LSE / 09-07-07
(Fly on Broken Wings - Chapter Thirty-Two: Heero and)
rated: R - language, content, violence
shounen-ai/yaoi

Heero and

The bus lumbered slowly up the darkening street, setting the passengers inside into a lulling sway at every rough and bumpy pothole. Outside the window, a street lamp flickered rapidly and died before blitzing back to life. Across the bench from him, a hunched rag-wrapped person of indeterminate age and gender drooped into a nap before snapping awake as the bus shook. Heero looked elsewhere, not wanting to see the drool bubbling from the corner of the bum's mouth. Toward the back of the bus, three teenagers in black hooded sweatshirts, despite the sticky humidity, leered at a young, pretty girl still dressed in her fast-food uniform and name tag. She coolly kept her eyes fixed to the front, hands clutching her umbrella as if she planned on using it as a weapon.

Lurching to a halt, the bus gave a great mechanical sigh as the doors scraped open. Both Heero and the girl got off, leaving only the hooligans and the bum as the bus rumbled off on the short remainder of its journey. Shuffling the plastic bags looped over his elbow around, Heero dug around in the pocket of his oil-stained mechanics uniform for his key. It was just a short walk from the bus stop to the crumbling brick apartment building he called home, for which Heero was grateful; it had been a long day. He checked his mailbox in the stuffy little entry way before unlocking the thick wooden door to the building.

A balding middle-aged man with perpetually dusty glasses seemed to have been waiting for him, eagerly abandoning his reading of the bulletin board as he headed toward Heero. "Ah, you see," the man fumbled out a greasy rag and wiped ineffectively at his lenses. "Today's the third, you understand, and—"

Heero gave a short nod and fished out his wallet. The man broke into a relieved smile. "Got your note about the, ah, situation at work. I understand, I understand. Happens to us all," he practically licked his lips as Heero counted out the second half of his money before passing it over. His boss had been kind enough to advance him the next paycheck, but only after a considerable amount of overtime. He hated working on Saturdays.

The man brightened considerably as he stashed the wad of twenties away. "Don't know if you noticed, but Ms. Thatch in 12B moved out this month. Left behind a delightful little studio, very neat, very clean, perfect for your needs I suspect."

"No," Heero frowned at the man. "I won't be late again."

His landlord gave a nervous, tittering laugh. "Of course, of course, you're usually always so prompt. Really, just the other day I thought to myself you must be my favorite tenant. I just thought that it's such a waste for you to be renting such a large—"

"No," Heero cut him off coldly. He knew the Andersons in 8C had been eyeing his apartment greedily , the new-wife's belly having already began to swell. With a curt nod, Heero brushed around the nervous man and punched the sixth floor button.

"Well, of course, naturally, it is such a nice unit you have. Keep it in mind, of course, Leases aren't up until the end of the year, you know, so just give it lots of thought," his landlord called. The elevators doors groaned shut with a rusty protest on whatever else the man had to say.

Heero tossed his keys into the little bowl he kept on a stand by the door and nudged on the lights with his shoulder as he passed. The little apartment brightened up, exposing bare walls and simple furnishings. He set the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter and carried the other two bags with him into the larger of the two bedrooms. In stark contrast to the rest of his home, this room featured bright, energetic movie posters, most of which Heero was only vaguely familiar with. They were a bit crumpled, salvaged from the movie theater dumpster a few blocks away, but well kept and tacked up with great care over the otherwise bland, beige walls.

Heero upended one of the sacks on the rumpled, blue bed sheets and a cascade of candy bars tumbled out. They were all well past the expiration date, but Heero had little intention of eating them. He'd picked them up for free from work, simply by asking the man who came to change out the vending machines if he could have them. With careful precision, he started arranging them over the already cluttered surfaces. He buried some in the nightstand, the drawer filled with a random assortment of pens, paint brushes and hair ties, while others he set on top the desk He dug out a battered shoebox from under the bed and added one to the blank scraps of paper it held.

Clearing aside crumpled wads of blank paper, loose change, and never-used pastel crayons, Heero took the contents of the second bag and set it proudly on the desk. The swivel-head lamp had a busted bulb, but was the precise puke-green color he remembered. Heero looked around the room. It was getting close to perfect. He rearranged the pillows and tried to give the bed sheets a just-slept-in look, a considerable feat since they had yet to be used.

Crossing through the tiny bathroom that connected the two bedrooms, Heero went into his own room. Grey-striped sheets covered a neatly made bed, the only thing in the room besides a nightstand, lamp, and a laundry basket. He shrugged out of his work coveralls and dumped them into the basket, which was near to overflowing.

He had just changed into a clean pair of boxers and began slipping on a pair of jeans when the phone started to ring. Without bothering to fasten his pants, Heero padded out into the living room and snagged the phone off the kitchen counter on the third ring. "Hello."

