Lovely 9
Lovely 9
Series: Gundam Wing
Characters/Pairings: Duo, Heero, Wufei, Quatre, Trowa, Duo/Heero
Rating/Warnings: T for various things, not really pushing the rating. Slash.
Summary: A retelling of Beauty and the Beast. When someone stumbles into an enchantment hidden deep within a forest, he trades his life for the lives of one of his slaves... 1x2 shounen-ai.
Author's Notes: My eternal thanks to my incredible beta, Lady_Friselle. She is fantastic beyond words!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
FFnet link
Lovely 9
It had been a long time since he’d felt it, but Heero could still remember the blood-in-the-back-of-your-throat taste of regret.
For once, he really hadn’t meant to… offend. He hadn’t meant to drive Duo away. Again.
If Duo was falling in love with anyone in the castle, it was Quatre. It certainly wasn’t him. When you loved someone… When you loved someone, you wanted to tell them things. You wanted to confide in them. You at least were willing to.
You didn’t listen in on their personal confessions to a third party, someone they trusted, someone they maybe loved, platonically or otherwise, and then flaunt that in their faces.
When you loved someone…
And he really, truly, hadn’t meant for that to happen. For Duo to be so upset, so angry, so hurt. He’d never really wanted any of it to happen, not after that first week or so, when he’d still been adjusting to Duo. But past that? He’d never meant for Duo to snap at him and stop talking. (He hadn’t thought that his behavior would grate that badly. Stupid. He should have…) He’d never meant for Quatre to collapse (all because of him) or for Duo to attack him for that. (It was all the curse’s fault; if it wasn’t for spell, he’d be been dead ten times over by now. But whose fault was the curse? His own. He’d never been good with people, he knew that. He wasn’t who he used to be, the person who would turn someone away from his door in the middle of a winter storm-if anyone ever came to his door, now-but there was still too much of that person mixed up in him. Monster.)
He’d never meant to do this. But he had, hadn’t he? He’d just caught bits and pieces, standing outside the window, and… He shouldn’t have. He should have moved on as soon as Quatre had arrived. Quatre knew how to make things right. Quatre knew how to comfort. He… Did not. He didn’t even know how to learn about someone who was supposed to be falling in love with him (impossible) without ruining whatever good he had managed to do. And that wasn’t much: he had talked to Quatre when Duo had forced him too. That hadn’t been the disaster everything else had been. Except for a few-very few-dinners that weren’t actively disastrous, that was all.
He would live here forever, because he was a monster. The witch-woman that had cursed him knew that: Monster. And so... I give you a chance to break the curse. Find someone who will love you unconditionally, no matter how you look, and it will disappear. Maybe that's even worse than the curse, hm? I know how you think, Monster. Infant. Beast-child. When you've hardened your heart to keep it from hurting so long that it's festered and died, then I will come for you. And it had taken fifty years for the servants to die, and after that it was merely eternity.
She had known that it wasn’t only appearance that would keep people away. She knew that he would never become too much more than what he had already been. She had understood that he would chase away anyone insightful, kind or caring enough to look past his form. If there was such a person-and there might not be.
He would have to sit down to dinner with Duo again tonight. Unless the curse had let up, and he had been forced-allowed-to leave. It was only a matter of time, with how things had been going. But until then, he would eat dinner with Duo every night.
At least now he knew better than to speak. If Duo spoke to him-if Duo was still speaking to him at all-he could make an effort (more than he usually did) to respond nicely. To respond normally. He could try, now that he’d overstepped boundaries even he had seen, and ignored. Now that it was too late.
Not that Duo would speak to him. Duo had already tried. Heero had responded. And that was the problem…
And in six hours the two of them would sit down to dinner together. Because that was how you got to know people you might, eventually, come to love.
oOo
Heero was early to dinner, and Duo was late.
He was subdued as he entered the dining hall, deathly quiet except for the near-silent whisper of Heero’s breath, though resentment still shone in his eyes. Heero felt something roil in his stomach, a tendril of guilt and anger and something he could taste in the back of his throat, heavy as the taste of magic, but couldn’t name.
