fic - alas, poor fred, i knew him [haven]
Title: Alas, Poor Fred, I Knew Him
Series: Moments of Haven
Summary: Don't you hate it when your hard drive crashes?
Alas, Poor Fred, I Knew Him
A Moment of Haven
"You know, a watched hard drive never defrags, Heero." Duo sauntered up behind where Heero was seated at his desk and draped his arms over Heero's shoulders, hand catching wrist across his chest.
One of Heero's hands lifted from the keyboard to join the hands on his chest, but his eyes did not leave the screen. There he could catch a faint outline joining his in the reflection. "I'm not defragging. I'm surface scanning."
"Fine, then. A watched hard drive never surface scans. ...Dangit, it's not actually the hard drive that's performing the surface scan, is it? So a watched utility... Aw, screw it. It's not like the pot is the one actually boiling anyway." He grinned when he succeeded in getting Heero to glance up and throw a fondly amused look at him. "So who's getting scanned and why?"
"I think it's about time to retire the f drive. Some bad sectors cropped up today."
"Aww, no way. You managing to get your data back?" According to the data map being displayed on the screen, the scanning utility had uncovered a few dead spots here and there, but it wasn't too catastrophic.
"They seem to be relocating well so far." Luckily, with the way he had chosen to farm out the data to the collective, he wouldn't lose too much if the drive went down altogether. It wasn't as if he was in any particular hurry to see the results from his latest tests on the Zero net, anyway.
"That's good. F, you said? Who is that, Frank?"
"Fred, I think you decided." Naturally, Duo had chosen to give names to all of the hard drives, and by extension the boxes they were housed in.
"Alas, poor Fred," Duo sighed. "I knew him, Heero. He shall be missed."
Heero did the best he could to chastise him for mangling lines from Shakespeare and nudged Duo's tummy with the back of his head. "He's not dead yet, you know."
"Maybe, but sitting here watching him get patched back up won't make him get better any faster. So, you got anything else to do here, or you wanna help me with dinner?"
Barely a moment's consideration and Heero's free hand pulled the top down on his laptop.
Duo rested his feet on top of Heero's to keep the cool floor from leeching the heat away through his soles. "So," he said, stabbing a potato thoughtfully with his fork. "What are you thinking about tonight?"
"Hm?" Heero looked up from his meal. He'd been quieter than normal, or maybe just more still and muted. "Oh. Sorry."
The 'I didn't mean to shut you out' was left unsaid at the end of the brief apology, as was the actual answer to the question. Duo waited a few seconds, then decided to provide a prompt. "Well?"
Heero blinked as if just realizing that the 'sorry' only covered half of the proper social etiquette. "I was just thinking about Fred."
And then it was Duo's turn to blink. "Heero, are you empathizing with the hardware again?" When Heero's expression closed up a bit, Duo rubbed the tops of his feet reassuringly. "Hey, I don't mean that like it's a bad thing." He thought it was kind of sweet, in its own Heero way. At least he was empathizing with something, and it was never because he felt like a machine. Almost the opposite, in fact: he usually found the machine typifying some quality of human existence.
The gentle comfort Duo exuded for Heero made him wish he could reach out and squeeze his hand in appreciation or something, but their hands were nowhere near each other at the moment, so he settled for lifting one side of his lips in a small smile. "Hard drives die all the time. I know that. It's because they're mechanical devices. In the middle of all the spinning and moving and reading, something has to go wrong sometime. It just..." He shrugged apologetically. "I guess it just reminded me of the inevitable failure of any mechanical thing."
"For instance... the human body?" Heero usually just accepted the less than perfect state of his physical health, but if he was thinking about something mechanical tonight that would make him moody, that was the only thing Duo could think of.
"For instance." An agreement lay somewhere beneath the neutral response. With another bite of his meal, he made it clear he would concede no more than that for the moment.
"So I guess you'll be replacing Fred, eh?" Duo said, pulling on his dishwashing gloves.
"Aa." Having filled his tub with hot, soapy water, Heero turned off the tap and got to work.
"You gonna scavenge another one from work, or are you going to buy a new one?" He dipped a finger into Heero's suds and caught some bubbles on his yellow rubber fingertip.
