version of my splintered little self.
I... no, he was looking right straight at me, with the most beauteous expression of openness. Smiling broadly, eyes shining with hope and happiness, he offered up in his cupped little hands what must have been his most prized possession. He cradled it, gentle and careful, holding it out to... someone... we won't get into that right now. He was... proud? I'm not sure about that part... there was something very akin to it in the expression. Something in the eyes that said 'this is a treasure'. That said, 'I'm sharing something important with you'.
The thing in the cupped hands was... oddly bird shaped. It was a thing that might have been pretty once. But it had been broken and mended many times. It looked pathetic lying there. Sad. More-so in the sharp contrast with the boy's expression. As though he didn't see what he held in his own hands with the same vision as the rest of the world.
A soul with wings that could not fly.
I tossed the sketch pad down on the couch beside me and wondered again if it was possible for me to freaking draw a simple still life. Don't other people just draw flowers sometimes?
That was when it finally filtered through to my brain that I could hear water running through the pipes in the house, and I realized that Heero was in the shower. It took me almost thirty damn seconds to pull my brain out of the haze it had been in to realize why that was odd.
Heero had showered while I'd fixed dinner. What the hell?
It was late. Later than I would have thought, and I rose to go up the stairs, turning lights off as I went.
When I got to the top of the stairs, I started to go toward the closed bathroom door, but the light on in the bedroom caught my eye. Heero is almost anal about turning lights off as he leaves a room. I almost think it causes him some kind of physical pain not to. If the light was on in the bedroom, there was a reason, so I went there instead.
The sheaf of neatly stacked papers sitting on our bed stood out like a neon sign. Starkly white against the dark green fabric of the comforter. They didn't exactly have my name written on them, but the intent was obvious. Heero had wanted me to come up and find them. I was almost loathe to make the walk across the bedroom and pick them up.
It was a shock to recognize the format and style of an old time mission report. It had not at all been what I'd been expecting, and that alone was enough to make me sit down on the bed. I scanned the cover sheet; surprised to note the date? it was nothing current, AC 194; a moment's calculation put the year in perspective? before Operation Meteor. Before the real war. During that period of time when we were all just finishing up our training and taking on our first missions. Going out into the field for the first time.
The report wasn't Heero's, but rather about a mission of Heero's. There wasn't a single author, but several reports all centered around an infiltration and sabotage mission that had apparently gone bad. I skimmed my way over the pages, suddenly filled with a vague sense of dread. A training mission that seemed to be almost a test; there had been a spotter who reported afterward. The words 'perfect' and 'flawless' were used often... until near the end. Get in, plant the explosives, get out, blow the installation. Simple; I'd run several almost identical assignments in my day. But this one had apparently not been so simple.
There was an evaluation. There were recommendations. A memo from Dr. J insisting on 'not discarding a useful weapon'. There were statistics and numbers, a death-count, quite clinically listing the military numbers right next to the... civilian.
Reports on retraining. Desensitization. Discipline. I read the term 'acceptable losses'. I read the term 'additional training'. I felt sick just reading the crap over.
War and desperation can make men do some damn unspeakable things.
I still didn't understand just what in the hell the dog had to do with anything, but I understood enough.
Heero's mistake at New Edwards had not been his first brush with 'civilian casualties'. God; it was no damn wonder he'd been so quick with the self-destruct button.
I was suddenly more concerned with how long he'd been in that shower waiting for me to come upstairs and find his attempt at showing me what he hadn't been able to tell me, than what those papers had to say.
I don't even know where they fell when I dropped them. I think I was down the hall and had the bathroom door open before they hit wherever they ended up.
I could see Heero in the tub, just his vague silhouette through the shower curtain. He was standing in the back corner, leaned up against the wall. I wondered how long he'd been there, waiting for me to hear the water and come to investigate. I wondered how long it had taken me to come out of my day-dreaming to notice. It's a wonder I didn't rip the curtain getting past it. Getting to him. I went in, clothes and all. The damn water had been running long enough that it was cold. He should have been shivering his ass off? but wasn't. It made me think of something he'd said. Something I hadn't understood at the time.
