Author: Atropa Belladonna
Rating: PG mebe PG-13ish?
Pairings: 1/2
Notes: Song by NIN, fic for reishin - HA, finally finished it so there >P Foofiness~ but finally completed foofiness ^^

Closer

:: you let me violate you, you let me desecrate you
you let me penetrate you, you let me complicate you ::

The pale silver light of the moon streamed in from the small window, casting an almost supernatural glow to the entire room. A small bed was tucked against one corner, across from a desk and chair. Upon that bed lay a sleeping boy, bathed in the silvery glow. His dark brown hair feel in silken locks across the pillow, and thick lashes rested upon perfect cheeks.

He looked like a fallen angel, swathed in rumpled white sheets. A low sigh gusted through the room as the other boy, who had been sitting in silent regard on the chair, rose. Indigo-violet eyes traced the fine curve of the sleeping boy's jaw.

Moving to stand by the bed, dressed all in black, the second boy followed the same line his eyes had with one slender finger. As he stroked along the smooth skin, that face turned so sweetly unaware into his touch.

"Duo..." the name was whispered from sleeping lips and the violet eyed boy drew his hand back as if burnt. He watched with almost morbid fascination as the sleeping boy's eyes twitched lightly under his eyelids in dreaming. "Duo..." An amazed, wistfully heartfelt statement overcame Duo's wide eyed face. Heero never dreamed; was trained out of it. Dreaming was unnecessary; it was a distraction, a complication. The perfect soldier did not need to dream.

But the perfect soldier was dreaming. Heero Yuy was dreaming, and he, Duo, was the cause of it. A small, cynical smirk curved his lips. He had tarnished the fallen angel, desecrated that perfection with his tainted touch; the seeping poison of emotion bleeding into his soul to bind him forever to this world. Duo forced the ethereal boy to feel, wedged a crack in his pure innocence. And Heero let him.

Duo quietly walked back to the chair. Slumping down onto the hard, unforgiving seat, the black clad pilot wearily stretched. It would be more comfortable to sleep in the bed, but he couldn't. Not now, when guilt was gnawing at his gut; when a strangely sweet voice whispered his name in his dreams. Shinigami had violated the purity of an angel, and Death could not sleep tonight.

:: help me i broke apart my insides, help me i've got no soul to sell
help me the only thing that works for me help me get away from myself ::

Heero's fingers slowly unclenched from around Wing's throttle. His breath streamed out over his lips as he calmed himself down from the battle high and surveyed the damage he had wrought. About his Gundam was a wreck of mangled metal and broken, smouldering buildings. Dozens of lives, at the very least, had been forever lost, snuffed out by the unparalleled force of the Gundam, his Wing. Too many lives had been lost in this war, but none of that mattered to him.

It was said that the eyes were the windows to the soul, but there was nothing in Heero's eyes as he looked upon the wasteland around him; a shattered wasteland he had created. He gave a short, mirthless laugh, echoing harshly in the small cockpit. It was a cold sound that held no joy, no remorse, nothing. It held no empathy for those brave soldiers who had died. All there was was a mocking parody of happiness that half caught in his throat with the bitterness of it. His victims were nothing more than that; nameless, faceless victims. That was how it was supposed to be. Perfect soldiers weren't supposed to have souls, weren't supposed to feel anything, no guilt, no regret, nothing. And he didn't. Heero Yuy felt nothing, save for the sharp sting of that lie.

That hurt. Inside, where the child he had never been allowed to be cowered, it hurt. Inside, where the conscience he suppressed clung, it hurt. Inside, where the soul he was never supposed to have raged defiantly against his perfect mask, it hurt. It hurt where it mattered. It hurt. The dull ache throbbing in the heart he shouldn't, couldn't possibly have brought him back to the present.

As Heero gunned his thrusters and automatically ran through Wing's transformation, he flipped on his com-unit. "Ninmu kanryou," he stated calmly without preamble, even before the visuals appeared on the view-screen.

