[fic] The Long Way Home, Pt 2
Here's part II of what is not supposed to be a 2-parter. Lol. Part one is here: https://scacao.livejournal.com/25810.html
Duo has the strangest dreams. He dreams he lives in an underwater castle. He’s trying to find the king to warn him about some terrible danger, but the king laughs him away. The dream fades as arrows begin to rain down around the castle, leaving trails of bubbles in their wake.
He dreams he’s driving a beautiful sports car, Heero in the passenger seat. Heero is looking away from him, and he’s talking louder and louder, trying to get his attention. When Heero turns, Duo finds himself looking away, suddenly afraid to see his expression.
He dreams of Heero staring down at him in the dismal lights of an ambulance, that he’s in surgery and Heero is the doctor, Quatre is the nurse, and Trowa is standing in a corner, recording the whole thing. Wufei keeps arguing with Heero about the proper techniques, and Duo wants to yell at them that he’s awake, they screwed something up, but he can’t make the words come out of his mouth.
He isn’t sure what might be a dream and what might be real. Everything takes on a hazy, superficial quality, like static on an old tv. He sees Heero beside him, holding his hand, telling him he loves him. He’s pretty sure that’s a dream.
Sometimes, he can hear voices, as if people are talking around him. He has a strange feeling that he’s at his own funeral, that these are people standing by his coffin, staring down at his waxy face and talking about his memory. It freaks him right out. He hears Heero always. Sometimes, Quatre and the other pilots are there, and he thinks he hears Hilde crying. He wants to say Hey, I’m not dead! But he can’t, and it makes him believe that maybe he is dead after all, that the afterlife or Hell or wherever he is is nothing more than sitting around while your friends cry over your dead body. What a lame ending.
When he first opens his eyes, he still can’t tell if he’s dreaming or dead or what. The room is dark and his eyes feel like dried out raisins. He wants badly to rub them, but his arms are leaden. There’s an IV bag dangling over his head, and that’s what makes him start to believe that maybe this is real.
Everything hurts. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to move in the bed he’s in. He starts to remember, little by little, as he stares up at the hospital ceiling. There was an ambush. He got shot. He can feel the pain focus in his chest and arm. Yep, there and there, that’s where it happened. He remembers Heero holding him up, dragging them along.
Shit. Heero! Where’s Heero?
He realizes then that Heero is at his side, his breath even. He wills his head to turn so he can get a better look. Heero is slumped forward in a chair, one arm serving as a pillow against the bed. His free hand is holding Duo’s, his fingers curled under his palm. Duo stares at their hands on the bed in disbelief. Maybe he’s dreaming after all.
He tries flexing his fingers to test this theory and Heero starts awake, then turns to him, his blue eyes going wide.
“Duo?” he says, so softly that Duo nearly can’t hear it.
Duo tries to say something witty, but his mouth feels like wet plaster, and he just coughs instead. His throat is raw with disuse. Heero is up in an instant, peering over him, his face more worried than Duo has ever seen before.
“Are you okay?”
Duo laughs, small and hoarse. “Water… please.”
Dutifully, Heero stands up, his hand slipping away. He returns a minute later with a glass of tap water from the adjoining bathroom, and presses it carefully to Duo’s lips. Duo feels like he’s drinking lava, but he swallows some down just so he can talk.
“Hey,” he says, when that wet plaster feeling is gone.
For a moment, Heero just stares at him with that shaken expression. Then, he laughs, for a good solid minute. Duo finds himself smiling, wondering what the hell is so funny.
“Hey,” Heero says back. His hand slips over Duo’s again. Wait, that part is real?
“Where am I?”
“Newport City hospital.”
“Shit. How long?”
“A week.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.” Heero is peering over him again. “How do you feel? Do you need anything?”
“I feel like death warmed over. And no, not unless you can spring me out of here.”
Heero laughs, then, completely to Duo’s surprise, reaches out and rearranges his matted bangs.
“Sorry, those days are over. I have to call the doctors in here soon, Duo. Now that you’re awake.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Duo groans, but his heart is doing strange leaps in his chest. He feels suddenly above the pain, with Heero touching him like this, with his hand slipping from Duo’s forehead back to his own hand on the bed, like they belong together there. He would kiss him if he had more control over his body. Instead, he moves his hand a little and entwines their fingers together, and the gesture makes Heero’s eyes go dangerously bright in the dark.
“Duo…”
“Thanks for… well, you know. Saving my life.” Duo cracks a weak smile.
“Idiot,” Heero says, blue eyes swimming, and then he leans over and presses his warm lips against Duo’s chapped ones, and it’s as perfect as any first kiss in the trauma ward of a hospital can be.