'You're not what they tried to make you,' I told him fiercely, grabbing hold of him. 'You are so much more than that. So damn much more.'
It was what he'd needed to hear, because he came away from the wall and buried himself in my arms. 'You don't think I'm a...'
'No,' I cut him off before the words could come tumbling out. I didn't even know what he'd meant to say. A monster? A killer? A cold-hearted bastard? It didn't matter; I just knew it wasn't going to be good, and I didn't want to hear it. Didn't want him to hear it. Sometimes putting things into words makes it harder to set it aside. 'You are none of the things they said. You are none of the things they wanted you to be.'
'I was,' he whispered in a tone of voice that was kind of flat. Kind of resigned.
'Maybe so,' I agreed, because you don't waste your time arguing with the truth. 'So was I. So were we all. But that was then... and we aren't what we were.'
'I'm not always so sure...' he said and I pushed him away to look him in the eye.
'I am very damn sure,' I told him, and then kissed him hard. Fed him raw feeling until he choked on a sound that wanted to be a sob that didn't come clear, and he was kissing me back.
Need was an almost-living presence there with us. Though it took me a minute to understand that it was as much my reassurance he craved, as anything physical.
I wanted to take him the hell out of there right then, but my clothes were soaked through. I groped behind us and got the damn water turned off and then he had to help me peel out of the clothes that were plastered to me. I simply abandoned them there in the tub, to drain and be dealt with later. I pulled him out, and got us dry and then took us to bed where we could hide together in the dark, under the dubious security of our blankets.
He curled against me, a thing that felt strange somehow, with his head pillowed on my shoulder. 'I'm sorry I took so long,' I had to tell him.
'S'ok,' he murmured, not seeming to care at all, but I couldn't escape the vision of him standing there all alone with the icy water running over him. He felt chilled still.
'Heero?' I began, not at all sure where I was going. I wanted to encourage him to talk. I wanted to understand. But I just... ached for him. So I also wanted to help him make it all go away again, didn't want him so upset. I wanted to run his ghosts off and keep him safe from them. 'I'm here,' I finally said, though it sounded rather feeble there in the dark.
'I know,' he replied and his hand stole up to stroke gentle patterns over my chest. He was quiet for a long time before he murmured, 'I feel like such a fool.'
I couldn't help a tiny snort of derision, understanding that feeling all too well. 'You're not,' was all I said.
'I just...' he said softly, 'haven't lost myself like that... in a long time.'
I didn't speak, letting him tell it, understanding that we were finally there. It was oddly... not what I'd expected. There was nothing about it that felt good in any way. I had thought it would make me feel closer to him... but it only hurt.
'That dog,' he said at last, just seeming to want to mold himself against me, 'was so much like... M...Mary.'
'Mary?' I prompted gently, though I really didn't want to. I wanted to tell him that he didn't need to tell me anything more, but I wasn't at all sure that he didn't need to tell me. A little bit the way I'd needed to tell him.
'Isn't that sad?' he suddenly said. 'I knew the dog's name... but I never knew the little girl's.'
Somehow I knew we weren't talking about Ruthie. I raised my arm and curled it more tightly around him, carefully letting my palm rest against his side. He sighed softly, sorting through words.
'I'd wanted to prove myself so badly,' he said, voice almost not his own. 'J had such faith in me; I wanted to prove I could handle it. I just wanted to be allowed to fight.'
There wasn't much I could say to that; I understood that need? that desire, inside and out. But he knew that. He didn't need to hear me say it, to know that I'd been down my own path of fire.
'I was so damn... full of myself,' he confessed, his voice finally betraying some of the pain I knew he was in. 'I slipped into that base in broad daylight to set the charges. I was so... so fucking proud of myself... I was so damned...'