"Hee-eero."

Only one person could whine his name like that. Heero shifted the phone into the crook of his shoulder. "What?"

"You didn't co-ome."

"I had to work."

"But you're always working. Why can't you come visited meeee?" Duo did a remarkable impression of a petulant toddler on the last syllable.

Heero glanced at the wall calendar, a freebie sent out by some funeral home in the area, tacked up behind his dining table. Each little square was filled with his precise handwriting with such things as "work 8am-7pm" and "grocery shopping" or "laundry." He frowned; laundry was on the agenda for that evening, right below "work" and "1/2 rent due." Sunday, tomorrow, had several big, red circles around it and Duo's name written in all caps.

The voice on the other end breezed on without him replying. "But you're always working! Why do you always have to work? You should quit your job. I need you! It isn't fair. You're a fucking workaholic." Duo griped. "Why is everyone being so mean to me right now? What the hell did I ever do to any of you? You're just as bad as Wufei."

"Shut up," Heero snapped. He did not want to be compared to that boy from the hospital. "What have you done now?"

"Nothing! Why do you always think it's my fault? You never trust me! You always think I'm up to something. The Heero I remember never gave a fuck about the rules. You were a bigger troublemaker than me anyway! Why the hell are you suddenly so uptight about everything? Duo, take your medicine. Duo, listen to your doctors. Why the fuck should I listen to anything they say? They're all quacks. They can't help me. They just want to keep me here and rake in money from the state."

"Idiot." Heero twisted the curls of the phone cord around his finger. "Behave," he pleaded. It snapped out like a command.

"Whatever. You're just as bad as them!" Duo huffed. "I'll see you tomorrow." The line went dead.

---

Heero woke from an uneasy sleep filled with hazy, unclear nightmares of Duo in peril and was stuffing his left arm into the sleeve of his mechanic's uniform before he remembered. He shucked out of the uniform and swapped it for a pair of jeans and a clean, blue shirt. He spent a little time in front of the bathroom mirror, hacking a comb through unruly hair that ignored his ministrations, before going to scrounge up breakfast from the kitchen. He stuck a pair of frozen waffles into the toaster, threw the empty box away, and then added "waffles" to the growing grocery list on the freezer door.

Double checking his calendar – grocery shopping was penciled in for that Tuesday, after work – Heero waited impatiently with a plate and fork by the toaster. The waffles sprung up just as the phone rang. Heero snagged it with one hand and slathered the waffles in syrup with the other. "Hello."

"Yuy, I'm going to need you to come in today."

Just like that, no preamble or excuses. Heero stabbed his waffle with unnecessary force. "Mr. Green, I am not scheduled to work today."

"I know that, boy, or I wouldn't be calling you in. Gonzales's wife just went into labor. I'm going to need you to come in around ten and stay until Hughes gets there at four."

"Sir, I have other plans—"

His boss's gruff voice broke in, "Didn't I just advance you half a paycheck? Whatever plans you've got can wait until after four."

Assuming he left the shop at precisely four, he could run to catch the 4:12 bus on Pine to Lincoln, the furthest west to buses ran, and from there it was only a twenty-five minute walk to the hospital. If he ran the whole way and check-in took less than five minutes, he'd have two to three minutes to say hello to Duo before visiting hours ended. "No, sir, it can't wait," Heero explained.

"Now, kid, I hired you because you could work weekends. Here it is a weekend, and I need someone to work. You're going to have to meet me somewhere in the middle, Yuy."

Heero caught the hint. "Yes, sir. I'll be in."

"That's what I like to hear, Yuy!"

The phone bounced out of the cradle when he threw it, and he left it that way. He ate with record speed, forwent making the bed, and was out the door in record time, still stuffing one arm into his mechanic's uniform. Halfway down in the slow, creeping elevator he remembered the white box of chocolates stashed up on the top shelf of his closet, leftovers from his last visit when treats had been denied. If he forgot them today, they'd be worthless. The elevator doors slid open and Heero made the decision to let them go. Even hurrying, his plan might not work.

Bypassing the elderly Mrs. Kittery with a curt nod, Heero started off in a brisk walk that turned into a full out run. Bypassing the closer bus stop, he ran two blocks to just barely catch the Lincoln street bus on 43rd. He slumped into a seat and kept one eye fixed on his watch, the other glued to the slow, laborious advancement of the bus. The further west they went, the more passengers they gathered until, eventually, Heero surrendered his seat to a young woman dragging a screaming toddler. The child wailed the entire rest of the route, adding to Heero's relief when the bus finally rolled to a stop on Lincoln.

Panicked over how long the bus had taken, Heero made the run in under ten minutes and a full fifteen minutes before visiting hours started. He caught his breath in the sweet, cool air conditioning of the entry way before going to give his information to the smiling receptionist. She passed over a visitor's badge after his signed her little clipboard, and then told him to sit and wait for visiting hours to actually begin. He remained standing, just a few feet from the double-doors of the administration wing that led into the actual hospital ward.