Heero elbowed his arm out of the way and set a scrubbed plate down in his side of the sink. "Probably work. They'll probably be calling us in again sometime soon."
"Aha." Duo flicked his suds towards his companion, but they fell short of their goal. "I see you're conceding the bet to me."
"Which bet?"
"I told you last week that it was about time for them to be calling us. I said it'd been a while, and the Preventers never like leaving us alone for so long, so they'd probably be finding something for us to do soon."
"...Where does the bet come in?"
"Well, I'm sure I phrased it 'I bet they'll call soon' or something like that."
"That does not imply a bet."
"Yeah, so?" He grinned, knowing Heero was surely rolling his eyes behind the cover of his bangs. "Hmmm, what should Fred's successor be named? Frank? Farley? Uh... Dangit, not too many 'F' names come to mind. Foobar? Finny? Fillmore?"
Heero knew it was a hopeless battle, but he tried anyway. "Does he really have to have a name?" Pause/blink. "It. Does -it- really have to have a name?" He shook his head at himself. "Now you have me anthropomorphizing the hardware, too."
"Hey," Duo protested jovially, knocking their shoulders together. "I wasn't the only one that used to talk to my machine, you know."
"Yes, but my machine talked back." It almost sounded completely reasonable when he said it.
"...You know that doesn't make you sound any more sane."
"...It does in the proper context," he answered with dignity.
They'd put the tea kettle on while they were cleaning up after dinner, and the water was boiled and the tea steeping by the time they were done. Duo pulled out the small tray that had come with their tea set, gathered up the teapot and two cups, and brought it all out with them as they adjourned to their so-called sitting room for some quality couch time.
Heero settled himself on the couch first, with Duo sitting on the edge beside him so he could pour them each a cup. When he was done, he handed Heero his, took up his own, and then reclined comfortably into the curve of Heero's welcoming arm. "Ah, life is good. I got my cup of tea, and I got my Heero. What more could I ask for?"
"Are you implying that I am not your cup of tea?"
A moment of silence, and then a chuckle. Heero humor was like that. Sometimes you just had to stop for a bit and make sure you really heard what you thought you heard, and then you had to think some more to make sure Heero meant it in the way you thought he was meaning it. It turned every quiet scrap of humor into a special surprise. "Oh, you are so my cup of tea, Heero. How about this? This is -a- cup of tea," he said, indicating the cup he held in his hand. "And you are -my- cup of tea. Better?"
Duo got a light kiss on his temple for his troubles. "Better."
"Good. Whoa, and you're both pretty hot, too," he added, gingerly shifting his grip on the cup up to the cooler rim. He let his unoccupied hand rest upon Heero's thigh. "So tell me, teacup. You gonna finish your story?"
Heero had a moment of exceptional goodness, during which a splendid surge of affection swept through him for the young man at his side. Nicknames were sweet, but when spiced with the unique Duo flavor, they approached divine. It was enough to make him overlook being referred to as a piece of tableware. "Which story?"
"You know. The one about mechanical failures of the human body. I'm sure you were about to tell me the rest of it."
Was he, now? It seemed so. It seemed somewhat pointless to him to share his mental meanderings for the night, but he supposed it would be equally pointless for him to let them fester within his mind to no end. "Hmmm. As you said, mechanical failures of the human body. In particular, mine."
"Something bothering you lately?" Duo's hand slipped down to rub Heero's knee lightly. Heero had put his body through a lot more wear and tear than any hard drive would ever have to suffer, and he paid for it.
Heero twitched one shoulder up in a small, negligent shrug. "Nothing unusual. It just got me thinking."
Duo waited patiently with his tea for a minute before he began tapping out a deliberate rhythm against Heero's leg. It could be a challenge extracting information from a moody Heero. He didn't like admitting to such weakness. "You still haven't told me anything more than you said before."
Heero's nearly imperceptible sigh might have gone completely unnoticed if Duo hadn't been relaxing against his chest. "Why are we only eighteen, Duo?"
"Feeling old tonight?"
A long silence, but when the words came, they were calm and easily uttered. "Maybe. Just a little."
"I can't decide whether we're too young or too old," Duo said contemplatively, staring at the blank television screen in front of them. "Too young to have seen all that we have, too old to still belong in our bodies."
