Archive of Our Own ^beta

Duo and Heero weren't a couple, no matter how Quatre sighed about it. Duo wasn't even sure Heero knew what sex was, except perhaps as a way of distracting a target. Or if he had any idea what a relationship was, beyond grudging compatriotism. Heero was very good at sacrificing for the cause, but having a relationship seemed beyond him.

After the war, they'd split up and gone their separate ways. Wufei was living with Sally Po, though he seemed to think the others didn't know it. Quatre had taken his company back, and had spoken out in favor of the pilots, though thankfully Trowa had seemed to talk him out of revealing himself as one of them. Duo had planned on going back into salvage – he was good at it, he liked it, and it was mostly legal most of the time. But then Heero would have been left all alone and -. Well. Heero had been making slight amounts of progress in being a person instead of a machine, and Duo had the sinking feeling that if they all just fucked off and let him be, he'd go right back to being someone's weapon.

So Duo stayed. Found out where Heero's hospital room was and camped out in it, even when Heero wouldn't talk to him and kept giving him angry looks whenever he did manage to wake up. When Heero decided to discharge himself in the middle of the night without asking anyone, Duo followed him. He'd eventually bullied Heero into getting an apartment with him. Heero bought them a two story house on one of the nicer L2 colonies, instead. Apparently Heero was loaded. He'd stolen enough money over the years for them to be able to afford pretty much any place they wanted. Duo had his own money of course, because what was the point of waging war on an evil organization if you couldn't take their money. He didn't have half of what Heero had.

Heero's artist career had started when Trowa brought him paints, and canvas, and told him that if he couldn't deal with his feelings, then he should try to get them out onto canvas instead. Duo thought Heero would ignore him, like he ignored everything else, but instead, Heero had set up the canvas and laid out the paints and started painting furiously.

Quatre was the one to blame for Heero getting famous. He'd taken one of Heero's paintings – a pair of wings barely sketched out in charcoal, then covered with gouache and called 'finished,' and hung it up in his office where everyone who was anyone could see it any time they visited. People demanded to know where he'd gotten it, so Quatre had gotten Heero an agent and a gallery and Heero had filled it with paintings of wings.

He didn't seem to paint anything else – just wings. People with wings, dogs with wings, giant robots with wings – well. Duo had seen that one coming, at least. Heero was fascinated with them. Art critics blathered on about them being a symbol of purity and redemption after the war, and maybe that was it, but Duo had the suspicion that it really just stemmed from the fact that Heero had an unhealthy relationship with his Gundam. Which Duo had never seen, since Heero crashed it to Earth. He suspected Heero still had all the pieces hidden away somewhere.

Then just as suddenly as he'd started – Heero stopped painting wings altogether. Any of his gallery pieces – no wings. He painted almost anything and everything, but unless he painted a bird, there were no wings. The art community had a field day about it, trying to figure out why he stopped painting them. People tried to pay him exorbitant amounts of money to paint more, so Heero did an entire series of terrible landscape paintings as a rebuttal, but people didn't stop asking.

His obsession with wings didn't disappear – it transmuted. Soon Heero started painting wings on everything in the damn house. If it was his, he painted wings on it. It drove Duo crazy. Even their dishes – Heero painted tiny wings under the rims of plates, bowls, on the bottom of cups, on his damn chopsticks. He got a needle and thread and stitched wings on his clothes.

At one point, Heero ran out of canvas, and asked Duo if he could paint his back. Duo eventually gave in, and got a book to read while he sat there and Heero carefully brushed a design on his back. He still hadn't gotten an answer about why Heero wanted to paint him, but Heero was calm and seemed genuinely happy, so Duo let him. Anything to keep him from going into one of his rages or worse, going completely catatonic like he tended to do when he wasn't working out or eating or painting or angry.

This went on for an hour or so, when Duo looked up at the mirror on the wall behind them and saw that Heero was painting wings on his back. Great big ridiculously detailed wings. Shit.

“Hey...Heero.”

“Hn.”

“Why're you painting wings on my back?”

“You don't like them?”

“I didn't say that. It's just. You only paint wings on things you own.”

Heero just looked at him, like Duo was being deliberately obtuse.

“You don't own me. You...know that, right?”

“You can't own people, Duo. It isn't legal.”

“Would that stop you?”

“No.”