His voice choked and he ground to a halt. I held him and kissed his forehead and waited for him to begin again. Knowing that he couldn't stop now that he'd started this tale. No more than I could have.
Once the memories come out of the box, they have a tendency to dance out their parts before they'll go back to their rest.
'There was this... little girl,' he said when he could manage it. 'She... she thought I was lost.' He made a sound like a laugh crumbling away to nothing, and his hand left off stroking over my skin to slide on around me. We just held on for a bit. I felt like I should say something, but was almost afraid to. It made me feel odd? Heero had always seemed to know just what to say to me when I was struggling so damn hard with words. I felt like I was letting him down.
'We talked,' he said. 'She... let me pet her dog. The dog's name was Mary. It was all cinnamon brown and... and soft. They had no idea what I was. No idea?'
His voice, and the tension in him, told me how he'd felt about that. I remembered that strange little rush of walking bold as you please among the unsuspecting. Of smiling and speaking to people, of having them talk to you and never realize what you were on your way to do... on your way from doing. Made you feel almost smug. God? we'd been so young.
'I was to blow the installation that night,' he told me, voice steadying on the technical parts. Operation parameters are so much easier to talk about than feelings. Than guilt. Than... consequences. 'The mission was to destroy the Alliance base. I set the charge and returned that night to detonate it. Minimal crew on the night shift. The... the least amount of... the least...'
'I know,' I told him, because I couldn't listen to him struggle with it anymore. The least amount of casualties. Skeleton night crew. It was odd to remember that there had been a point in the war when that had mattered. Back before things had gotten... intense.
He nodded his head against my shoulder in acknowledgement, letting me know he was grateful not to have to say it. But really? I'd seen the report; it was the least of what we had to get through yet.
'You don't have to,' I told him, suddenly remembering when he'd made that offer to me. At the time, I remembered thinking that it was far too late for that, and it was probably the same for him now, but I understood the need to say it. Understood suddenly the need to try and spare.
'I know,' he whispered and shifted so he could twine his leg over mine, settling as close as he could. I felt his breath sigh across my chest.
He knew I had the gist of it, knew he didn't have to tell me every minute little detail and when he spoke again, he'd skipped forward a bit. 'They said later that I miscalculated the charge, but it wasn't really that. I just wanted? I?'
Had just wanted to be certain. Had just wanted to pass the test. Had only wanted to make absolutely sure of the assignment. Had only wanted to prove himself.
I knew. God, did I know. He couldn't say it, and I kissed his brow gently, absolving him of the need. He tilted his face up to meet mine then, almost suddenly, but waited for me to bring us together. I kissed him willingly, trying to give back at least in part some of the endless support he's always given me. It ate at me seeing him so unsure of himself. So unsure of me.
I tried to imagine him back then, it seemed so damn long ago, though it wasn't... not really. A thousand life-times, but less than a dozen years.
'I found them,' he told me, quite suddenly cutting to the heart of it. 'In the rubble. She lived in the residential quarters. I found... them... I...'
I just couldn't bear to hear any more; I turned to pull him completely into my arms and he came quite readily. 'I know, love... I know,' I soothed and felt him heave a sigh that I hoped was relief.
I could only imagine the fixation he'd had on that little girl and her dog Mary. The casualty list had been? long, but Heero had not stopped and spoken with all the others. Had not been introduced to their dogs. Had not talked about being lost.
I thought about that child, and that dog, and truly understood what had happened on our front steps.
The crash after the high always made things worse. To go in and do the job, to think you have it nailed and perfect... only to have it all go to hell in your face, is infinitely worse than just generally fucking up, if you understand what I mean.
You know, I really don't know that I could have gone on, had I been in his place all those years ago. I don't think I could have continued to fight the fight... no matter my reasoning. No matter the training I'd have been wasting. No matter the revenge I'd have forsaken.
The fact that he'd been able to, kind of filled me with a twisted sort of pride.