Without saying a word, Duo sat and started eating. As always, Heero simply sat. Some days, he watched Duo, but today his gaze was carefully turned away, down and to the side. A candle guttered then extinguished itself, drowning in a pool of wax, the little flicker enough to attract the lord’s gaze. He watched as a twisting, looping thread of smoke rose from the still-smoldering wick. It seemed to keep on burning-just barely, even the faintest red-orange glow gone-for far longer than it should have.
When he looked up, Duo’s flat gaze was leveled at him across the table, his knife and fork crossed across his plate in a clear hint.
“I’m sorry,” Heero said roughly, voice deeper than normal with a combination of pent-up emotion and disuse.
Duo stilled suddenly, gaze shifting into something less easily identifiable. Heero had shocked him, even if he hadn’t surprised him.
“I’m glad you realize that there was possibly something wrong with your actions,” said Duo, voice cutting and sharp. Heero bit back the instinct to back away, even a little, to even twitch back, to show any sort of reaction-that would be showing a weakness, admitting to failure, offering up a weakness on a silver plate.
This time it was Heero’s turn to stand sharply, and he didn’t miss Duo’s sudden flinch backwards, even in the dim half-light of the hall. His eyes weren’t human, and didn’t have a human eye’s limitations. Again there was that tight curl of emotion in his stomach, but this time it almost hurt.
Carefully, slowly and cautiously, he walked around the long dining-hall table, taking the long side, so he didn’t come too close to Duo. He paused at the hall doors. “Will you marry me?” he said, and he was thankful that his voice was flat and emotionless for the first time since he had been eight years old and reporting to his father the death of his first hunting dog.
“No,” said Duo, and Heero left before he could say anything more.
oOo
The bitter humor of how the situation had reversed was not lost on Heero. It seemed that they were now incapable of having a dinner without one of them or the other storming from the dining hall, offended and hurt.
Of course, it served him right, for letting his guard down like that. The situation was simply the natural consequence of believing that Duo’s (excellent) façade of indifference to his physical appearance was the reality of the situation. He should have known better, especially after he had proven-so effectively-that he was excellent at creating masks, at hiding, the first time the two had sat down together to eat.
And he should have known better than to make any action that could be interpreted as threatening when he looked the way he did. No matter how relaxed Duo seemed to be around him.
No human-other than maybe Wufei, and he had had 500 years of daily appearances to grind the edge off of his fear-would ever be comfortable around him. He was a predator: you could see it in the claws that graced his ‘hands,’ his paws, and in his teeth, made for cutting and tearing. Even his eyes, and the way they were set into his head. He was bigger, stronger, faster, and more lethal than any human could ever hope to be. More a gift than a curse. Monster.
He knew that. He’d known it for four hundred and thirty years of ‘visitors.’ Known it in the seventy years of frantic and half-crazed servants before that.
But it looked like he’d forgotten. Until he’d been reminded.
It was for the best. His curse wasn’t something he could afford to forget.
And he’d been trying to apologize. Because he had overstepped his boundaries. Duo hadn’t wanted to hear it, but it still… ached, somehow. It shouldn’t have. But it didn’t matter; Duo would be gone soon, the way this was going. The curse and the castle had sent people away for far less conflict than this; it was only a matter of time…
It had to be.
oOo
Duo was honestly surprised, because he was pretty sure that that emotion he’d seen in Heero’s eyes as he’d scrambled (metaphorically speaking) for the door was hurt. But that didn’t make any kind of sense at all.
He hadn’t really meant to flinch. It was just that Heero was very, very big and very, very deadly, and he wasn’t, particularly. Sure, he could cause a fair bit of damage if he put his mind to it, but he wouldn’t last long in a fight with an ordinarily strong person. And Heero was far above excellent. Forget ‘ordinary.’ And he had had a dangerous sort of look in his eyes, and Duo had just (again, metaphorically speaking) spit in his face when he tried to apologize, and he didn’t strike Duo as particularly stable at the best of times.