A brightly cheerful face smiled at him from the screen, "Heero-kun!" Heero's eyes flickered up from where he had been adjusting his controls. He frowned minutely, almost imperceptibly. Quatre, not Duo. The blonde boy's mouth was moving, but Heero wasn't paying any attention, only staring thoughtlessly at him. After a few moments, Quatre stopped and smiled at him again, wearing a slightly expectant statement. The Japanese pilot blinked, slightly startled that he had missed everything Quatre had said. "Ryoukai," Heero muttered, clicking off the transmission. Whatever it was, he could check his flight log later.

A small scowl formed on his perfect features as he did a quick scan of all the other secure channels. Duo wasn't on any of them. That was... slightly upsetting. The long haired boy was almost always there to pester him with asinine questions about his completed missions. He was always there to brighten the gloom that threatened to cling to him, to brush away the dark thoughts of destruction with ribbed humour whether Heero wanted him to or not.

However, though he wouldn't often admit it to himself, let alone aloud, he looked forward to that heart shaped face grinning offensively at him from the view-screen, from anywhere. The concern that the other boy showed him made him warm inside and he liked it, no matter how strange it was to him.

But Duo wasn't there.

Wing's small cockpit suddenly felt much smaller and the isolation was amplified. The chill he had been unconsciously staving off flooded his being. His soft breaths caught almost painfully and rasped harshly as he struggled to regain control. The wildly erratic sounds in the otherwise silent cockpit did little to calm him. Suspiciously heavy eyelids slid shut over cobalt eyes, hiding the glint of sudden hurt in them. Even as he felt the coldness seeping into his limbs his hands clenched around the Gundam's throttle, instinctively piloting his beloved Wing; always the perfect soldier.

He was cold. It was a cold he was supposed to feel. He was supposed to be the perfect soldier with a block of ice to pass off as a heart. Before, it had always been what he wanted, needed. The loneliness was a key to lock away his mind, to keep him from feeling as normal mortals would feel. It was that separation from human emotion that made him into a machine, a perfect killing machine; nothing but a weapon, a tool for the colonies. But that was before. "Duo..." he whispered.

A vision of a broad smirk and a pair of wide indigo eyes, a long brown braid, and comforting hands flashed, unbidden, across his mind's eye. Heero's fingers tensed minutely, though enough to cause a tremour to run through Wing's frame.

That single image called up a myriad of memories, memories of the one thing that could take the frozen loneliness away. He needed that. He needed the warmth that a playful jab to the ribs or a slender arm slung carelessly over his shoulder could bring.

Duo forced him to be human, and to feel human needs; the need for companionship, to care, the need for another human being. No cold gundanium creation could ever replace what he now had, what he now wanted. He needed so badly now, but at the same time he needed to hide those longings away, never to be seen, never to be exploited. He had to act the perfect soldier, all for the mission. No petty emotion could be allowed to interfere. It was all for the mission. Nothing mattered but the mission.

Perhaps if he told himself that enough times, he would start to believe it again himself.

"Duo... where are you..."

:: i want to fuck you like an animal
i want to feel you from the inside
i want to fuck you like an animal
my whole existence is flawed
you get me closer to god ::

Duo roughly shoved Heero up against the wall, breath breaking harshly over his face. He stared, strangely enthralled, at the startled statement for several long heartbeats. Then he kissed him hard, with brutal, bruising intensity. The braided pilot knew he was reacting to the stress, to the burning guilt that tore at his every waking moment. The only thing that made it go away was this, this mind numbing passion that blocked out everything else.

"Duo, what...?" Heero's slightly startled whisper caused a chilled ripple to run down his spine, the words close to penetrating the frenzied haze that was clouding his reason.

"Don't," Duo nearly snapped, shaking his head violently, not allowing his nerves to calm down one bit. He couldn't. His braid whipped around like a lash to curl around one of Heero's arms. "Don't," he choked out again, then crushed his lips to Heero's.