Heero didn't seem like he was planning on elaborating, and just kept working on filling in the feathers with ridiculous detail instead. Duo gave up, and went back to his book. When Heero had finished one wing and was half done the second, he said,

“There's a gallery opening tonight. I hope you're free because you're going to be in it.”

Duo managed to squawk “ WHAT ?!” without twitching his back and messing Heero up, mostly because he knew Heero would kill him.

“It's a demonstration piece. I'm painting Trowa, too. He's supposed to be here in an hour.”

“You – you – you .”

“Yep.” Heero popped the 'p' on purpose. “I'm expressing myself.”

“Christ. You're a terrible person, you know that?”

Heero just looked at him, very still. “But I am a person.”

“Yeah. You are.” And they went back to their silent activities. Heero didn't say anything else, and Duo didn't push.

Trowa showed up exactly on time, and just like he'd promised, Heero painted him too. But there were no wings for Trowa – Heero painted two koi, one golden – small, but rich, and one larger, slender one, done in green and gray. They were circling around each other, but their tails intertwined. Heero was apparently making a statement.

When they got to the gallery, Duo didn't know what to say. There were pictures he'd never seen Heero paint before all over the gallery but there wasn't a single pair of wings in sight, except for the ones he'd painted on Duo's back. Duo stood there all night, while people stared at his back. He felt – awkward. Trowa managed to look like sex on legs the entire night, even though he was wearing relatively conservative pants and a mask.

At the end of the show, Heero brought him a shirt and took him out to dinner. It was strangely like a date, except Heero didn't really say much, just moved his food around his plate while sampling small bites of everything. After he did that and didn't keel over from poison, he ate normally, but he still didn't really say anything. His eyebrows settled into this frustrated line, like he wanted to say something, but he had no idea how to proceed for this sort of interaction.

Duo picked up the slack, as usual. He didn't mind. “So...why was that one lady staring at me for so long? She stared at me for like – three hours. It was kinda creepy.”

“Oh,” Heero said, twirling his noodles, “She paid two million dollars.”

Only his reflexes kept him from spitting out his food all over the table. Well, that and the fact that this was a seriously nice restaurant. “She did what?!”

“It was a charity auction, did I tell you that?” Heero asked. “For war orphans. That's...why I painted you and Trowa. Stupid rich people eat that up – performance art. It's about the experience. Or something. My agent told me about it. Worked out pretty well. We raised a ton of money and I made a donation, too, and. It should help.”

“But. There weren't any pictures. Or anything. She didn't take me home. She's never going to see it again!”

“It's for charity.” Heero said tiredly, and signaled for the check. “I want to go home.”

“I'm sorry. Did I -?” Had he actually managed to hurt Heero's feelings?

“Lets just go.”

Heero didn't let him look at the check, he just paid and walked Duo home. The whole thing was very strange. When they got home, Heero undressed him slowly and then posed him, and took pictures of his back. Duo thought that was strange too, since he'd literally just said it was performance art. But maybe that was only for the patrons, and it meant something else to him? Duo was really confused about this whole day.

He held completely still when Heero put down the camera and came up behind him, put his arms around Duo's waist and hooked his chin on Duo's shoulder. Duo had been growing lately, and Heero hadn't, so it was a stretch, but it was. Well. Duo almost expected Heero to kiss him or something. It was very intimate. He didn't know if he'd ever actually seen Heero get this close to anyone he wasn't assassinating. Of course with that thought he tensed up a bit, but then relaxed back into Heero's loose grip when nothing happened.

They stood like that for probably half an hour, and then Heero let go and went to bed without saying another word.

xxx

Heero was growing marijuana on their porch. Not that it was illegal – marijuana was legal in most of the colonies for personal and medicinal use, and on many Earth territories. It was just strange. Heero didn't do drugs. He didn't smoke, didn't drink, nothing. But he apparently smoked weed.

Not that Duo didn't approve. He was seriously tense. It would probably do him some good. He was a little worried about how often Heero would just sit on their porch and smoke and do nothing. He got pissed off less, which was good, though he'd still put himself through brutal workouts that made Duo's muscles twinge in sympathy. But he slept better - Duo hadn't woken up with Heero's hand around his throat in months – though to be fair, he'd freaked a little bit the last time and stabbed Heero back with the knife he kept under his pillow so maybe that was just self preservation kicking in.