Really, he felt kind of bad about the apology thing, actually. It really hadn’t sounded like he was used to giving them out. Not that Duo had been all that out of line, really, considering what Heero had done to him. Assuming he had been assuming anything at all, Heero shouldn’t have assumed that an apology would make things all better again, a sibling’s kiss on a scraped knee to make everything okay.
But anyways… He had hurt Heero by showing that natural fear. What did that mean?
…he hadn’t known that Heero had cared at all. He still didn’t have the slightest clue of what Heero cared about (was it his appearance, or Duo’s reaction to his appearance? Was it that Duo clearly didn’t trust him? He didn’t think it was something else, but it might be…) but he knew that it was there, now.
He didn’t know. He didn’t know a lot of things, but these were the sort of things that mattered. It meant he couldn’t figure out what to do.
…What to do about the situation, at least. He knew what he was going to do: he was going to go run around in the gardens, even though it was fully dark by now. He needed to move again.
oOo
Heero had sat silently where he was, crouched in a slight pocket of night garden, as Duo had run past it three or four times, bathed in sweat and breathing hard but still keeping determinedly at it.
He couldn’t see him now, but he knew where he was: three right turns down, on a small bench. He could feel it in the castle.
oOo
Duo’s breathing slowed as he lay sprawled on the bench. His mind had been blissfully empty for his run (except for thoughts like ‘Oh shit! A rock!’) but now all his problems were trickling back into his head.
He didn’t know what Heero had reacted to, only that he had reacted. He didn’t know what the rest of his apology-if there was anymore to it-would have been if things hadn’t gone as they had. He didn’t know what Heero was feeling. Hell, he didn’t even know what he was feeling.
Well, he knew some of what he was feeling. He was incensed, outraged, that Heero had listened in on him and Quatre. (Was he betrayed by that breach of privacy? That would require that he had trusted him, at least a little, in the first place…) And he knew that he was still shaken from the dream, the nightmare, itself, and from all the memories it had brought to the surface. He knew that really liked Quatre, felt vaguely protective of him, and thought that Quatre felt somewhat close to the same. He honestly liked Trowa, who had a truly wicked sense of humor, and Wufei was growing on him, though the friendly-rivals-grudge thing they had going on was a bit difficult to navigate sometimes.
He supposed he liked Heero, that he wasn’t sure why. He’d done nothing but be rude, difficult, down-right insulting and nasty since he’d met him.
…but sometimes he was merely socially awkward, and sometimes it seemed like he was trying, and sometimes things felt almost friendly.
He had started to relax around him.
Duo shivered, and shifted out of his boneless sprawl into a heat-conserving huddle. The cooling sweat was wicking away whatever heat he had, and the night was chillingly cold, although the day had been hot-considerably hotter than Duo liked it, although Quatre had said that it reminded him of home.
He sighed and buried his face in his knees. There were a few minutes of peace.
Duo’s face whipped up as he caught the shifting noises of feet on loose gravel. He looked wearily at the person, the creature, facing him. “Heero,” he said, voice wary.
Heero nodded in recognition of the greeting, then realized that Duo probably couldn’t see it, in this lighting. “Hello,” he said simply, not sure of what else to say. (He wanted to say things he didn’t know yet, wanted to say things he hadn’t figured out for himself. He didn’t really want to say anything at all… He wasn’t even sure why he was there at all.)
After a few minutes, he realized that he was standing over the much-smaller and sitting boy, looming over him. There was room on the bench next to Duo, but he wouldn’t force him to sit next to him like that. He looked uselessly around, then simply crouched on the gravel path. Duo swallowed nervously at the inhuman motions his different structure made possible, the movement made more threatening by the near-total dark and the glint of what little light there was from Heero’s eyes.
There was more silence, Duo still curled into the defensive huddle that had tightened at Heero’s sudden appearance.
“When I was first placed under this curse,” he said, abruptly. “People began to grow crazy as the other servants began to die. By 20 years it was clear that neither Wufei nor I were aging.
“Nothing scared the servants more than I did. I-I wasn’t a kind master, before the change, and I isolated myself totally for the first six months I was like-this. And they started trying to kill me…
“I accepted that. But then…
“My mother had died in childbirth. A girl, the daughter of one of the peasants, probably no older than 12 when I was born, was put in charge of me. My father was… very busy, running the castle, and never had time for anything more than my education in matters of ruling and behavior. She was the one almost solely responsible for raising me.