It's a daunting thing to find that breed of strength curled in your arms.
We were down to the soft murmurings then. Words of comfort on my part. A few more words of confession on his. Apologies. Acceptance. Until he eventually fell asleep, exhausted, with his head still pillowed on my arm.
I was a very long time following him. I don't sleep well with shit stuck in my craw.
You know, I pretty much gave those five scientists their ride to Hell. I suppose if you want to get severely technical, I have to take some responsibility for their deaths. And I suppose the fact that they went to those deaths quite willingly, doing their part to stop Zechs' lunatic plan, should absolve them of a lot.
But it would never be enough, in my book, for what that fucker Dr. J did to Heero. Damn bastard. I went through Gundam training too. So did Trowa, and Quatre, and Wufei. None of the rest of us were told we weren't allowed to feel. None of the rest of us were told to check our humanity at the door. None of the rest of us endured that kind of 'retraining' for our mistakes.
While Dr. G was never what I would have called a father figure for me, I can't ever say the man went out of his way to be cruel. He trained me, or saw to my training, and there was nothing about it that was easy. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Not easy for a full grown adult soldier, much less a scrawny little kid. But from what I'd just read, he didn't have shit on Heero's own personal SOB.
Had I known then what I know now, I'm not entirely sure that Dr. J would have lived to make that crossing to the Peacemillion. I might have crushed the bastard in the hand of my Gundam.
My Heero was more than just a weapon. More than just a damn tool.
Like I said... I was a long time joining him in sleep.
I was a little surprised that there weren't nightmares, but Heero has never been the 'thrash and yell' type. My own bad dreams have put me on the floor more than once, but he kind of... contains his. If he has them. I'm assuming that he has them. Hell; he might have enough damn control over his sub-conscious mind that he just doesn't, but I don't think so. Sometimes there's a haunted quality in his eyes in the morning, and sometimes he wakes needing to make love in a way that speaks of desperation.
But he seemed peaceful enough that night, so when I woke from my own unsettled dreams, I didn't really hesitate to leave the bed. He didn't need my tossing and turning, after all, and since I was awake anyway, I might as well try to get some work done on the stupid painting that I needed for the stupid art show that was coming up in something like a stupid week.
Stupid damn idea; should have just gone for the second job.
If I had not already had so much time invested in that damn picture, I think I would have been tempted to trash it. I was heartily sick of it and at five in the morning, was suddenly a little aware that it was a large part of my irritation with the whole damn endeavor. The only thing that was even letting me consider turning it over to Aleyah's tender mercies, was knowing that no one would ever know who he was or just what the thing was all about. Would never know that they were looking at the portrait of a rapist and murderer. Would never realize that they were looking at a man that had haunted my dreams for a lot of years. Guess I was never quite going to let go of the guilt over that one.
I was just finishing the shadows at Jensen's feet when warm arms slid around my waist and soft lips brushed across the back of my shoulder. I shivered and had to bite back a gasp, finally getting the touch I'd been wanting for days.
'Part of your... rough week?' Heero asked gently, and I snorted.
'Guess so,' I confessed, leaning into him. 'Wish these damn things would consult me before I start painting.' He chuckled softly and nuzzled against my hair.
'Things?' he asked, not understanding at all, I don't think.
'Ideas? Muses? Errant thoughts?' I sighed. 'I don't know... whatever damn whim starts these projects.'
'You all right?' he said, his voice knowing, and I was a little surprised.
'You...' I said, turning my head to try to look at him. 'You know what this is?'
'Yes,' he affirmed gently, and gave me a tight squeeze. 'Can't say I'm happy to find you've been... working through this all alone.'
I ignored the somewhat embarrassing statement and went for the other part. 'Quatre recognized it too. How in the hell...?'
'You sketched him, remember?' he told me and I had to stop and think about it. It had been a long time ago.