Heero hn'ed thoughtfully. Remarkable. Duo had pretty much just summed up everything that had been on his mind. There was something beautifully comforting in that, and he relaxed a notch. "Maybe the state of my mind matches the state of my body."
"You have a sound mind in a sound body, Heero, not an old mind in an old body." He slid his hand back up his companion's thigh and nudged his elbow into his gut. The motion served to emphasize his point, and to remind them both of the solid abdominal muscles hidden beneath Heero's shirt.
"Things can be both old and sound, Duo."
"Fine. But if you have a sound, old mind in a sound, old body, then I'm gonna have to say that it's the soundness that's more important than the oldness."
"Am I even completely sound?"
"Completely? No," he was forced to admit. "Who is, really? Even I'm not completely of sound mind and body. I mean, this head of mine... well, 'nuff said. And even I have some odds and ends that ache in the wrong weather."
"I know," Heero answered quietly. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be--"
"No, you should," Duo cut in. "Well, maybe 'should' is too forceful a word... but you're certainly entitled to a complaint now and again. It's okay to... to not be strong all the time."
"You know that doesn't come easily to me."
His fingers rubbed soothingly at the flesh beneath them. "And I've never known you to favor a route just because it's easy. It's okay, Heero. It is. I got your back."
It was a familiar phrase carrying a familiar concept, and it made its way into the depths of Heero's mind like little else could. "I know. I'm sorry," he repeated softly, but this time it was an apology for something else altogether, for forgetting that he had a partner who could and would pick up the slack if or when he had to. Duo had that strength, and he believed in it, even if he tried never to rely upon it.
Duo smiled his acknowledgement, even though Heero couldn't really see it from where Duo's head lay pillowed upon his shoulder. He was sure Heero felt it in the air, anyway. "We should do something young."
"Hm?"
"Young. You know. Well, maybe not, but something guys our age should be doing."
"What should eighteen-year-old guys be doing?"
"You're seventeen. Your birthday hasn't passed yet."
Heero snorted softly, tilting his head to rest against Duo's, the tiredness he'd felt earlier being washed away by that soft glow he felt when just -being- in Duo's presence. "Says you. I increment my age at the beginning of the year. The date you chose was just a time for commemoration."
"Whatever. What I say, goes." He hurried along before Heero had time to do much more than push the side of his head lazily in protest. "We should be... oh, out on a date."
"It's a school night," Heero responded blandly.
"School's pretty much out for the year. We already know we'll graduate, and what colleges we'll be going to."
"I think we're already on a date," he decided after a little thought.
"How's that?"
"Well, you invited me over to your place for a quiet dinner for two. Of course, you coerced me into helping out with dinner, too, but I didn't mind since we had a good time." He turned and pressed another kiss to the side of Duo's head.
"I swear, Yuy, if you say that any time spent with me is a good time...."
Heero just smiled at the mock-threat and went on. "And of course, since I'm such a considerate boyfriend, I helped you clean up, and we had a good time doing that, too. After which we sat down on the couch, and who knows? Maybe we'll catch a movie together or something. Sounds like a date to me."
"Hmm, maybe we'll just make out on the couch while the movie plays unnoticed in the background. That sounds pretty -- hey, wait, I'm not supposed to agree with you." He turned and leveled a mild glare at his companion.
"Why not?" Eyes laughed at him over the rim of a tea cup.
"..." Darnit, what kind of response was that? Well, he supposed he could let it go just this once, if it pulled Heero out of his little slump. It wasn't as if it was all that unpleasant, after all. "Wanna feel eighteen tonight?"
"I don't know. Are eighteen-year-olds allowed to feel anything deep and important?"
Duo chose not to think too hard about any implications that may or may not have been hiding within that statement. Knowing Heero, he had probably intended every last one of them, if any. "I wouldn't know either. Wanna act eighteen tonight?" He didn't bother waiting for an answer this time. Besides, it was unfair that Heero do all the kissing.
A short minute later, and Heero said, "You know, I don't think guys our age normally sit around on the sofa necking with each other."
"Oh, bite me, Yuy."
Heero obligingly nibbled on his ear lobe.