“And then-after the curse-she tried to kill me. She brought me my meals, and had, even for the five years when I almost never left my own quarters in the palace. I could smell the poison in it, and when I told her she-
had snapped, started screaming at him. ‘Monster! Inhuman beast! You disgust me! I treated you like my child! I raised you! And now… Now…! I will never have a child of my own, my lord, because I would rip the unborn child from my own womb rather than bring him into this half-existence you’ve forced us into-’
“…It was eventually revealed that she had tried to kill me herself.”
Heero swallowed once and then again, throat choked with tears he couldn’t shed anymore.
“Why are you telling me this?” said Duo hesitantly after another long, silent pause.
“What I overhead was-not meant to be heard by me. I’m sorry. This is all I can do to try to make things even.” He shrugged, then bit back a growl when he realized, again, that Duo couldn’t see at all what he could see easily.
“Thank you,” said Duo slowly. He curled tighter, but it was against the cold and not emotion, and the shiver that ran down his spine wasn’t from the quickly-choked-off beginnings of a growl that had escaped Heero’s throat. The bench he was sitting on, solid stone, had lost the heat it had picked up during the day, turning to what felt like ice against the bare skin of his palms. “I’m-I suppose I’m sorry too. I probably owe you one on general principal. You didn’t-The Plague’s kind of an issue with me. It’s… More than private. But yeah, I think it’s going to be okay. And I probably owe you an apology on general principal.”
Again, silence fell, although it felt more companionable.
Duo’s teeth started chattering. “H-Heero?” he said. “I gotta get back to the castle. It’s cold out here.”
Heero snapped out a curse and stood swiftly, hackles bristling slightly and a growl building in the back of his throat. He needed to remember things like how his vision had changed, and how much warmer a fur coat was than human skin, even covered in clothing.
“Uh… Heero?” said Duo, sounding slightly unnerved. “Something wrong? ’Cause, uh, I didn’t mean to be insulting or anything, this time around…”
He hadn’t flinched, even when Heero had fluidly snapped back to a standing position.
“No, it’s nothing,” said Heero shortly, trying to calm himself down. It didn’t seem to calm Duo down all that much. He tried again. “I-forget, what it’s like to be human,” he said, stiffly.
“No problem. It’s my fault, really, for running around in the middle of the night without enough clothes. I just want to start heading back…”
Duo took a few steps down the path, then turned to look back at the still-standing Heero. He cocked his head in a clearly questioning look.
“Would… you rather I walk ahead or behind you?” Heero said, softly. “If I-frighten you. There’s not much I can do…”
Duo looked at him appraisingly, and Heero missed the slight apprehension in his glance. He took the few steps back and tucked himself under Heero’s arm, against his side. “Mmm. Much better. You’re very warm, you know that?”
Heero couldn’t seem to manage much resembling a coherent sentence.
Duo slid away a little. “I’m sorry,” he said, frowning. “I always tend to forget that not everyone has my own personal space boundaries. It’s just… I suppose we are, kinda not really sorta, dating, in a way, and… You know? Never mind…”
“No, I don’t mind,” said Heero and then cursed himself soundly (thankfully internally) for coming up with something so stupid to say. He had felt Duo’s body shivering against his own; it was far too cold for him, with no body fat to hold in heat and far too few clothes. “If it is a matter of your comfort.”
“Okay, then,” said Duo, shifting back to his original position. “It really is cold out-this helps.”
The two started off down the path, their movements a little choppy as the two got used to being so close to one another. Heero had to concentrate on keeping his strides short and slow, to adjust for the length of Duo’s legs. Duo had to keep from walking into bushes.
The two slid apart as they entered the castle entrance, no longer sharing heat. “Thank you,” said Duo again, voice slightly awkward. “I’ll see you at dinner tomorrow, I guess.”