So maybe the weed was helping, maybe it wasn't. Duo wasn't a therapist, and he wasn't planning on seeing one any time soon, or sending Heero to one either, like he'd even go. If they didn't arrest Heero for his crimes against humanity they'd probably drug him up to his eyeballs and institutionalize him. Heero made the rest of them look well adjusted, even now.

Duo worked at a mechanics shop during the day, helping decommission military weapons and re-purpose them into something else; usually farming or mining equipment. It was technically a government job, but he was working for an independent company affiliated with the Sweepers, and they hadn't asked for a background check. He liked his job well enough, and there was something satisfying about making the world safer instead of just blowing thing up. Though he did sort of miss blowing things up.

Duo was less happy when he realized that Heero wasn't sleeping better so much as just not sleeping at all. As far as he could tell, Heero slept during the day while Duo was gone, if he actually got any sleep. He seemed to do a lot of catnapping in the sun on the porch right after he smoked, but of course that wasn't really sleeping. Duo didn't even know how long Heero could go without sleep. Longer than a normal person, for sure. He'd pulled more missions more closely together than the rest of them, stayed up for days at a time repairing his Gundam or doing research when they'd had overlapping missions and had been staying together. In short – Heero had never been very good at taking care of himself.

Duo knew Heero didn't sleep at night any more, because that was when he painted. Duo would go to bed and when he woke up, Heero would have half a dozen new paintings drying. Though it hadn't always been that way; when they'd first started living together Heero had gone to bed whenever Duo had, and had usually woken Duo up with his nightmares, or with the aforementioned hand around his throat while he flashed back to some time or another.

Today Heero was awake when he got home, sitting against the wall in a wrinkled tank top and a ratty pair of jeans – no shoes or socks on. There was an ash tray next to him filled with the ends of blunts, and there were the beginnings of circles under his eyes, so he apparently hadn't slept at all today. He was eating an apple and reading The Joy of Sex. Sitting next to him in an inconspicuous stack were battered copies of The Joy of Gay Sex, Sex and Gender Expression, and What if I Just Don't Want Sex: A guide to asexual relationships. Well damn.

“Doing some light reading?”

Heero gave him a withering glare and bit into his apple while simultaneously making it look like a threat. “I jacked off for the first time yesterday.”

“Um.” He had to have heard that wrong, right? They were – well, no one really knew how old Heero was, not even Heero. But Duo was turning eighteen soon, and there was – there was no way Heero'd never jacked off, right? Right? Except Heero's eyebrows were doing that thing again, which meant he was just as uncomfortable with this conversation as Duo, or maybe more, and shit, he wasn't kidding.

“Why would you tell me that?” Ouch. That probably wasn't the right thing to say.

“Who else am I going to tell?” Heero growled.

“I – I don't know. I – look. Sorry. Just – I'll be right back.”

Duo practically ran to his room and pulled off all his work clothes, and slipped into something more comfortable. He didn't put on shoes or socks, either, and came back into the main room shaking out his hair from where it'd been coiled up under his hat all day. He sat down next to Heero, who was ignoring him fiercely now, glaring down at his book.

“Don't do that. Don't shut me out. I'm sorry, okay? That was really shitty of me.”

Heero glared at the book for a while longer, then sighed, and put it down. He closed eyes and leaned back, his head hitting the wall with a 'thunk.' He looked – tired.

“It was – good. I didn't know I could feel good like that.”

Duo bit his lip to keep from blurting out something stupid. When he was sure he wasn't going to fuck it up more, he said, “I'm. Glad you can. You deserve to feel good, you know?”

“Do I?”

Duo risked reaching out and putting his hand on Heero's knee. “Yeah. You do. Look – I'm not going to spout off any nonsense about how the war wasn't your fault and all that. We killed people. Yeah, it worked out in the end but we did what we did and nothing's going to change that. Maybe it was for a good cause – I have to believe that we've made the world a better place than it was before. I have to. But that doesn't mean I don't still have nightmares, that I don't feel shitty about it.

“I don't know what happened to you, before. And you don't have to tell me, unless you want to. But you're still a person; hell, we're practically still kids. You deserve to feel good, to live. Especially if you – haven't. Before.”

Heero didn't respond for a long time, though his hand did come up to rest on top of Duo's. They weren't really holding hands, but it still felt significant somehow.