"Heero!" He paused for a few pseudo-scandalized seconds before he was unable to suppress his delighted chuckle for any longer.
Heero, once again obligingly, took advantage of his distraction and transferred his lips to Duo's mouth, going so far as to slip in a couple of those new and still highly experimental open-mouthed kisses they had been flirting with recently. There was just something special -- specialer -- about kissing a laughing Duo.
Duo hummed appreciatively and was about to send his left hand off to do something interesting when he realized he was still holding his half-finished cup of tea. With a few slow parting kisses to finish off the string, he pulled away reluctantly in order to reach out to the table and set the cup down before some accident befell them. The motion was aborted halfway when he decided to empty the cup in one last big gulp first, thankful that it had been only pleasantly warm since he hadn't stopped to think about it.
As he was about to put the cup down on the table so he could get back to business, he noticed that Heero had not moved to follow. In fact, he was sipping at his tea leisurely, and though the way he absently licked at his lips could have done some wonderful things to Duo, given half a chance, Duo responded to Heero's expression, fairly open and bright, but content and satisfied. With nothing more than a fond blink, he altered his actions smoothly into a refill, and offered Heero one while he was at it.
When they'd both settled in again, Duo asked lazily, "So, feeling better now?" Then he unsettled himself quickly and slapped a few fingers over Heero's mouth as he realized how vulnerable that innocent question left him to attack. "Wait, don't answer that."
Heero smiled against his fingers and gave them a kiss, and that was answer enough.
Duo rolled his eyes. "I'm getting better at this. Really, I am." His fingers shifted slowly from the soft lips to slide over Heero's cheekbone.
"I'll just have to get more creative, then." He did like a good challenge, anyway. Duo fared pretty well against the easy frontal assaults. They'd see how well he did against the sneakier ones. Duo may have been the master of stealth, but Heero was pretty sure he could slip a thing or two beneath his radar, as he had with the issue of feeling eighteen.
Duo eyed him suspiciously for a moment before giving up with an exaggerated sigh and reclaiming his former position. His annoyed air was belied by the way he made himself so comfortable against Heero's side.
Heero pulled Duo's braid out from where it was being squashed against his arm and played with the tassel at the end. "I changed my mind. We aren't on a date."
"What? You can't do that!"
"I'd like to think we're past the point where we need to concoct reasons and make deliberate plans just to be with each other. Wouldn't it be nicer to just be with each other because we're just with each other? Doesn't that normally happen eventually?"
As if Duo was really in a position to know. But he supposed it was true. When the couple was close enough, they usually stopped 'dating' and just started being with each other, or spending their free time together. Which meant that Heero was saying something completely innocuous and yet completely heartwarming. Again. Damn him. He sighed. "Yeah. Fine, I forgive you."
Heero tickled his cheek with his braid. "So, are you busy tomorrow night?"
"No, don't think so. Why?"
"Why don't you come over to my place for dinner this time?"
Duo laughed quietly, a nice, deep sound that vibrated its way from one chest to another. "Sure. Maybe we'll actually catch that movie tomorrow, eh?"
"It's supposed to rain tomorrow."
"Even better. We can watch the rain, then." He remembered the first time they watched the rain together. That was a nice night. "Hey, what time is it? Too late for anything interesting?" It wasn't only an excuse for him to lean over Heero and grab the remote on his other side. He flipped the television on and found them a movie, a law drama. "Cool." They'd missed the first twenty minutes, but that was okay. They'd just missed someone getting killed, and they generally didn't like watching that anyway.
Perhaps another twenty minutes later, when they were both so very comfortable and loath to move, Duo had to muse, "Hmm, maybe George will crash tomorrow. That would be nice, wouldn't it?"
Heero frowned, but the amusement in the expression quite nearly turned it into a pout. "Hey. Don't jinx my system."
------
i have managed to write a 20k fic all stemming from a failed hard drive. go me.
moments of this moment of haven were inspired by moments of rapture's heero and duo go on a date contest.
alas, poor yorick. i knew him, horatio. shakespeare's hamlet.
this fic is dedicated to my d: drive, who suddenly reported so many bad sectors that even half a dozen surface scans by norton couldn't detect them all, who crashed during a good defragging and then refused to come out and play, who then kindly decided to come back and give me back my data.
back to previous part
on to next part
Series: Moments of Haven
Summary: Don't you hate it when your hard drive crashes?