“Yes,” said Heero slowly. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
--End Chapter 9--
Lovely 10
Lovely 11
Series: Gundam Wing
Characters/Pairings: Duo, Heero, Wufei, Quatre, Trowa, Duo/Heero
Rating/Warnings: T for various things, not really pushing the rating. Slash.
Summary: A retelling of Beauty and the Beast. When someone stumbles into an enchantment hidden deep within a forest, he trades his life for the lives of one of his slaves... 1x2 shounen-ai.
Author's Notes: My eternal thanks to my incredible beta, Lady_Friselle. She is fantastic beyond words!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
FFnet link
Lovely 9
It had been a long time since he’d felt it, but Heero could still remember the blood-in-the-back-of-your-throat taste of regret.
For once, he really hadn’t meant to… offend. He hadn’t meant to drive Duo away. Again.
If Duo was falling in love with anyone in the castle, it was Quatre. It certainly wasn’t him. When you loved someone… When you loved someone, you wanted to tell them things. You wanted to confide in them. You at least were willing to.
You didn’t listen in on their personal confessions to a third party, someone they trusted, someone they maybe loved, platonically or otherwise, and then flaunt that in their faces.
When you loved someone…
And he really, truly, hadn’t meant for that to happen. For Duo to be so upset, so angry, so hurt. He’d never really wanted any of it to happen, not after that first week or so, when he’d still been adjusting to Duo. But past that? He’d never meant for Duo to snap at him and stop talking. (He hadn’t thought that his behavior would grate that badly. Stupid. He should have…) He’d never meant for Quatre to collapse (all because of him) or for Duo to attack him for that. (It was all the curse’s fault; if it wasn’t for spell, he’d be been dead ten times over by now. But whose fault was the curse? His own. He’d never been good with people, he knew that. He wasn’t who he used to be, the person who would turn someone away from his door in the middle of a winter storm-if anyone ever came to his door, now-but there was still too much of that person mixed up in him. Monster.)
He’d never meant to do this. But he had, hadn’t he? He’d just caught bits and pieces, standing outside the window, and… He shouldn’t have. He should have moved on as soon as Quatre had arrived. Quatre knew how to make things right. Quatre knew how to comfort. He… Did not. He didn’t even know how to learn about someone who was supposed to be falling in love with him (impossible) without ruining whatever good he had managed to do. And that wasn’t much: he had talked to Quatre when Duo had forced him too. That hadn’t been the disaster everything else had been. Except for a few-very few-dinners that weren’t actively disastrous, that was all.
He would live here forever, because he was a monster. The witch-woman that had cursed him knew that: Monster. And so... I give you a chance to break the curse. Find someone who will love you unconditionally, no matter how you look, and it will disappear. Maybe that's even worse than the curse, hm? I know how you think, Monster. Infant. Beast-child. When you've hardened your heart to keep it from hurting so long that it's festered and died, then I will come for you. And it had taken fifty years for the servants to die, and after that it was merely eternity.
She had known that it wasn’t only appearance that would keep people away. She knew that he would never become too much more than what he had already been. She had understood that he would chase away anyone insightful, kind or caring enough to look past his form. If there was such a person-and there might not be.
He would have to sit down to dinner with Duo again tonight. Unless the curse had let up, and he had been forced-allowed-to leave. It was only a matter of time, with how things had been going. But until then, he would eat dinner with Duo every night.
At least now he knew better than to speak. If Duo spoke to him-if Duo was still speaking to him at all-he could make an effort (more than he usually did) to respond nicely. To respond normally. He could try, now that he’d overstepped boundaries even he had seen, and ignored. Now that it was too late.
Not that Duo would speak to him. Duo had already tried. Heero had responded. And that was the problem…
And in six hours the two of them would sit down to dinner together. Because that was how you got to know people you might, eventually, come to love.
oOo
Heero was early to dinner, and Duo was late.
He was subdued as he entered the dining hall, deathly quiet except for the near-silent whisper of Heero’s breath, though resentment still shone in his eyes. Heero felt something roil in his stomach, a tendril of guilt and anger and something he could taste in the back of his throat, heavy as the taste of magic, but couldn’t name.