“You are the worst motivational speaker I've ever heard.”

“Hey!” Duo shoved his knee lightly. “When have you even heard a motivational speech anyway?”

“Besides all the war speeches? I was in a lot of boarding schools, you know.”

“Yeah. I'm glad we didn't go back to school.”

Heero groaned. “No. I never want to go back to school ever again.”

Before Duo could reply, Heero opened his eyes, a determined look on his face. He pushed the books out of the way and laid down, his head in Duo's lap. Duo froze.

Heero sighed, and reached up to bring Duo's hand down to his shoulder. “Is – is this okay?”

“Yeah. Yes. Yep. Definitely okay.” Just – talk about masturbating with your roommate and initiate pretty much the most intimate contact they'd ever had. Duo could handle that. No problems. Hopefully not awkward boners, either. Oh god.

He sort of wanted to kiss Heero. Oh what was he saying – he really wanted to kiss Heero, very much. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he'd not gotten laid since the day Heero had painted his back – okay, fine, maybe it had a little bit to do with that; he was horny. But mostly it had to do with the fact that Heero had been acting more than a little bit strange since the whole back painting incident. Duo couldn't say for sure that Heero was trying to have a relationship with him. Nothing that had happened would be outside the realms of friendship for a normal person but. For Heero it really seemed like he was reaching out. Duo didn't want to ruin it, even if that meant not having sex with anyone else while Heero figured it out.

He should probably just ask but – well. It looked like Heero was struggling with his sexuality, and human behavior had never been his strong suit anyway. There was every possibility that asking would embarrass him, and if Heero was just trying to be friends and not date him then it could prove disastrous. He didn't want to discourage Heero from seeking out human contact, even if it was confusing the hell out of him.

“Can I – um. Your hair. Can I?”

“I don't really understand what you're saying.” Heero admitted. “Just do it, and I'll tell you to stop if I don't like it.”

“And you won't uh. Break my arm?”

“If you try to cop a feel, maybe.”

“No! I wouldn't do that.”

“Alright then.”

So Duo veeeeery carefully put his hand in Heero's hair and made what he hoped were soothing motions. He'd always liked it when Sister Helen had done this for him. It was very calming, and it had made him feel safe, and loved. He figured Heero could probably use some of that. They weren't at war any more, and if it was up to him to show Heero that people could touch each other without violence occurring, so be it.

“That feels -”

Duo's hand stilled.

“Good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They stayed that way for hours. Heero fell asleep at some point, his breathing evening out. It got dark, Duo's stomach rumbled, but he didn't move until Heero finally jerked awake and pulled away. Heero didn't say anything else about it. He picked up his books and went back to his room, though he did come out when Duo got around to making dinner.

Several weeks later, Duo was at yet another gallery showing, and he stopped in front of a relatively small, unobtrusive canvas. It was a painting of a young man coming up out of water – what kind of water, Duo didn't know. The man was gasping for breath, but it almost looked like – no. No way. He wouldn't.

Duo glanced down at the price tag to see that Heero had had the audacity to price the damn thing at 500,000 dollars, and it had already been sold. Heero came up to him, looking way too damn pleased with himself.

“Heero.”

“Mm? You don't like my painting?”

“You painted your o-face and sold it for half a million dollars.” Duo hissed.

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Heero said, but he was smiling.

xxx

Duo didn't mean to eavesdrop on Heero's private conversation with Quatre. He came home just like he did every day, he wasn't even trying to be quiet. Only, when he came in, Heero was standing on the porch with the glass door open and Duo could hear every word.

“What am I supposed to say Quatre? 'Oh, hey Duo, I'm desperately in love with you, only, I'm not sure I really understand what love is. Please date me. Oh, and I hope you don't like sex all that much because I don't really want to ever have it.”

Heero was facing away from him – he clearly hadn't heard Duo come in, which meant he must have been very worked up.

“No it's not the same as you and Trowa. You two have been together for practically forever. Yes I noticed. I'm trained to notice, even if no one ever bothered to teach me how to have a relationship myself. Besides Trowa practically breathes sex and I -”

He was pacing now. He still hadn't noticed Duo was there and at this point Duo wasn't really sure what he should do. If he moved Heero would probably see him, but if he didn't move, he'd just keep overhearing what was most definitely supposed to be a private conversation.