He pulls back eventually and stands, his fingers finally slipping from Duo’s grasp.
“I’m going to call them now.”
Duo nods absently, seeing only Heero.
****
Heero manages to keep his composure until the doctors arrive, swarming around Duo like a chattering flock of birds, before slipping into the bathroom. He puts the lid down on the toilet seat before sitting heavily on top of it, and this is where his control finally slips and he weeps silently into his hands.
Thank god you’re alive, Duo. Thank god.
He makes sure he doesn’t look as wrecked as he feels when he exits the bathroom again. The doctors are still there, trying to fill Duo in on the details of his brush with death, but Duo’s eyes are on him the entire time, and Heero feels like he might weep again, right here.
The next few days are a blur. It seems as soon as Heero calls Noin the others are all back at the hospital, and then it’s a rush of tears and happiness and worry and relief. Hilde cries all over Duo’s hair, shaking in his arms as he blushes and tells her it’s all right. Quatre tries to put on a brave face, but tears start to stream out and he excuses himself from the room several times. Noin takes the seat that has been reserved for Heero until now, talking with Duo for hours, and Heero thinks for the first time she looks worn from these days as well.
Duo is embarrassed from the attention, but also happy. He laughs at Hilde even as he pets the back of her head, looking to Heero with a sheepish grin, like he’s sorry to have caused all this trouble.
“You look like hell, Heero,” he says affectionately, their hands clasped on the bed. “Can you please go home and get some sleep?”
Heero obeys. He’ll do anything Duo says for the rest of his life, probably. He doesn’t even make it out of his clothes once he gets to his hotel room, just passes out on top of the covers and sleeps for eighteen hours. He wakes up feeling like eons have passed, like he’s come out of the other side of a wormhole.
The first days are shaky. Duo needs help in and out of the bathroom, needs help even opening the door, which he hates even more than the needles and examinations and shitty hospital food. At first, Heero waits outside, but one time Duo stumbles as he tries to get off the toilet, and from then on, he waits right there inside the bathroom with him, Duo collapsed on the toilet, his arms around Heero, his head balanced against his stomach. Heero finds he can’t stop running his fingers through Duo’s hair, even when it makes him doze off on the seat.
Duo tries to shake off the atrophy of his muscles like it’s a headache or a sprain. He forces himself to stagger around the room, allowing Heero only a hand to balance him when he appears ready to topple to the floor.
“I’m fine! Jeez.”
Heero kisses him to apologize. He suspects maybe that’s why Duo lets him do it at all.
Duo is impatient when they kiss, coaxing Heero’s tongue out of his mouth, teasing him with his own.
“I want…” he breathes against Heero. “Shit. I wish I wasn’t swiss cheese. I would…”
“It’s okay,” Heero says, though he hopes Duo doesn’t notice the erection burning in his pants. “We have time.”
Duo laughs. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting.”
Oh yes I do, Heero thinks.
One night, his resolve cracks, that searching tongue loosening his control. He finds Duo’s cock under the sheets and rolls it in his palm, watching Duo’s face as he moans under him. He pumps it, fingers slipping around the fat, drooling head, until Duo tightens up and comes, spilling into his hand.
After, Duo is languid, like a snake that just ate a pig and can rest for months. He plays with Heero’s hair as Heero leans over him, happy just to stare at him forever.
“Why did you wait until I was dead?” he asks.
“I’m an idiot.”
“Yeah,” Duo laughs, and Heero can’t help but kiss him again. “You are.”
It seems that Duo’s tenacity, or his training, has paid off by the end of the week. The doctors are ready to discharge him once they see him wandering around the room by the power of his will alone.
“Do you have anyone to stay with you? You need to have someone around for a few weeks, just in case.”
“I will be watching him,” Heero says forcefully. He glances at Duo, who is sitting up in bed, expecting him to put up a fight. But he’s quiet, just looking at Heero in a way Heero can’t define, though it melts him all the same.
When the doctor is gone, he walks over to the bed and sits down beside Duo.
“Are you thinking, hell no, Heero, I’m not letting you do this?”
Duo shakes his head.
“No, I’m thinking I love you a hell of a lot.”
It’s all Heero can do to be mindful of his still tender injuries as he throws his arms around Duo and pulls him close. Duo leans his head against Heero’s shoulder, breathing in.
“I love you Duo,” he says, against the soft pillow of Duo’s hair. “You know that, right? You’re my entire world.”
They sit that way for a long time. Heero thinks, wildly, that maybe he’s the one still hooked up to monitors, because he swears he can hear his heart outside his body.
Finally, Duo rises to look at him, a wide, contented smile on his face.
“I’m ready to go home,” he says.