Without saying a word, Duo sat and started eating. As always, Heero simply sat. Some days, he watched Duo, but today his gaze was carefully turned away, down and to the side. A candle guttered then extinguished itself, drowning in a pool of wax, the little flicker enough to attract the lord’s gaze. He watched as a twisting, looping thread of smoke rose from the still-smoldering wick. It seemed to keep on burning-just barely, even the faintest red-orange glow gone-for far longer than it should have.
When he looked up, Duo’s flat gaze was leveled at him across the table, his knife and fork crossed across his plate in a clear hint.
“I’m sorry,” Heero said roughly, voice deeper than normal with a combination of pent-up emotion and disuse.
Duo stilled suddenly, gaze shifting into something less easily identifiable. Heero had shocked him, even if he hadn’t surprised him.
“I’m glad you realize that there was possibly something wrong with your actions,” said Duo, voice cutting and sharp. Heero bit back the instinct to back away, even a little, to even twitch back, to show any sort of reaction-that would be showing a weakness, admitting to failure, offering up a weakness on a silver plate.
This time it was Heero’s turn to stand sharply, and he didn’t miss Duo’s sudden flinch backwards, even in the dim half-light of the hall. His eyes weren’t human, and didn’t have a human eye’s limitations. Again there was that tight curl of emotion in his stomach, but this time it almost hurt.
Carefully, slowly and cautiously, he walked around the long dining-hall table, taking the long side, so he didn’t come too close to Duo. He paused at the hall doors. “Will you marry me?” he said, and he was thankful that his voice was flat and emotionless for the first time since he had been eight years old and reporting to his father the death of his first hunting dog.
“No,” said Duo, and Heero left before he could say anything more.
oOo
The bitter humor of how the situation had reversed was not lost on Heero. It seemed that they were now incapable of having a dinner without one of them or the other storming from the dining hall, offended and hurt.
Of course, it served him right, for letting his guard down like that. The situation was simply the natural consequence of believing that Duo’s (excellent) façade of indifference to his physical appearance was the reality of the situation. He should have known better, especially after he had proven-so effectively-that he was excellent at creating masks, at hiding, the first time the two had sat down together to eat.
And he should have known better than to make any action that could be interpreted as threatening when he looked the way he did. No matter how relaxed Duo seemed to be around him.
No human-other than maybe Wufei, and he had had 500 years of daily appearances to grind the edge off of his fear-would ever be comfortable around him. He was a predator: you could see it in the claws that graced his ‘hands,’ his paws, and in his teeth, made for cutting and tearing. Even his eyes, and the way they were set into his head. He was bigger, stronger, faster, and more lethal than any human could ever hope to be. More a gift than a curse. Monster.
He knew that. He’d known it for four hundred and thirty years of ‘visitors.’ Known it in the seventy years of frantic and half-crazed servants before that.
But it looked like he’d forgotten. Until he’d been reminded.
It was for the best. His curse wasn’t something he could afford to forget.
And he’d been trying to apologize. Because he had overstepped his boundaries. Duo hadn’t wanted to hear it, but it still… ached, somehow. It shouldn’t have. But it didn’t matter; Duo would be gone soon, the way this was going. The curse and the castle had sent people away for far less conflict than this; it was only a matter of time…
It had to be.
oOo
Duo was honestly surprised, because he was pretty sure that that emotion he’d seen in Heero’s eyes as he’d scrambled (metaphorically speaking) for the door was hurt. But that didn’t make any kind of sense at all.
He hadn’t really meant to flinch. It was just that Heero was very, very big and very, very deadly, and he wasn’t, particularly. Sure, he could cause a fair bit of damage if he put his mind to it, but he wouldn’t last long in a fight with an ordinarily strong person. And Heero was far above excellent. Forget ‘ordinary.’ And he had had a dangerous sort of look in his eyes, and Duo had just (again, metaphorically speaking) spit in his face when he tried to apologize, and he didn’t strike Duo as particularly stable at the best of times.