“What am I going to do? Hire a hooker? I'm not going to try having sex with some random -”

Loud, rapid swearing in enough different languages that Duo couldn't follow interrupted the conversation.

“Never offer me Trowa like that ever again. I don't care if it was his idea, it was a terrible idea. Aren't you supposed to be good at reading emotions?”

Heero turned then, and saw him. His whole body went rigid, his face closed off. Shit.

“Look, I have to go. I'll see you – later. Some time. Yeah. Okay. Bye.”

“Heeeeeey Heero. Look, I um.”

“Save it. I'm going to Wufei's for a week.”

“What?”

Heero's eyes were cold. “I don't want to talk about what you just heard. I've been planning on going to visit Wufei for a while. Alone. Just.” Heero closed his eyes and grit his teeth, grinding the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Just. Maybe we'll talk about it later.”

And then he stalked off to his room, presumably to pack. Which meant that they wouldn't talk about it until at least Heero got back, which meant they probably wouldn't talk about it at all. Great. That could have gone better.

He didn't hear from Heero for the entire week. After about four days, he tried calling Wufei, but all the other man would say was, “If he doesn't want to talk to you, I'm not going to be a messenger pigeon. He's fine, he'll be home at the end of the week.”

So that was awesome.

Heero returned exactly when Wufei said he would, with an entirely new wardrobe, and a more angry than usual scowl on his face. Apparently he hadn't enjoyed his trip. He looked – haggard, like he hadn't slept at all the entire time he was gone, which Duo supposed was possible. He would have thought Heero would be comfortable sleeping at Wufei's, since they had fought together, but apparently not. Maybe Wufei's security system wasn't up to Heero's exacting standards.

Heero didn't speak until he'd put his things away in his room, come back out and made a cup of coffee, and then sat down with it at the table, nursing it slowly. When he did speak, he made no fucking sense at all.

“How old do I look?”

“What?”

Heero's glare was particularly fierce. “How old do I look? It's just a fucking question.”

“Okay, okay. Jeez. Bad trip?” Duo grumbled, and sat down across the table from Heero and really looked at him. He tended to avoid doing that because Heero had fantastic everything and Duo was horny as fuck.

Now that he really looked at Heero, he realized with a jolt that the other man didn't look a day over sixteen. Even though Duo knew he himself was approaching nineteen and he looked it – shooting up in height, putting on weight, his face just generally looking older, Heero didn't. He looked like a particularly mulish teenager, especially in the navy blue zip up hoodie and light gray undershirt he had on at the moment. He didn't even really have any facial hair. There were a few hairs starting to peek through stubbornly along his jaw, but they were patchy at best. Nothing like what happened when Duo didn't shave for a few days. Some of that could have been Heero's ancestry, but no one actually knew how much Japanese Heero actually had in him. He, Duo and Trowa had all come from mixed neighborhoods in the colonies; they didn't know who their parents had been, much less the rest of their family trees.

“I dunno. Eighteen maybe?” That was a dirty dirty lie. He looked sixteen at the most.

“I'm twenty-five.”

Duo actually did spit coffee everywhere this time. Of all the sudden, unexpected statements Heero had ever made, this one was the most astounding. “Twenty-five?”

Heero was glaring angrily down at the table, tracing around the rim of his mug faster and faster in his irritation. “I didn't actually go to visit Wufei. I went to stay with him and let Sally do tests on me.”

Ouch. Heero hated hospitals, or doctors, or testing. They all did, really. They'd had enough of that before the war ended. “That -” he tried to choose his words carefully, “Why did you decide to do that?”

“Because I don't want sex!” Heero exploded. “I don't age, I can't grow facial hair, I hurt all the fucking time, I'm not getting any taller, I can barely gain weight, and I don't want sex!”

“You know – being asexual is -”

“But I don't know if I'm asexual. I don't know anything. I might not even be human!”

“Of course you're -”

“No!” Heero's voice was rising, it had a hysterical edge to it now and his eyes were wild. “I'm not aging right. I've got – my DNA is mangled, I've got nanites all through my body. It's why I heal so fast, why I can stand injuries that would kill a normal person. I only need four hours of sleep at most, I can eat pretty much anything and sustain myself. I made a really fucking good soldier but I'm not -” He gripped the mug tight enough to shatter it all over the table.