It hurt, the kiss, but in a good way. It was a hurt he could deal with, could be forgiven for. That slight pain, both physical and deeper, emotional, was like a rush of light. Being here, with Heero, and feeling something so sharply akin to the pain of the world, to the pain of his heart, it was like a purification of the blackened soul he sheltered. Just sharing in something so singularly free made him forget. For now.

As Heero's hands rose to clasp behind Duo's back, the violet-eyed boy clenched his own arms around the other's unresisting body, drawing him inexorably closer. When everything was wrong, and everything in his entire world, entire being was flawed, this was what he needed. He needed to feel this one boy's heartbeat racing under his own, to feel Heero's strangely soft skin under his fingers. It was what he needed to stay sane. It was the only thing that could make him forget. He needed that.

In a sudden move, Duo pushed away from the wall, drawing Heero with him. He pressed the other back against the nearby bed, then stared at him as he had before, desire burning behind his eyes; desire for him, and the purity he possessed. Heero's breath was already beginning to quicken as Duo traced the corded line of his neck with his eyes.

This was what he needed to forget, to forget the sins of the past and those of tomorrow. All he needed was below him right now, looking up at him with heavy lidded cobalt eyes. It was enough.

Duo leaned over and pressed a light, sweet kiss to the dip in Heero's throat, sliding his hands down Heero's body. The smooth skin trembled slightly under the pads of his fingers. This was enough to make him forget. This was all he needed to make everything okay. For now.

:: you can have my isolation, you can have the hate that it brings
you can have my absence of faith, you can have my everything ::

Rapid, evenly spaced and uninterrupted clicks of keys tapped in the muggy pre-noon air, not quite loud enough to fully draw the attention away from the myriad of sounds from outside. The noise from without was heavily obscured by the closed window, but, like the pressing head, was not kept completely from the room.

It was swiftly becoming unbearable to one Heero Yuy, poised straight and attentive in front of his laptop.

It was the heat. That was it. It was the heat and humidity and general muggy atmosphere that made it feel like he was breathing in more water than air with each breath that was irritating him.

It wasn't the faint echoes of happy shouts and cries of jubilation ringing up through the thin glass pane from the courtyard below. They were playing, their so-called classmates at the high school he and Duo were currently enlisted in; just playing, taking joy in the sheer act of being with each other.

He clenched his fingers into fists, the steady typing finally ceasing for the first time that morning. Perfect soldiers did not need to play. They did not need others; they did not need anything. Heero Yuy needed nothing. Heero Yuy needed...

Unbidden, his piercing blue eyes turned to the face down figure splayed carelessly across the one bed they used. A small, rare smile graced his lips, unseen, as he took in the picture. Duo's pale body was bare but for rumpled black boxers, and somehow, in the course of the morning, he had managed to kick not only the blanket, but the sheets and pillows off the mattress. The sleeping boy twitched occasionally, seemingly trying to find a cooler spot in which to lie.

Heero shook his head at the movement. It was so typically Duo; trying to make the best of an unpleasant situation, even without realizing it, even if it was something as menial as appalling weather.

Then Duo squirmed again and flipped himself over onto his back, arms flung of from his side. The tiny gold crucifix he always worse stuck to the sweaty skin of his shoulder, the thin, filament chain snaking intricately back around his neck.

Frowning, Heero was forced to notice how like that small icon of faith Duo's current pose looked.

Some would have seen it as a sign, a show of belief.

But not Heero Yuy.

With a scowl, he was up before he realized it, and halfway to the bed. He did not want to see this, this display of all he did not have. What right did Duo have to show him this, when he believed no more than Heero himself did?

None.

Closing his fist around the little gold emblem, he jerked it off suddenly, snapping the chain so hard that dozens of tiny gleaming links burst apart to fall like glitter onto sweat glistened skin. Startled indigo eyes opened just in time to see Heero fling the cross away with such violence that it smashed a small hole through the thin glass of the window.