Really, he felt kind of bad about the apology thing, actually. It really hadn’t sounded like he was used to giving them out. Not that Duo had been all that out of line, really, considering what Heero had done to him. Assuming he had been assuming anything at all, Heero shouldn’t have assumed that an apology would make things all better again, a sibling’s kiss on a scraped knee to make everything okay.
But anyways… He had hurt Heero by showing that natural fear. What did that mean?
…he hadn’t known that Heero had cared at all. He still didn’t have the slightest clue of what Heero cared about (was it his appearance, or Duo’s reaction to his appearance? Was it that Duo clearly didn’t trust him? He didn’t think it was something else, but it might be…) but he knew that it was there, now.
He didn’t know. He didn’t know a lot of things, but these were the sort of things that mattered. It meant he couldn’t figure out what to do.
…What to do about the situation, at least. He knew what he was going to do: he was going to go run around in the gardens, even though it was fully dark by now. He needed to move again.
oOo
Heero had sat silently where he was, crouched in a slight pocket of night garden, as Duo had run past it three or four times, bathed in sweat and breathing hard but still keeping determinedly at it.
He couldn’t see him now, but he knew where he was: three right turns down, on a small bench. He could feel it in the castle.
oOo
Duo’s breathing slowed as he lay sprawled on the bench. His mind had been blissfully empty for his run (except for thoughts like ‘Oh shit! A rock!’) but now all his problems were trickling back into his head.
He didn’t know what Heero had reacted to, only that he had reacted. He didn’t know what the rest of his apology-if there was anymore to it-would have been if things hadn’t gone as they had. He didn’t know what Heero was feeling. Hell, he didn’t even know what he was feeling.
Well, he knew some of what he was feeling. He was incensed, outraged, that Heero had listened in on him and Quatre. (Was he betrayed by that breach of privacy? That would require that he had trusted him, at least a little, in the first place…) And he knew that he was still shaken from the dream, the nightmare, itself, and from all the memories it had brought to the surface. He knew that really liked Quatre, felt vaguely protective of him, and thought that Quatre felt somewhat close to the same. He honestly liked Trowa, who had a truly wicked sense of humor, and Wufei was growing on him, though the friendly-rivals-grudge thing they had going on was a bit difficult to navigate sometimes.
He supposed he liked Heero, that he wasn’t sure why. He’d done nothing but be rude, difficult, down-right insulting and nasty since he’d met him.
…but sometimes he was merely socially awkward, and sometimes it seemed like he was trying, and sometimes things felt almost friendly.
He had started to relax around him.
Duo shivered, and shifted out of his boneless sprawl into a heat-conserving huddle. The cooling sweat was wicking away whatever heat he had, and the night was chillingly cold, although the day had been hot-considerably hotter than Duo liked it, although Quatre had said that it reminded him of home.
He sighed and buried his face in his knees. There were a few minutes of peace.
Duo’s face whipped up as he caught the shifting noises of feet on loose gravel. He looked wearily at the person, the creature, facing him. “Heero,” he said, voice wary.
Heero nodded in recognition of the greeting, then realized that Duo probably couldn’t see it, in this lighting. “Hello,” he said simply, not sure of what else to say. (He wanted to say things he didn’t know yet, wanted to say things he hadn’t figured out for himself. He didn’t really want to say anything at all… He wasn’t even sure why he was there at all.)
After a few minutes, he realized that he was standing over the much-smaller and sitting boy, looming over him. There was room on the bench next to Duo, but he wouldn’t force him to sit next to him like that. He looked uselessly around, then simply crouched on the gravel path. Duo swallowed nervously at the inhuman motions his different structure made possible, the movement made more threatening by the near-total dark and the glint of what little light there was from Heero’s eyes.
There was more silence, Duo still curled into the defensive huddle that had tightened at Heero’s sudden appearance.
“When I was first placed under this curse,” he said, abruptly. “People began to grow crazy as the other servants began to die. By 20 years it was clear that neither Wufei nor I were aging.
“Nothing scared the servants more than I did. I-I wasn’t a kind master, before the change, and I isolated myself totally for the first six months I was like-this. And they started trying to kill me…
“I accepted that. But then…
“My mother had died in childbirth. A girl, the daughter of one of the peasants, probably no older than 12 when I was born, was put in charge of me. My father was… very busy, running the castle, and never had time for anything more than my education in matters of ruling and behavior. She was the one almost solely responsible for raising me.