“Shit.” Duo stood and ran for the towels to clean up the mess. He mopped up the coffee and then got the dust pan to sweep up all the little shards of ceramic. “Are you okay?”

“No.” Heero's voice wobbled a little bit, like he was going to cry.

“Look, lets – c'mon, out here.” Duo motioned him over to the living room floor where Heero usually took naps in the sun. It was a particularly nice day out today – they must have been scheduled some extra sun this rotation. It was warm and soothing, just what Heero needed.

“Sit – here, like this. Is this okay?” Duo pulled Heero back against his chest, Duo's legs on either side of him. He forced himself not to get sidetracked by Heero's body. This was about comfort, not sex.

“I -” Heero shuddered, and exhaled before relaxing against Duo. He was still tense, but he was always tense. Heero put his head back against Duo's shoulder and closed his eyes, and swallowed. “Yeah. Can you -” he tugged Duo's arms up around his waist, “like that.”

There was pretty much no denying they were in an intimate position now. Cuddling was definitely the operative word. It felt – really fucking good to have Heero in his arms like this though. “This is okay?”

“Yeah. This is okay.”

“Okay then. Just relax, and. Talk when you want to. Or don't talk. We don't have to talk if you don't want to.”

Heero took him up on that, and just sat there with him for a while soaking up the sun. Duo had actually thought he'd fallen asleep when he started talking again.

“Sally's tests were inconclusive. She couldn't tell what happened to me. My DNA is all – fucked up. If I'm human I'm extremely enhanced.”

“I don't think you're AI, or whatever you're thinking. There are no known androids; no one's built anything that functions on a higher level than the Mobile Dolls, and I killed a lot of those myself. We're not even close to building something that looks human.”

Heero's voice was quiet and small and – scared. “Except me, maybe.”

“No. No fucking way. Just because you don't want sex -”

“That's not the only reason! I don't have emotions! I don't cry, I can't – I can't talk to people.”

“You were brainwashed and abused and emotionally stunted. But that doesn't mean you're an android.”

“I wasn't abused.” Heero spat. “I shouldn't be able to do what I do. It just shouldn't work – I should be dead by now. I've got scar tissue on all my major organs, I've broken pretty much every bone in my body. You didn't see me after I self destructed. Well, I didn't either but I've talked to Trowa about it. I was basically just a bloody piece of meat at that point.”

“I don't. Want to remember that.” Duo said stiffly. He could still see it though; the image was practically burned into his brain.

Heero laughed but it was really more of a sob. “Yeah. Me either.”

“Look. Heero, think about it logically. If the old men had actually been able to make androids that passed for human, you really think they would have designed a kid? Why not arrange to have someone like Treize kidnapped and replace him with a drone under their control?”

“...maybe.”

“No, I'm serious. C'mon, think about it. Would J really have let you out of his control for so long if you were actually such an advanced piece of hardware? He wouldn't have wanted you out of his sight.”

“I -” Heero's face looked agonized. “I wasn't abused. It was – it was consensual. I agreed to -”

“To what? Having them experiment on you? Having them drug you out of your mind for what had to have been years of tests and changes? If you're twenty five, they had to have had you for what, six years longer than any of us?”

“But I – I wanted to. To help win the war and.” Heero cut himself off. “You know...I don't know what year it was, when they took me in. I was really young, and alone, and I just – I don't even know where I was. Somewhere the war was ravaging. But there were skirmishes all over, I could have been anywhere. I don't know how long they – kept me.”

It was like the horror of his childhood was hitting him all at once. Heero crumpled, turned and actually put his face in Duo's shoulder and shuddered. Duo didn't know if he was actually crying – like Heero said, he just didn't cry, ever. Duo started thinking about what they would have had to do to make him not cry like that, and then shoved those thoughts away. If Heero wanted to talk about it they would; he didn't need to make up scenarios.

Duo hugged him a little tighter. “I don't care. You're still human, no matter what they did to you. And I -” he was so not dropping the 'l' bomb in this conversation, “I know you. I know you have trouble with emotions but let me tell you, I've got emotions to spare, and you've got them.”

Heero snorted. “Terrible motivational speaker.”

“Oh shut up and enjoy hugging me.”

“I am.” Some of the tension actually bled out of Heero's shoulders. “We should do this more often. If – that's okay.”