Heero’s mouth is on his even as the words come out.
“Me too.”
The End
Duo has the strangest dreams. He dreams he lives in an underwater castle. He’s trying to find the king to warn him about some terrible danger, but the king laughs him away. The dream fades as arrows begin to rain down around the castle, leaving trails of bubbles in their wake.
He dreams he’s driving a beautiful sports car, Heero in the passenger seat. Heero is looking away from him, and he’s talking louder and louder, trying to get his attention. When Heero turns, Duo finds himself looking away, suddenly afraid to see his expression.
He dreams of Heero staring down at him in the dismal lights of an ambulance, that he’s in surgery and Heero is the doctor, Quatre is the nurse, and Trowa is standing in a corner, recording the whole thing. Wufei keeps arguing with Heero about the proper techniques, and Duo wants to yell at them that he’s awake, they screwed something up, but he can’t make the words come out of his mouth.
He isn’t sure what might be a dream and what might be real. Everything takes on a hazy, superficial quality, like static on an old tv. He sees Heero beside him, holding his hand, telling him he loves him. He’s pretty sure that’s a dream.
Sometimes, he can hear voices, as if people are talking around him. He has a strange feeling that he’s at his own funeral, that these are people standing by his coffin, staring down at his waxy face and talking about his memory. It freaks him right out. He hears Heero always. Sometimes, Quatre and the other pilots are there, and he thinks he hears Hilde crying. He wants to say Hey, I’m not dead! But he can’t, and it makes him believe that maybe he is dead after all, that the afterlife or Hell or wherever he is is nothing more than sitting around while your friends cry over your dead body. What a lame ending.
When he first opens his eyes, he still can’t tell if he’s dreaming or dead or what. The room is dark and his eyes feel like dried out raisins. He wants badly to rub them, but his arms are leaden. There’s an IV bag dangling over his head, and that’s what makes him start to believe that maybe this is real.
Everything hurts. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to move in the bed he’s in. He starts to remember, little by little, as he stares up at the hospital ceiling. There was an ambush. He got shot. He can feel the pain focus in his chest and arm. Yep, there and there, that’s where it happened. He remembers Heero holding him up, dragging them along.
Shit. Heero! Where’s Heero?
He realizes then that Heero is at his side, his breath even. He wills his head to turn so he can get a better look. Heero is slumped forward in a chair, one arm serving as a pillow against the bed. His free hand is holding Duo’s, his fingers curled under his palm. Duo stares at their hands on the bed in disbelief. Maybe he’s dreaming after all.
He tries flexing his fingers to test this theory and Heero starts awake, then turns to him, his blue eyes going wide.
“Duo?” he says, so softly that Duo nearly can’t hear it.
Duo tries to say something witty, but his mouth feels like wet plaster, and he just coughs instead. His throat is raw with disuse. Heero is up in an instant, peering over him, his face more worried than Duo has ever seen before.
“Are you okay?”
Duo laughs, small and hoarse. “Water… please.”
Dutifully, Heero stands up, his hand slipping away. He returns a minute later with a glass of tap water from the adjoining bathroom, and presses it carefully to Duo’s lips. Duo feels like he’s drinking lava, but he swallows some down just so he can talk.
“Hey,” he says, when that wet plaster feeling is gone.
For a moment, Heero just stares at him with that shaken expression. Then, he laughs, for a good solid minute. Duo finds himself smiling, wondering what the hell is so funny.
“Hey,” Heero says back. His hand slips over Duo’s again. Wait, that part is real?
“Where am I?”
“Newport City hospital.”
“Shit. How long?”
“A week.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.” Heero is peering over him again. “How do you feel? Do you need anything?”
“I feel like death warmed over. And no, not unless you can spring me out of here.”
Heero laughs, then, completely to Duo’s surprise, reaches out and rearranges his matted bangs.
“Sorry, those days are over. I have to call the doctors in here soon, Duo. Now that you’re awake.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Duo groans, but his heart is doing strange leaps in his chest. He feels suddenly above the pain, with Heero touching him like this, with his hand slipping from Duo’s forehead back to his own hand on the bed, like they belong together there. He would kiss him if he had more control over his body. Instead, he moves his hand a little and entwines their fingers together, and the gesture makes Heero’s eyes go dangerously bright in the dark.
“Duo…”
“Thanks for… well, you know. Saving my life.” Duo cracks a weak smile.
“Idiot,” Heero says, blue eyes swimming, and then he leans over and presses his warm lips against Duo’s chapped ones, and it’s as perfect as any first kiss in the trauma ward of a hospital can be.
He pulls back eventually and stands, his fingers finally slipping from Duo’s grasp.