I blinked owlishly at the canvas in front of us, because I couldn't really turn far enough to see Heero all that well. 'You... recognize the man in this painting based on a two minute sketch I did all those years ago?'
'I had reason to memorize that face,' he murmured, and though his voice was soft, his tone was as hard as steel.
'Oh,' was the best I could come up with, but then I felt him tense and I made the effort to turn enough to see him. He'd spotted the other paintings and I wasn't surprised when he moved away from me to go look at them. I took the moment to clean out my brush; it would be nearing time to get ready for work, after all.
He gave Aleyah's portrait a glance and I saw him quirk a little, amused grin at it. Perhaps imagining what she was going to think of it. But then he looked further, and Allison's portrait he had to pick up.
'Oh, Duo,' he sighed, and it was my turn to go slip arms around him from behind. 'I'm sorry I wasn't here,' he told me and turned to kiss my cheek.
I shrugged and shared a grin with nobody in particular. 'Had plenty of company,' I quipped before I had a chance to think better of it. He set the picture carefully down and turned to pull me into his arms. He seemed to want to say a million things and I wasn't sure that any of it was going to be something I wanted to talk about. So, 'How are you feeling this morning?' I asked instead, before he had a chance.
'Stupid?' he chuckled after a moment, though I could tell he hadn't really wanted to change subjects.
'You know this is the part where I tell you how damn amazing you are, and you have to take it, because you did it to me on my 'morning after', right?' I grinned and kissed the side of his neck. It won me a full, if somewhat rueful laugh, but he didn't have a reply, so we just stood with our arms wrapped tight around each other. Offering with mere presence all the things that words might have made too painful.
He was the one who finally broke away, telling me, 'We have to get ready to go... it's getting late.'
'Guess that means I can't talk you into playing hooky?' I teased, though I wasn't really serious, I'd already missed enough work.
'Look where that got us last time,' he snorted and took my hand, giving it a tug just as though he thought he was really going to have to fight with me over it.
I followed him out of the studio and up the stairs, sighing dramatically and playing the game. It helped us put it all aside for the moment, and I guess that's what I'd been missing the most. Just another living being to help me focus enough not to think about the crap I didn't want to be thinking about.
With Heero back in the house, even Jensen's portrait was... just another painting.
We cleaned up, we dressed, we ate breakfast and were on our merry way with only one awkward little moment as we made our way down the front steps. Heero gave me a look that told me he wanted to apologize again, and I just stepped up beside him, bumping shoulders with him and giving him a look that kept the words from coming out. Then we climbed in his car, following our routine just like he'd never been gone.
I cheerfully waved at a woman I took to be Ruthie's mother, from the fact that she was standing on her front lawn in her housecoat waiting for Buffy to finish watering the shrubs. She waved back, though she looked a little confused and a little embarrassed all at the same time. I made a mental note to walk down to their house some evening and introduce myself since I was becoming so acquainted with her kids.
'So,' Heero ventured hesitantly after a couple of blocks. 'You going to tell me some more about this... funeral we're going to this evening?'
Oh yeah. Guess that would be fair.
'It's not exactly a funeral,' I told him, looking out my side window. 'Have you ever been to an Irish wake?'
'No,' he said, 'but I think I get the gist of it.'
I sighed heavily. 'A Spacer send-off is kinda like that.'
'Spacer send-off?' he asked, sounding like he wasn't quite sure what to make of that.
'We...' I began and then rethought that. 'Spacer's don't really go in for the standard 'bury 'em in the dirt' kind of thing. So there's no real funeral.' Just a couple of friends to raise a final glass, space your ashes, and wave goodbye. A lot cheaper than a ground-bounder funeral too.
I forced myself to tear my gaze from the fascinating scenery when his fingers brushed across my thigh. 'You... ok?' he asked, and I gave him my hand to hold on to.