Duo opened his mouth to speak, gaze locked on the shattered hole, though the cross was long gone. However, before he had the chance to utter a sound, or query, Heero's lips descended on his, hard and bruising, and obliterating all else.

Outside, the sounds of life and play were clear through the now broken window, but they were nothing.

This, this room, what they were, and who they were, was nothing. All that mattered was the kiss. That was everything; Heero's everything. And it was all for Duo, the only one who knew, the only one who mattered. The only one who cared. For him, everything.

:: help me tear down my reason, help me it's your sex i can smell
help me you make me perfect, help me become somebody else ::

The quiet rasp of a key in the lock and the whisper of the door sliding open heralded Duo's return. He quickly shut the door behind him with an inaudible click. A glance at the clock on the nightstand showed 3:52 in dull, glowing red digital numbers.

Raking a shaking hand through the tangled mess of his hair, he tried to ignore the grime and wetness that may or may not be sweat that clung to the long strands. His clothes, especially his shirts, were no better, stiff and rough against his skin. He felt disgusting and disgusted in so many ways. His eyes closed for a moment as he slumped back against the closed door, head bowing until chin rest upon his chest. Everything hurt. There was nothing he wanted more in this world than a shower right then and there, but that would have to wait until morning. The school they were enrolled in had strict rules about curfew hours, so as not to disturb the other students' sleep.

Speaking of sleep...

A quick look at the bed, visible only by the red glow of the alarm clock, showed that it was empty. The blanket and sheets were still neatly tucked into place, like they were just after Heero woke up and made the bed. It had been a few days since he had gone on his latest mission, but he could detect the faint smell of sex still clinging to the sheets. He frowned. Heero periodically changed the sheets every couple days, but he hadn't this time. It just didn't seem like him to leave them, unless he wasn't actually sleeping in the bed for some reason.

Eyes skittering over to the desk, he shook his head and sighed. Sitting in the one chair in the room, head resting on crossed arms on the desk, was Heero. His laptop rested next to his head, still turned on Duo noticed from the twin green lights on the front, but the screen had gone dark from the screen saver. The small spots of light threw a sullen wash of colour over Heero's sleep slack features. Sharp, dark shadows and an eerie green glow made him look strangely distant, like he did not belong in a dingy dorm room, like he belonged to the heavens and had gotten lost on the way.

Toeing off his black boots and shoving them aside, Duo silently padded over to the sleeping boy. Heero had discarded the school uniform some time earlier and was now just clad in his typical shorts and tanktop. Leaning over him, Duo tapped one of the keys on the laptop, and the screen flickered into brilliance. A glance at Heero's strangely peaceful face showed him that the sudden change in light hadn't woken him. Duo's eyes turned back to the screen, expecting to see their homework, or any of the innumerable reports Heero frequently skimmed looking for leads on Oz. But that wasn't what was on the screen.

It was a news bulletin, an account of his attack on a nearby weapons manufacturing plant that had been disguised as a paper factory.

Something warm and almost painful wrapped itself around his heart and squeezed, sending a rush of some unknown, sharp emotion through him that was very much like rapture at the thought of Heero being worried about him. Shaking off the feeling with more difficulty than he would like to admit, Duo placed a light hand on Heero's shoulder. The movement made him wince as he remembered the long gash that graced his left arm, a momento from his flight to safety.

Heero stirred slightly at the touch, dark eyelashes flickering against his cheeks as heavy lids rose to reveal glittering blue eyes. "Hn?" he mumbled into his crossed arms, already beginning falling back into slumber. It was a measure of his fatigue that he had not instantly woken the instant the key was in the lock. "Duo...?" He shook his head slightly, as if trying to clear away the haze of sleep that clouded his vision.

"Aa, it's me," Duo murmured in a whisper, gently carding his hands through Heero's short, surprisingly soft hair in a soothing caress, "Go back to sleep." Sleepy dark eyes blinked a few times, then Heero mumbled something incomprehensible into his skin and settled back down.