Alas, Poor Fred, I Knew Him
A Moment of Haven
"You know, a watched hard drive never defrags, Heero." Duo sauntered up behind where Heero was seated at his desk and draped his arms over Heero's shoulders, hand catching wrist across his chest.
One of Heero's hands lifted from the keyboard to join the hands on his chest, but his eyes did not leave the screen. There he could catch a faint outline joining his in the reflection. "I'm not defragging. I'm surface scanning."
"Fine, then. A watched hard drive never surface scans. ...Dangit, it's not actually the hard drive that's performing the surface scan, is it? So a watched utility... Aw, screw it. It's not like the pot is the one actually boiling anyway." He grinned when he succeeded in getting Heero to glance up and throw a fondly amused look at him. "So who's getting scanned and why?"
"I think it's about time to retire the f drive. Some bad sectors cropped up today."
"Aww, no way. You managing to get your data back?" According to the data map being displayed on the screen, the scanning utility had uncovered a few dead spots here and there, but it wasn't too catastrophic.
"They seem to be relocating well so far." Luckily, with the way he had chosen to farm out the data to the collective, he wouldn't lose too much if the drive went down altogether. It wasn't as if he was in any particular hurry to see the results from his latest tests on the Zero net, anyway.
"That's good. F, you said? Who is that, Frank?"
"Fred, I think you decided." Naturally, Duo had chosen to give names to all of the hard drives, and by extension the boxes they were housed in.
"Alas, poor Fred," Duo sighed. "I knew him, Heero. He shall be missed."
Heero did the best he could to chastise him for mangling lines from Shakespeare and nudged Duo's tummy with the back of his head. "He's not dead yet, you know."
"Maybe, but sitting here watching him get patched back up won't make him get better any faster. So, you got anything else to do here, or you wanna help me with dinner?"
Barely a moment's consideration and Heero's free hand pulled the top down on his laptop.
Duo rested his feet on top of Heero's to keep the cool floor from leeching the heat away through his soles. "So," he said, stabbing a potato thoughtfully with his fork. "What are you thinking about tonight?"
"Hm?" Heero looked up from his meal. He'd been quieter than normal, or maybe just more still and muted. "Oh. Sorry."
The 'I didn't mean to shut you out' was left unsaid at the end of the brief apology, as was the actual answer to the question. Duo waited a few seconds, then decided to provide a prompt. "Well?"
Heero blinked as if just realizing that the 'sorry' only covered half of the proper social etiquette. "I was just thinking about Fred."
And then it was Duo's turn to blink. "Heero, are you empathizing with the hardware again?" When Heero's expression closed up a bit, Duo rubbed the tops of his feet reassuringly. "Hey, I don't mean that like it's a bad thing." He thought it was kind of sweet, in its own Heero way. At least he was empathizing with something, and it was never because he felt like a machine. Almost the opposite, in fact: he usually found the machine typifying some quality of human existence.
The gentle comfort Duo exuded for Heero made him wish he could reach out and squeeze his hand in appreciation or something, but their hands were nowhere near each other at the moment, so he settled for lifting one side of his lips in a small smile. "Hard drives die all the time. I know that. It's because they're mechanical devices. In the middle of all the spinning and moving and reading, something has to go wrong sometime. It just..." He shrugged apologetically. "I guess it just reminded me of the inevitable failure of any mechanical thing."
"For instance... the human body?" Heero usually just accepted the less than perfect state of his physical health, but if he was thinking about something mechanical tonight that would make him moody, that was the only thing Duo could think of.
"For instance." An agreement lay somewhere beneath the neutral response. With another bite of his meal, he made it clear he would concede no more than that for the moment.
"So I guess you'll be replacing Fred, eh?" Duo said, pulling on his dishwashing gloves.
"Aa." Having filled his tub with hot, soapy water, Heero turned off the tap and got to work.
"You gonna scavenge another one from work, or are you going to buy a new one?" He dipped a finger into Heero's suds and caught some bubbles on his yellow rubber fingertip.