“Yes!” Duo cleared his throat. He might have been blushing a bit. “Uh. What I mean is um. I – like you?”

This time Heero's laugh sounded more genuine. “I – like you too?”

“We're hopeless.”

xxx

Duo really wasn't sure if they were dating now. He still hadn't asked Heero outright, and Heero hadn't said he wanted to talk about the conversation Duo had overheard. They hadn't had the conversation on asexuality either, but Duo had been doing a lot of reading. He really wanted to make this work between them, if Heero wanted it to. And even if Heero didn't want it, Duo still wanted to understand and not make him feel shitty about it. He got the impression Heero thought he was asexual because something was wrong with him. Duo wanted to dispel that notion as quickly as possible. He still struggled to really understand asexuality, but he was under no impression that it made someone less of a person, or that it meant something was wrong with them. Just different.

Duo was most definitely not asexual. He thought about sex pretty much all the time, and he had a healthy enough sex life, even if he wasn't with anyone right now. He watched a lot of porn and purchased more sex toys off the internet than he'd ever even considered using before he'd given up sex for his potential relationship with Heero. It wasn't that he didn't want sex; he just cared enough about Heero to not fuck around with anyone until he was really sure what was between them. Was he hoping that Heero might want to have sex with him some day? Yeah. Yeah he really was. But if Heero wasn't ever comfortable with that – well. Duo wasn't exactly sure how he was going to handle never having sex again, but he'd cross that bridge when he came to it. He'd gone without for a long time before during the war, and he'd always had a bit of trouble finding someone he trusted enough to sleep with anyway. It was a sacrifice but – it was one he was making willingly.

He didn't talk to Heero about it. He knew he should, but he just didn't really know how to bring it up without everything being – awkward. So he went to work and came home and he and Heero hung out, business as usual. Sometimes Heero would sit really close to him; their thighs or knees touching, and he pulled Duo in for a hug more than once, but they never kissed or anything. What was the marker of a relationship anyway? For Heero, an intimate touch was practically a marriage proposal. Duo felt sort of shitty just waiting for Heero to kiss him or something. He just – wanted to know this wasn't all in his head, without making everything really horrible between them.

About two weeks after Heero's infamous trip to Sally's, Duo got home from work to see Heero laid out on the couch, stoned out of his mind. He was just laying there, eyes glazed over, staring at the ceiling, and a bunch of instant heat packs laid out all over him. He seemed – happy, though that could have just been the drugs.

“Hey Heero, how are you?”

“I'm fucking awesome.” Heero grinned, “Did you know that Sally's a doctor? She can get like – the best pain killers. I didn't even know they made painkillers like this. I feel so good right now.”

“Yeah? That's good. Um. Where's the bottle?”

“Oh. Um.” Heero propped himself up on his elbows and looked around like he was having trouble focusing on anything. His pupils were pinpricks so he probably was. “Over there.” He waved his arm in the direction of the coffee table, and collapsed back onto the couch again.

“I'm just gonna look at them, okay?”

“Yeah, sure. You can't have any though. They're really strong.”

“Yep, I can see that. I won't take any.”

Duo set his things down and toed out of his work boots, and then padded over to the coffee table. Heero followed his movements, grinning lazily at him. It was a little disturbing, actually. Duo'd never seen him like this. He picked up the innocuously small bottle, and looked at the label. Dilaudid, 2mg, take as needed every 8 hours for severe pain, no more than 3 in a 24 hour period. Jesus. This was like, the strongest painkiller available on the market. And Heero had a prescription for sixty of them.

Sitting right next to it was a bottle of fucking methadone. This was a 10mg prescription, take every 12 hours for pain. There were a hundred and eighty of those. Duo had to sit down. How much pain was Heero in, if he had a prescription for this stuff? He knew Sally wouldn't just give it to him if he didn't need it, and besides the marijuana, Heero wasn't exactly the type to abuse prescription drugs.

“That's a lot of painkillers, Heero.”

“Yeah, I know. Sally told me that ignoring my pain was probably making it worse. So she gave me stuff. It's really good stuff.”

“Do you normally have a lot of pain?” He felt a little bit like a tool for asking while Heero was high, but not enough to stop doing it.

“Yeah. I mean. I've got scars everywhere.”