Grinning at the picture of peace, Duo quietly closed the laptop with one hand. He rolled his shoulders to try to work the kinks out, but that just pulled at the wound on his arm. Duo's smile faltered as he traced the line of torn flesh through the ripped edges of his ruined sleeve. His fingers came away bloody and he wiped them disdainfully on his pants.

It was a stupid mistake that had earned him that gash, his own arrogance, he reflected as he bent slightly and hooked his good arm under Heero's knees. Winding his other arm around the other boy's back, ignoring the sharp spikes of agony that sang along his nerves, he hefted the sleeping boy up and out of the chair. Heero was lighter than he remembered him being, or perhaps it was just the traces of adrenaline that still coursed erratically through his veins.

With swift, efficient steps, Duo carried the other pilot over and deposited him on the bed, mussing the immaculately tucked sheets. Heero grumbled in his half-asleep state and curled over onto his side, one hand instinctively reaching out towards the braided boy. Duo's eyes fell on the pale hand resting on the dark blue comforter. In repose, those hands that could bend steel looked so fragile, so deceptively delicate.

Heaving an inward sigh, Shinigami's pilot stripped off his two shirts. A hastily smothered hiss of pain through clenched teeth and Duo dropped the stiff garments on the floor with a grim satisfaction. Tearing off the offending articles had been cathartic, but the swift removal had ripped open the delicate scabs that had already started forming on his cut. Blood oozed out and trickled down his arm in a sluggish, winding path.

Impersonal indigo eyes appraised the wound now that Duo was finally able to see it in full. It was neither worse nor better than he had assumed. The cut itself was jagged, the product of a broken dagger swung by a wildly desperate girl who had looked too young by far to be a soldier. While the gash was nearly a half a foot long and uneven, it was fairly shallow. He wouldn't really need stitches if he cleaned and bandaged it, but it was probably going to scar. Duo snorted. It wouldn't be the first or the last; one didn't go through war without being marked by it. His eyes turned down to Heero. Except for him, the perfect soldier.

Suddenly feeling the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders, Duo decided to let consequences be damned and flopped down on the bed himself. He was smearing blood on the blanket and sheets, but he was too tired, too weary to care. Heero would most likely bitch him out about it in the morning, but that didn't matter now.

Spooning up against Heero's back, Duo curled a possessive arm around the dark haired pilot's waist, hand splaying across a rock hard stomach. He almost wished Heero could have been with him on the mission; Heero would never have made the stupid mistakes he had. Duo's eyes slid shut. So stupid, so careless, too cocky by half believing himself to be as indestructible as his Gundam. Now he had a fresh mark on his body to remind him of his own frail mortality. If only he could be more like Heero. Heero had no scars. None. Even that doctor, Sally Po, had commented on it. He was flawless, even after all the war, all the pain he had endured and the battles fought. Heero was the perfect soldier that Duo knew he, himself, could never be.

Clutching desperately to the other boy, Duo tucked his head in the crook of Heero's neck. Hot tears he refused to believe were his leaked down into dark hair that smelled faintly of shampoo as the braided boy's emotions suddenly dropped out from under him. They careened wildly out of control and in their wake they left him exhausted and overwhelmed, too small and dirty in a room meant for children untainted by the stains of innocent blood. All he could do was cling to his fellow pilot, the one who knew the madness of battle, the pain of victory.

Maybe if he held on tight enough, if he held him long enough, he could take some of that perfection into himself. If only...

Duo just pressed himself tighter against Heero, tumbling into an uneasy sleep, plagued by dreams of fire.