“And then-after the curse-she tried to kill me. She brought me my meals, and had, even for the five years when I almost never left my own quarters in the palace. I could smell the poison in it, and when I told her she-
had snapped, started screaming at him. ‘Monster! Inhuman beast! You disgust me! I treated you like my child! I raised you! And now… Now…! I will never have a child of my own, my lord, because I would rip the unborn child from my own womb rather than bring him into this half-existence you’ve forced us into-’
“…It was eventually revealed that she had tried to kill me herself.”
Heero swallowed once and then again, throat choked with tears he couldn’t shed anymore.
“Why are you telling me this?” said Duo hesitantly after another long, silent pause.
“What I overhead was-not meant to be heard by me. I’m sorry. This is all I can do to try to make things even.” He shrugged, then bit back a growl when he realized, again, that Duo couldn’t see at all what he could see easily.
“Thank you,” said Duo slowly. He curled tighter, but it was against the cold and not emotion, and the shiver that ran down his spine wasn’t from the quickly-choked-off beginnings of a growl that had escaped Heero’s throat. The bench he was sitting on, solid stone, had lost the heat it had picked up during the day, turning to what felt like ice against the bare skin of his palms. “I’m-I suppose I’m sorry too. I probably owe you one on general principal. You didn’t-The Plague’s kind of an issue with me. It’s… More than private. But yeah, I think it’s going to be okay. And I probably owe you an apology on general principal.”
Again, silence fell, although it felt more companionable.
Duo’s teeth started chattering. “H-Heero?” he said. “I gotta get back to the castle. It’s cold out here.”
Heero snapped out a curse and stood swiftly, hackles bristling slightly and a growl building in the back of his throat. He needed to remember things like how his vision had changed, and how much warmer a fur coat was than human skin, even covered in clothing.
“Uh… Heero?” said Duo, sounding slightly unnerved. “Something wrong? ’Cause, uh, I didn’t mean to be insulting or anything, this time around…”
He hadn’t flinched, even when Heero had fluidly snapped back to a standing position.
“No, it’s nothing,” said Heero shortly, trying to calm himself down. It didn’t seem to calm Duo down all that much. He tried again. “I-forget, what it’s like to be human,” he said, stiffly.
“No problem. It’s my fault, really, for running around in the middle of the night without enough clothes. I just want to start heading back…”
Duo took a few steps down the path, then turned to look back at the still-standing Heero. He cocked his head in a clearly questioning look.
“Would… you rather I walk ahead or behind you?” Heero said, softly. “If I-frighten you. There’s not much I can do…”
Duo looked at him appraisingly, and Heero missed the slight apprehension in his glance. He took the few steps back and tucked himself under Heero’s arm, against his side. “Mmm. Much better. You’re very warm, you know that?”
Heero couldn’t seem to manage much resembling a coherent sentence.
Duo slid away a little. “I’m sorry,” he said, frowning. “I always tend to forget that not everyone has my own personal space boundaries. It’s just… I suppose we are, kinda not really sorta, dating, in a way, and… You know? Never mind…”
“No, I don’t mind,” said Heero and then cursed himself soundly (thankfully internally) for coming up with something so stupid to say. He had felt Duo’s body shivering against his own; it was far too cold for him, with no body fat to hold in heat and far too few clothes. “If it is a matter of your comfort.”
“Okay, then,” said Duo, shifting back to his original position. “It really is cold out-this helps.”
The two started off down the path, their movements a little choppy as the two got used to being so close to one another. Heero had to concentrate on keeping his strides short and slow, to adjust for the length of Duo’s legs. Duo had to keep from walking into bushes.
The two slid apart as they entered the castle entrance, no longer sharing heat. “Thank you,” said Duo again, voice slightly awkward. “I’ll see you at dinner tomorrow, I guess.”
“Yes,” said Heero slowly. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
--End Chapter 9--
Lovely 10
Lovely 11