Heero elbowed his arm out of the way and set a scrubbed plate down in his side of the sink. "Probably work. They'll probably be calling us in again sometime soon."
"Aha." Duo flicked his suds towards his companion, but they fell short of their goal. "I see you're conceding the bet to me."
"Which bet?"
"I told you last week that it was about time for them to be calling us. I said it'd been a while, and the Preventers never like leaving us alone for so long, so they'd probably be finding something for us to do soon."
"...Where does the bet come in?"
"Well, I'm sure I phrased it 'I bet they'll call soon' or something like that."
"That does not imply a bet."
"Yeah, so?" He grinned, knowing Heero was surely rolling his eyes behind the cover of his bangs. "Hmmm, what should Fred's successor be named? Frank? Farley? Uh... Dangit, not too many 'F' names come to mind. Foobar? Finny? Fillmore?"
Heero knew it was a hopeless battle, but he tried anyway. "Does he really have to have a name?" Pause/blink. "It. Does -it- really have to have a name?" He shook his head at himself. "Now you have me anthropomorphizing the hardware, too."
"Hey," Duo protested jovially, knocking their shoulders together. "I wasn't the only one that used to talk to my machine, you know."
"Yes, but my machine talked back." It almost sounded completely reasonable when he said it.
"...You know that doesn't make you sound any more sane."
"...It does in the proper context," he answered with dignity.
They'd put the tea kettle on while they were cleaning up after dinner, and the water was boiled and the tea steeping by the time they were done. Duo pulled out the small tray that had come with their tea set, gathered up the teapot and two cups, and brought it all out with them as they adjourned to their so-called sitting room for some quality couch time.
Heero settled himself on the couch first, with Duo sitting on the edge beside him so he could pour them each a cup. When he was done, he handed Heero his, took up his own, and then reclined comfortably into the curve of Heero's welcoming arm. "Ah, life is good. I got my cup of tea, and I got my Heero. What more could I ask for?"
"Are you implying that I am not your cup of tea?"
A moment of silence, and then a chuckle. Heero humor was like that. Sometimes you just had to stop for a bit and make sure you really heard what you thought you heard, and then you had to think some more to make sure Heero meant it in the way you thought he was meaning it. It turned every quiet scrap of humor into a special surprise. "Oh, you are so my cup of tea, Heero. How about this? This is -a- cup of tea," he said, indicating the cup he held in his hand. "And you are -my- cup of tea. Better?"
Duo got a light kiss on his temple for his troubles. "Better."
"Good. Whoa, and you're both pretty hot, too," he added, gingerly shifting his grip on the cup up to the cooler rim. He let his unoccupied hand rest upon Heero's thigh. "So tell me, teacup. You gonna finish your story?"
Heero had a moment of exceptional goodness, during which a splendid surge of affection swept through him for the young man at his side. Nicknames were sweet, but when spiced with the unique Duo flavor, they approached divine. It was enough to make him overlook being referred to as a piece of tableware. "Which story?"
"You know. The one about mechanical failures of the human body. I'm sure you were about to tell me the rest of it."
Was he, now? It seemed so. It seemed somewhat pointless to him to share his mental meanderings for the night, but he supposed it would be equally pointless for him to let them fester within his mind to no end. "Hmmm. As you said, mechanical failures of the human body. In particular, mine."
"Something bothering you lately?" Duo's hand slipped down to rub Heero's knee lightly. Heero had put his body through a lot more wear and tear than any hard drive would ever have to suffer, and he paid for it.
Heero twitched one shoulder up in a small, negligent shrug. "Nothing unusual. It just got me thinking."
Duo waited patiently with his tea for a minute before he began tapping out a deliberate rhythm against Heero's leg. It could be a challenge extracting information from a moody Heero. He didn't like admitting to such weakness. "You still haven't told me anything more than you said before."
Heero's nearly imperceptible sigh might have gone completely unnoticed if Duo hadn't been relaxing against his chest. "Why are we only eighteen, Duo?"
"Feeling old tonight?"
A long silence, but when the words came, they were calm and easily uttered. "Maybe. Just a little."
"I can't decide whether we're too young or too old," Duo said contemplatively, staring at the blank television screen in front of them. "Too young to have seen all that we have, too old to still belong in our bodies."