Once the clock struck nine, the receptionist buzzed him through the doors where an orderly stood waiting to escort him down the narrow hall. As Heero emerged out into the hospital's main hub, across the way he spotted the trickling stream of patients leaving the cafeteria, Duo's timid little blonde roommate among them. Duo, however, wasn't at the boy's side. Instead, there was a tall, broad-shouldered young man with a long, gold ponytail and the Asian boy, Wufei. Usually, Duo ate with his friends. Where was Duo?

He asked this question aloud to the orderly, who merely shrugged and told him to ask at the nurse's station before disappearing back down the hall. Ignoring the line of patients receiving medication, Heero asked one of the harried-looking nurses where he could find Duo. "Oh, Maxwell?" her eyes flicked to the chart in her hands while the nurse next to her passed out little paper cups filled with pills. Another nurse handed out water. "Hasn't been through yet. If you wait, he'll be out – Catalonia, don't try sneaking off! Get over here, girl!" the nurse barked.

And so Heero waited, none too patiently and fully aware of the minutes being wasted as he did so. The roommate – Quatre – noticed him first and, wide eyed, nudged Wufei repeatedly until all three of them were staring at Heero. He tried to ignore them, keeping an eye on the cafeteria doors, but the hushed whispers kept drawing his attention. Then Duo, dressed in his usual black, appeared at the cafeteria doors and Heero zeroed in on him. The circles under his eyes looked darker than normal; had he been sleeping?

When he noticed Heero, Duo went rigid for a moment before breaking into an enthusiastic grin; but it failed to reach his eyes, Heero noticed. His joy at seeing Heero had a definite air of wariness, maybe guilt. "Heero!" he gushed anyway, arms awkwardly wanting to snatch Heero up into a hug, but settling instead to cross over his chest.

"Why aren't you with your friends?"

The words tumbled out almost against his will, and Duo's scowled to hide his hurt. "Nice to see you, too, Heero." Okay, maybe not to hide it at all.

"Why?" Heero prodded. He tried to lead Duo toward the nurses passing out medication, but the other remained planted.

"Why do you care?" Duo shot back, which only made Heero more suspicious.

"Idiot. Did you hurt one of them again?" he asked anxiously; if Duo kept hurting people, they'd never let him out.

"What? No! What's with the third degree? Why's it always have to be my fault? Why don't you trust me? What did you even come here for… did Wufei call you? What'd he tell you?" Duo's brows drew tightly together, the words flying out with venom and hitting Heero like physical blows. "We're just having a fight. Friends do that. Oh, right, you don't have any, so you wouldn't know! You, you… crazy psycho-loner! I hate you."

Heero did a goldfish impression, mouth opening and closing several times before he choked out a snarling response to the only part deserving one. "No one called me but you." The subtext cut the anger from the younger boy's face, and Duo, abashed, lowered his glare. Heero peered down at his watch. "I'm leaving now," he tried to put an apology into the words, but by the sudden rush of color to Duo's face he suspected it came out otherwise.

"Just like that? You just got here!"

"I have—"

"Don't say work!" Duo cut him off, fury rushing back into his beautiful features. Heero's shoulders sagged in disappointment. When he said nothing, Duo gave a heaving sigh of discontent, juxtaposed against a bright, sudden grin. "Call it... a tea party, or something."

"Fine," Heero said softly. "I have a tea party."

Duo snorted out a laugh, eyes radiating the same fierce look of gentle feelings and hard determination that so captivated Heero; he felt a warm sense of peace. They exchanged awkward goodbyes, conscious of the myriad of curious stares, and Heero reluctantly started to leave. He felt Duo's gaze on his back, but kept himself from looking. Doing so would make it more difficult to leave.

Author's Notes: Tada! As promised! Many of you guessed correctly that I'd be featuring Heero next. But don't you Trowa-fans worry, I can assure you he's due up for an appearance very shortly.
So, what'd you think? I took too long, I know, I'm sorry! The start of classes coincided with Ian's computer fritzing. I very nearly lost this entire chapter! (btw; the title is correct and not a typo or missing any words. Interpret it how you will.)
Well, I guess that's about it from me. I'll be working on the next chapter if you need me. Oh yeah! Everyone's reviews have been amazing! I get so motivated when I read them. Thanks so much.

Oh, and only my math class truly sucks, but it's math so what can you expect? (Apologies to those lucky bastards who like math; may you all become engineers and make way more money than we poor students of humanities.)
Everyone who's a student, college or no, how's it going? Let's all work hard, ne?

Feedback/reviews are very much appreciated!
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LSE - Violet Nyte (violetnyte dot livejournal dot com)