“I’m going to call them now.”
Duo nods absently, seeing only Heero.
****
Heero manages to keep his composure until the doctors arrive, swarming around Duo like a chattering flock of birds, before slipping into the bathroom. He puts the lid down on the toilet seat before sitting heavily on top of it, and this is where his control finally slips and he weeps silently into his hands.
Thank god you’re alive, Duo. Thank god.
He makes sure he doesn’t look as wrecked as he feels when he exits the bathroom again. The doctors are still there, trying to fill Duo in on the details of his brush with death, but Duo’s eyes are on him the entire time, and Heero feels like he might weep again, right here.
The next few days are a blur. It seems as soon as Heero calls Noin the others are all back at the hospital, and then it’s a rush of tears and happiness and worry and relief. Hilde cries all over Duo’s hair, shaking in his arms as he blushes and tells her it’s all right. Quatre tries to put on a brave face, but tears start to stream out and he excuses himself from the room several times. Noin takes the seat that has been reserved for Heero until now, talking with Duo for hours, and Heero thinks for the first time she looks worn from these days as well.
Duo is embarrassed from the attention, but also happy. He laughs at Hilde even as he pets the back of her head, looking to Heero with a sheepish grin, like he’s sorry to have caused all this trouble.
“You look like hell, Heero,” he says affectionately, their hands clasped on the bed. “Can you please go home and get some sleep?”
Heero obeys. He’ll do anything Duo says for the rest of his life, probably. He doesn’t even make it out of his clothes once he gets to his hotel room, just passes out on top of the covers and sleeps for eighteen hours. He wakes up feeling like eons have passed, like he’s come out of the other side of a wormhole.
The first days are shaky. Duo needs help in and out of the bathroom, needs help even opening the door, which he hates even more than the needles and examinations and shitty hospital food. At first, Heero waits outside, but one time Duo stumbles as he tries to get off the toilet, and from then on, he waits right there inside the bathroom with him, Duo collapsed on the toilet, his arms around Heero, his head balanced against his stomach. Heero finds he can’t stop running his fingers through Duo’s hair, even when it makes him doze off on the seat.
Duo tries to shake off the atrophy of his muscles like it’s a headache or a sprain. He forces himself to stagger around the room, allowing Heero only a hand to balance him when he appears ready to topple to the floor.
“I’m fine! Jeez.”
Heero kisses him to apologize. He suspects maybe that’s why Duo lets him do it at all.
Duo is impatient when they kiss, coaxing Heero’s tongue out of his mouth, teasing him with his own.
“I want…” he breathes against Heero. “Shit. I wish I wasn’t swiss cheese. I would…”
“It’s okay,” Heero says, though he hopes Duo doesn’t notice the erection burning in his pants. “We have time.”
Duo laughs. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting.”
Oh yes I do, Heero thinks.
One night, his resolve cracks, that searching tongue loosening his control. He finds Duo’s cock under the sheets and rolls it in his palm, watching Duo’s face as he moans under him. He pumps it, fingers slipping around the fat, drooling head, until Duo tightens up and comes, spilling into his hand.
After, Duo is languid, like a snake that just ate a pig and can rest for months. He plays with Heero’s hair as Heero leans over him, happy just to stare at him forever.
“Why did you wait until I was dead?” he asks.
“I’m an idiot.”
“Yeah,” Duo laughs, and Heero can’t help but kiss him again. “You are.”
It seems that Duo’s tenacity, or his training, has paid off by the end of the week. The doctors are ready to discharge him once they see him wandering around the room by the power of his will alone.
“Do you have anyone to stay with you? You need to have someone around for a few weeks, just in case.”
“I will be watching him,” Heero says forcefully. He glances at Duo, who is sitting up in bed, expecting him to put up a fight. But he’s quiet, just looking at Heero in a way Heero can’t define, though it melts him all the same.
When the doctor is gone, he walks over to the bed and sits down beside Duo.
“Are you thinking, hell no, Heero, I’m not letting you do this?”
Duo shakes his head.
“No, I’m thinking I love you a hell of a lot.”
It’s all Heero can do to be mindful of his still tender injuries as he throws his arms around Duo and pulls him close. Duo leans his head against Heero’s shoulder, breathing in.
“I love you Duo,” he says, against the soft pillow of Duo’s hair. “You know that, right? You’re my entire world.”
They sit that way for a long time. Heero thinks, wildly, that maybe he’s the one still hooked up to monitors, because he swears he can hear his heart outside his body.
Finally, Duo rises to look at him, a wide, contented smile on his face.
“I’m ready to go home,” he says.
Heero’s mouth is on his even as the words come out.
“Me too.”
The End