Heero hn'ed thoughtfully. Remarkable. Duo had pretty much just summed up everything that had been on his mind. There was something beautifully comforting in that, and he relaxed a notch. "Maybe the state of my mind matches the state of my body."
"You have a sound mind in a sound body, Heero, not an old mind in an old body." He slid his hand back up his companion's thigh and nudged his elbow into his gut. The motion served to emphasize his point, and to remind them both of the solid abdominal muscles hidden beneath Heero's shirt.
"Things can be both old and sound, Duo."
"Fine. But if you have a sound, old mind in a sound, old body, then I'm gonna have to say that it's the soundness that's more important than the oldness."
"Am I even completely sound?"
"Completely? No," he was forced to admit. "Who is, really? Even I'm not completely of sound mind and body. I mean, this head of mine... well, 'nuff said. And even I have some odds and ends that ache in the wrong weather."
"I know," Heero answered quietly. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be--"
"No, you should," Duo cut in. "Well, maybe 'should' is too forceful a word... but you're certainly entitled to a complaint now and again. It's okay to... to not be strong all the time."
"You know that doesn't come easily to me."
His fingers rubbed soothingly at the flesh beneath them. "And I've never known you to favor a route just because it's easy. It's okay, Heero. It is. I got your back."
It was a familiar phrase carrying a familiar concept, and it made its way into the depths of Heero's mind like little else could. "I know. I'm sorry," he repeated softly, but this time it was an apology for something else altogether, for forgetting that he had a partner who could and would pick up the slack if or when he had to. Duo had that strength, and he believed in it, even if he tried never to rely upon it.
Duo smiled his acknowledgement, even though Heero couldn't really see it from where Duo's head lay pillowed upon his shoulder. He was sure Heero felt it in the air, anyway. "We should do something young."
"Hm?"
"Young. You know. Well, maybe not, but something guys our age should be doing."
"What should eighteen-year-old guys be doing?"
"You're seventeen. Your birthday hasn't passed yet."
Heero snorted softly, tilting his head to rest against Duo's, the tiredness he'd felt earlier being washed away by that soft glow he felt when just -being- in Duo's presence. "Says you. I increment my age at the beginning of the year. The date you chose was just a time for commemoration."
"Whatever. What I say, goes." He hurried along before Heero had time to do much more than push the side of his head lazily in protest. "We should be... oh, out on a date."
"It's a school night," Heero responded blandly.
"School's pretty much out for the year. We already know we'll graduate, and what colleges we'll be going to."
"I think we're already on a date," he decided after a little thought.
"How's that?"
"Well, you invited me over to your place for a quiet dinner for two. Of course, you coerced me into helping out with dinner, too, but I didn't mind since we had a good time." He turned and pressed another kiss to the side of Duo's head.
"I swear, Yuy, if you say that any time spent with me is a good time...."
Heero just smiled at the mock-threat and went on. "And of course, since I'm such a considerate boyfriend, I helped you clean up, and we had a good time doing that, too. After which we sat down on the couch, and who knows? Maybe we'll catch a movie together or something. Sounds like a date to me."
"Hmm, maybe we'll just make out on the couch while the movie plays unnoticed in the background. That sounds pretty -- hey, wait, I'm not supposed to agree with you." He turned and leveled a mild glare at his companion.
"Why not?" Eyes laughed at him over the rim of a tea cup.
"..." Darnit, what kind of response was that? Well, he supposed he could let it go just this once, if it pulled Heero out of his little slump. It wasn't as if it was all that unpleasant, after all. "Wanna feel eighteen tonight?"
"I don't know. Are eighteen-year-olds allowed to feel anything deep and important?"
Duo chose not to think too hard about any implications that may or may not have been hiding within that statement. Knowing Heero, he had probably intended every last one of them, if any. "I wouldn't know either. Wanna act eighteen tonight?" He didn't bother waiting for an answer this time. Besides, it was unfair that Heero do all the kissing.
A short minute later, and Heero said, "You know, I don't think guys our age normally sit around on the sofa necking with each other."
"Oh, bite me, Yuy."
Heero obligingly nibbled on his ear lobe.
"Heero!" He paused for a few pseudo-scandalized seconds before he was unable to suppress his delighted chuckle for any longer.