'Yeah,' I reassured, trying not to let it come out on a sigh. 'Just... such a damn waste.' I ended up telling him the whole stupid, gory story, such as it was, just as I'd gotten it from McMurphy. I hadn't really meant to, but at least he didn't get the terminal guilt part. There was no real reason for him to make that connection; he'd only seen me around Jock that one time. I don't think he'd ever pieced together that I'd talked the poor sap down from situations like that a dozen damn times. Talked him down when nobody else could sometimes.
I never seem to be in the right damn place at the right time.
'So this service... thing is actually going to be at McMurphy's?' Heero asked and I wasn't sure if he wasn't just a bit scandalized by that fact. But then he'd been thinking for the past couple of days that we were talking a black suit and tie kind of thing.
I snorted, imagining the evening. 'All the better for those involved to get rip roaring drunk.'
I felt him look at me as much as saw it. His gaze had a certain? weight to it. 'Are you... all right with that?'
I sighed, trying to recall if I'd ever said anything to him about the vague unease I had about alcohol now, or if I had Wufei to thank for passing on that little tidbit of information. 'I'm not planning on getting soused,' I informed him, just a touch of something snappish in it.
He squeezed my hand and when I looked, he quirked that little lop-sided grin at me. 'Well, you know I've got your back if you decide you want to... right?'
I couldn't help the chuckle at the mental picture of Heero Yuy playing designated driver for me and the Musketeers back in the day. 'I think I'll pass, thanks,' I grinned, and he seemed relieved despite his offer.
'I'm assuming then,' he quipped, 'that the suit I thought I'd be wearing would be... a little out of place?'
That made me laugh just right the hell out loud. I'm not sure that McMurphy's place had ever seen a freakin' tie. 'Just a little bit,' I grinned, when I was able. 'The uniform of the day will be jeans and smart-ass slogan shirts.'
Heero groaned. 'Please don't tell me you'll be wearing that beaver shirt...'
I grinned ruthlessly and actually thought about it for a couple of seconds. Heero absolutely hates the thing ever since he realized that his naive little Relena paraded around L2 in it without knowing about the three... manner-challenged Beavers on the back. 'Nah,' I finally said. 'I've got way more obnoxious shirts than that.'
He raised an eye-brow and gave me a look that was supposed to quell me. 'I'm so reassured,' he dead-panned, but since we were pulling up to the Preventors' building, I had to let it go.
He gave my hand one last squeeze just before I climbed out of the car and I was moved to tell him, 'I'm glad to have you home, Yuy.'
He looked pleased, gracing me with that smile of his that always makes me feel warm all over.
And then it was time to go the hell to work.
I have come to hate time-clocks. In the salvage business, you worked when you had work and you stopped when you were tired. Or you stopped when you could. It was way less... regimented than this weird ground-bounder method of daylight versus dark. It bugged me that it mattered if I walked through the door in the morning at a quarter till eight, eight, or eight-fifteen. Give me a break; fifteen minutes out of a day should not matter so damn much. If I was early, I had to wait to clock in or some poor clerk upstairs in the main building had a coronary over 'unauthorized' over-time. If I was late, I got docked for the full half hour. It just seemed so damn anal to me.
And at the same time, it drove me nuts to be in the middle of a job and have to quit just because the clock said it was five. It's just stupid; unproductive and wasteful. You lose all that time putting your tools away only to get them back out in the morning and start all over again. You lose the thread of what you were doing and waste time getting back into the job. Why not just work until you're done?
And if anybody could ever find a logical explanation for me about the flow of time from day to day, I would be greatly appreciative. The last few days, waiting for Heero to come home, had crept by like sluggish oil down a clogged drain. I thought the days were never going to end. But that day, with a damn Spacer's social event I didn't want to go to loaming in my face, the day sped by like the spray from a damn garden hose. Noon, before I had a chance to blink, and almost time to go home before I thought to get a little hungry over the missed lunch. And the jobs I'd been doing were not even all that interesting. Boredom was usually a recipe for long days, but nothing ever goes the way I want it too.