Duo hadn't really thought about that before. He ached sometimes when it was cold, or if he was taking off or entering an atmosphere too quickly. Nothing like what Heero experienced, apparently. Though that made sense, since Heero had been injured far more often than Duo had. Heero was reckless, he relied on his healing abilities and superior strength in combat. He'd also self destructed the the stupid martyr that he was.

“Well. I'm fucking exhausted. I'm gonna order some takeout. You want anything?”

“...mmm. I'm not really hungry. But Sally said the painkillers would kill my appetite so...I dunno. Whatever.”

“Okay man, I'll get you something.”

Duo ended up ordering pizza, getting a pineapple and ham and a meat lover’s, and paid the delivery girl a big tip when she dropped it off less than half an hour later. He got himself a beer and Heero some iced tea, because mixing painkillers and alcohol was just stupid. They had some kettle corn in the cupboard, so he popped two bags of that and then brought everything into the living room. Heero managed to pull himself upright on the couch, and Duo sat down and turned on the cheesy horror show he'd been working his way through lately.

He managed to coax Heero into eating a few slices, while he packed away half a pizza, a bag and a half of popcorn, and a six pack of beer. He was deliciously full, and comfortable, and the show was good. He sighed, and leaned back against the couch, content, only to be startled out of his wits when Heero slumped over onto his chest.

“Holy shit, warn a guy.”

“Mmm...sorry. Is this okay?”

Duo cautiously put his arm down and around Heero's shoulders. “Um. Is it okay for you?”

Heero closed his eyes and sighed. “Yeah. I trust you.”

They sat like that for the next three hours. Duo never turned off the television, but he had no idea what had happened in the show he'd been watching. He was too busy staring at Heero, instead.

xxx

It was the weekend, and all Duo wanted to do was sleep, maybe play some video games, and generally do nothing. His plans were completely thrown however, when he stumbled out into the kitchen mid-morning for some coffee, to find Heero sitting at the table, waiting for him. Heero was still in a pair of soft gray sleep pants and a white wife beater. Duo felt extremely under dressed in his striped boxers.

“So...we should probably talk some time. About...this.” Heero gestured vaguely between them.

“...yeah?” Relationship conversations, first thing in the morning; not exactly his forte.

“I made you coffee. Extra sugar and cream, with a touch of honey, just the way you like it.”

“Thanks.” Duo slid into the seat uneasily, and accepted the mug of coffee, taking a cautious sip. It was just the way he liked it. “So....”

Heero cleared his throat, and took a drink of his own coffee, and looked around nervously, not really meeting Duo's eyes. “So...I was pretty high earlier this week.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“And I um. Well. And you overheard me, that one time.”

“...yeah. I did.”

“You didn't seem to mind...spending time with me. And you; you even said there wasn't anything wrong with not wanting sex so. What I mean to say is -” Heero bit his lip, and cursed. “I swear it's easier to fucking murder someone than tell you how I feel.”

“No pressure here, man. Really. We can do this later if you need to.” Duo was pretty sure he knew what Heero was trying to say, but he didn't want to put words in the other man's mouth.

“No! I've been putting it off for way too long already. I think I – I think I'm – in love with you.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Duo said earnestly. That must have been the wrong thing to say, however, because Heero looked devastated.

“No, I mean. I'm not turning you down, you know.”

“...you aren't?”

“No! I mean, I'd like to date you. I really like you Heero. You're smart and sexy, you're an amazing warrior, you get me, you know? I care about you; you're my best friend. I'm not sure if I love you, but I think I could. I'd like to try, at least.”

“What about the – the sex thing?”

Duo exhaled sharply. He'd been thinking about that – a lot. “I'm not gonna lie. I like sex. But – well, you're a virgin, so even if you wanted sex I'd suggest we take it slow. I don't want to do anything you're not comfortable with. If you feel up to trying something, we can. If you don't, then we won't. I'm not saying it'll work out, but honestly, I've never had a relationship that lasted longer than a weekend, so I don't know if we'll be able to make it work outside the sex anyway. But I'd like to try.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I mean. We're practically dating as it is.”

“Oh.” Heero seemed to take a moment to digest that. “So...want to sit on the couch and play games with me today?”

“And cuddle?”

Heero actually blushed. “Yeah, and cuddle.”

“Sounds awesome.”

Owari