:: i want to fuck you like an animal
i want to feel you from the inside
i want to fuck you like an animal
you get me closer to god ::

Heero resisted the urge to fidget. It wasn't easy and took his years of training to suppress it. Intellectually he knew that agitation made people restless, but that did not make him any less irritated by the impulse. The cause of his ire was sitting cross-legged on the bed, calmly bent to his task, oblivious to the glower leveled on him from across the small room. His concentration was unbroken as he painstakingly mended the tear in his sleeve. The torn clothing and light gauze bandage almost fully hidden by one of the many white undershirts he had were the only physical reminders of the damage Duo had taken during his last mission. The myriad of minour scrapes and motley bruises had faded and disappeared over the previous week, but the braided pilot had been too busy making up the school work he had missed to mend his shirt until now.

Duo's jagged fringe of bangs obscured his eyes from view as he concentrated on the cloth in his lap. His hand moved back and forth in a steady, controlled movement, needle strung with black thread grasped between calloused fingers. He picked out precise little stitches, tiny stitches so carefully done that the seam between the two rent edges was nearly undetectable.

Frowning, the pilot of Wing turned his eyes back down to the pages he held in his hands, but they still remained unread as he stared past the words to the white paper they were printed on. He was not sure what was bothering him so much. Rather, he knew what was bothering him, he just did not know why. His gaze flicked back over the top of the paper to his erstwhile partner again. It bothered him that Duo would put so much effort into repairing his priest's over shirt, that it meant so much to him. Heero would have just discarded it and gone on. Not Duo, though. He steadfastly refused to part with it, despite the innumerable battles it had seen. The fabric should have been falling apart by then, but each time, Duo lovingly stitched it back together with meticulous care, as if it were too precious for him to part with.

A quick glance told Heero that Duo had not replaced the little gold crucifix that he had ripped off weeks ago. Yet still the braided boy persisted in clinging to his last show of faith, a simple black over shirt fitted with a stiff white tab that should have marked him as one of the clergy, yet he was a killer. Duo was no priest, no man of God, just a terrorist and Shinigami's own hand, leaving only death in his wake. Heero didn't understand why he did it, dressed as he did, and it bothered him.

Shuffling sounds and a pleased exclamation drew his attention away from his musing. Duo had finished with his shirt and was tossing it over with the rest of his dirty clothes. In his hand he still held the white collar tab from the collar. He was staring at it with a strange statement that Heero wasn't sure he could identify if he wanted to. A smear of dry blood crusted one of the edges, rust coloured flakes occasionally breaking off onto his fingers as he turned it over and over in his hand. And suddenly, Heero couldn't take it anymore.

Tossing down the crumpled papers in his hands, he stalked over to the other pilot and jerked the offending article out of his grasp. "Why?" he demanded harshly, flinging the collar down to hit the ground at Duo's feet, "Why do you dress that way? Why do you care?"

"Heero..." Duo began, uncertain, only to be cut off by the unusually incensed pilot.

"You told me once that you don't believe in God," Heero went on, voice suddenly quieter but no less intense, "Was that a lie? Was everything you've told me a lie? You say you never lie, but you..." He broke off, chest constricting with a flood of emotions that halted his outburst. Horrified, he felt the telltale pinpricks of tears at the back of his eyes, just waiting to be released to fall down pale cheeks.

Maddeningly, Duo's eyes softened, which made the pain in his chest increase two fold. "No, I don't lie, Heero," he spoke the words softly, but his gaze locked boldly onto Heero's too blue eyes. "This... this reminds me..." he gestured vaguely towards the discarded clothes, "It just reminds me of something I don't ever want to forget. I never lied to you, especially not you, Heero."

Heero just stood before him, trembling slightly. Duo reached out a hand for him, but it was slapped away. "Don't."

"Heero, I..."

With a sudden, violent shove, Duo went tumbling backwards onto the bed. "Don't say it," Heero bit out, crushing the forgotten white priest's tab under his heel. "You don't need to say it."

A warm, understanding smile quirked Duo's mouth as Heero began to strip out of his uniform. "I'd say it anyway."

"You don't have to."

"No, but I want to," the braided pilot murmured against lips that descended upon his own, and then there were no more words to be said.

:: you are the reason i stay alive ::

"No words."

None were needed.

--*--
end
--*--

[back to Singles a - k]