Heero, once again obligingly, took advantage of his distraction and transferred his lips to Duo's mouth, going so far as to slip in a couple of those new and still highly experimental open-mouthed kisses they had been flirting with recently. There was just something special -- specialer -- about kissing a laughing Duo.
Duo hummed appreciatively and was about to send his left hand off to do something interesting when he realized he was still holding his half-finished cup of tea. With a few slow parting kisses to finish off the string, he pulled away reluctantly in order to reach out to the table and set the cup down before some accident befell them. The motion was aborted halfway when he decided to empty the cup in one last big gulp first, thankful that it had been only pleasantly warm since he hadn't stopped to think about it.
As he was about to put the cup down on the table so he could get back to business, he noticed that Heero had not moved to follow. In fact, he was sipping at his tea leisurely, and though the way he absently licked at his lips could have done some wonderful things to Duo, given half a chance, Duo responded to Heero's expression, fairly open and bright, but content and satisfied. With nothing more than a fond blink, he altered his actions smoothly into a refill, and offered Heero one while he was at it.
When they'd both settled in again, Duo asked lazily, "So, feeling better now?" Then he unsettled himself quickly and slapped a few fingers over Heero's mouth as he realized how vulnerable that innocent question left him to attack. "Wait, don't answer that."
Heero smiled against his fingers and gave them a kiss, and that was answer enough.
Duo rolled his eyes. "I'm getting better at this. Really, I am." His fingers shifted slowly from the soft lips to slide over Heero's cheekbone.
"I'll just have to get more creative, then." He did like a good challenge, anyway. Duo fared pretty well against the easy frontal assaults. They'd see how well he did against the sneakier ones. Duo may have been the master of stealth, but Heero was pretty sure he could slip a thing or two beneath his radar, as he had with the issue of feeling eighteen.
Duo eyed him suspiciously for a moment before giving up with an exaggerated sigh and reclaiming his former position. His annoyed air was belied by the way he made himself so comfortable against Heero's side.
Heero pulled Duo's braid out from where it was being squashed against his arm and played with the tassel at the end. "I changed my mind. We aren't on a date."
"What? You can't do that!"
"I'd like to think we're past the point where we need to concoct reasons and make deliberate plans just to be with each other. Wouldn't it be nicer to just be with each other because we're just with each other? Doesn't that normally happen eventually?"
As if Duo was really in a position to know. But he supposed it was true. When the couple was close enough, they usually stopped 'dating' and just started being with each other, or spending their free time together. Which meant that Heero was saying something completely innocuous and yet completely heartwarming. Again. Damn him. He sighed. "Yeah. Fine, I forgive you."
Heero tickled his cheek with his braid. "So, are you busy tomorrow night?"
"No, don't think so. Why?"
"Why don't you come over to my place for dinner this time?"
Duo laughed quietly, a nice, deep sound that vibrated its way from one chest to another. "Sure. Maybe we'll actually catch that movie tomorrow, eh?"
"It's supposed to rain tomorrow."
"Even better. We can watch the rain, then." He remembered the first time they watched the rain together. That was a nice night. "Hey, what time is it? Too late for anything interesting?" It wasn't only an excuse for him to lean over Heero and grab the remote on his other side. He flipped the television on and found them a movie, a law drama. "Cool." They'd missed the first twenty minutes, but that was okay. They'd just missed someone getting killed, and they generally didn't like watching that anyway.
Perhaps another twenty minutes later, when they were both so very comfortable and loath to move, Duo had to muse, "Hmm, maybe George will crash tomorrow. That would be nice, wouldn't it?"
Heero frowned, but the amusement in the expression quite nearly turned it into a pout. "Hey. Don't jinx my system."
------
i have managed to write a 20k fic all stemming from a failed hard drive. go me.
moments of this moment of haven were inspired by moments of rapture's heero and duo go on a date contest.
alas, poor yorick. i knew him, horatio. shakespeare's hamlet.
this fic is dedicated to my d: drive, who suddenly reported so many bad sectors that even half a dozen surface scans by norton couldn't detect them all, who crashed during a good defragging and then refused to come out and play, who then kindly decided to come back and give me back my data.
back to previous part
on to next part