running

by Darkwood
Set to: "Call Me, Call Me" by Yokko Kanno

Disclaimer: I don't own GW, nor do I own Yokko Kanno, "Call Me, Call Me", Cowboy Bebop, or anything other than the collage nature of this fic and the made up scenes that never happened in the series. Enjoy, mina-san.

[ Taking one last look over his shoulder, Duo starts the motorcycle.

His pride and joy, the motorcycle had been a present from Heero at the end of the war. With a sarcastic chuckle Duo sighs, Ironic that it's the very thing that's going to be carrying me away from him.

The window of the apartment he looks back up at it is dark, but suddenly there is movement and a small, dim light comes on. The bedside lamp in the outer bedroom, Duo knows as he watches the angles that it makes on the curtains.

Heero must be waking up, Duo thinks fondly. He revs the engine of the motorcycle once and pulls out of the parking space below the somewhat well-to-do apartment building. At the stoplight, which just happens to be red, he can't help but look back at the window and seeing the light has multiplied. He shakes his head. He should find the note soon, Duo reasons, looking impatiently up at the light to see it turn green.

Forcing himself to get on with it, and that it is too late to turn back now, Duo pulls out of the intersection in the predawn light. Things look grayscale to him as he passes, the visor of his helmet down he passes Wufei as the Preventer returns home from work.

Duo keeps his eyes straight ahead and hopes that with his braid tucked down the back of his jacket the ex-Shenlong pilot won't notice him as he makes his escape.

His hopes are answered as Wufei, looking very sleep deprived, drives numbly towards the building and pulls into the garage next door. Duo lets out a sigh of relief as he heads for the interstate and makes his way to the space port.]

[ Even if no one else expected it of him, Duo expected it of himself. The most normal life possible he could live, first as an orphan, and then as a gundam pilot, known as Shinigami. But fate had a different card to play against his naïve ambitions for the end of his life and eternity.]

I close my eyes and I keep seeing things

I should really just give it all up. Every time I see him it's one way, and every time he sees her it's another. This constant merry-go-round is one ride I wouldn't mind getting off, for the love of it all. I don't need this sort of abuse by him. He's already had all I have to give him, hasn't he? What does putting me on a leash and giving it a yo-yo string do either of us?

Rainbow waterfalls
sunny liquid dreams

[ The room was dark and Duo lay in bed, unable to sleep and alone in the dorm room. The door opened and he looked up. Heero entered the room to find Duo staring at him. Not noticing beyond the point of initial discovery, he glared at the violet-eyed young man and went over to his dresser.

Duo continued to stare despite the discouragement given; he had long since learned to disregard the hate stares and angry looks from the other pilot. His conscious trapped in fantasies that made him blush, he only noticed what was happening about when Heero tossed his shirt to the side and continued to strip down to go shower.

That certainly was a revelation for Duo. He was always rather secretive with his body, whether it was pride or self-consciousness he couldn't tell, but there Heero was, knowing he had an audience, and still striping off his clothes and then just going into the bathroom to casually take a shower.

Duo's cheeks reddened, feeling guilty at not looking away from the boy. He lowered his eyes to his lap and bit back a gasp as he noticed his arousal. It wasn't like he'd never seen a male body before, only that it was usually his, which he knew every imperfection and weak spot on. He didn't posses the muscles Heero did; his body was equipped for his specialty - stealth. But Heero… Duo put his hands up to his flushed cheeks and tried to shake the image of the tanned skin from his mind, but it didn't work as he continued to see Heero's body and his mind ran through a list of things to do with it. Duo knew a few things he'd like to try, but his self-preservation denied him most of the images, his subconscious mind understanding the danger of walking up to an angry tiger and…

For a long time he sat there, staring at the wall, occasionally looking back at the bathroom door to confirm that the object of his obsession remained in the bathroom, and eventually saw something he didn't remember seeing on the anger-clouded visage he watched closely.]

Confusion creeps inside me raining doubt

That's just the thing, it isn't doing either of us any damn good, and that's a serious problem. I can't just sit back and watch both our lives go to shit because of my own codependent nature. I love the damn bastard, and I can't just let him being so into my body and the pleasure it brings him that he misses out on real happiness. So I'm going to do it.

And the worst part of it all is that I can't trust him.

Ok, so I can trust him as far as I can throw him.

I can trust him to fight for the world, to protect the colonies, to get the girl, and then to come home and fuck me…

The Perfect Soldier.

He would find the one person that he could trust to be discreet and to understand, or the one person he would think would understand. I mean there really isn't any reason that I shouldn't understand that it isn't about him caring about me. It really isn't about that between us.

[ Duo was so lost in the trance of his imagination that he stared right through Heero's real body and at the wall. He probably could have pried words from Heero then, and sated his curiosity about the other questions he longed to present the other pilot with, but had a severe problem working his mouth.

"Duo?" Heero growled, his voice very near his pale ear. Heero shocked him and Duo recoiled, only to find the two tan hands were planted firmly on both sides of him. Duo succeeded only in banging into one of those arms and sliding until he was on his back.

Then Heero started undressing him, all swift, deft hands and an intent stare at every inch of skin he exposed. Duo was still dumbstruck and didn't even make a move. Not even when Heero flipped him onto my back and slid the black pants from his waist.

What happened after that… a lot of creaking of bedsprings and grunting and Duo's face growing redder and redder as the process continued. He stepped out of his body and had a conference with himself while blind eyes stared at Heero's skin. He finally came to the conclusion that he was enjoying it, if only because Heero was touching him it didn't matter, but he did enjoy it, felt a different sort of completion than the one he had only found before in the heat of battle.

And he had wanted Heero in the beginning. Since that moment when violet eyes had locked with cobalt and the gun fired in Duo's hands he had wanted Heero in some impossible way that his imagination conjured up for him. Heero began to slow his movements and Duo began to feel the dull throb of pain emanating from his rear. Finally, it appeared, Heero had finished because he came inside Duo and pulled out.

Duo, stunned and frozen, did not realize what had happened until Heero lay down beside him and began to run his hands over Duo's back to try and coax something out of him. He received only a wincing yawn. Heero mumbled something that Duo didn't try to make out as his arms wrapped around his body and pulled him closer.

Just as Heero's eyes fell closed and he slipped into an unmoving slumber, Duo began to worry. 'I must have been horrible. It must have been the worst time he's had in his entire life with… with anybody, I think.' The logical part of Duo's brain, the part that had also been the first to realized that he liked it, shook his head at Duo's self-doubt and then Duo fell asleep snoring almost inaudibly.]

Gotta get to you

At first it was just that.

At first I could let it be just that… casual sex.

Hurt like a bitch, but I could understand the need for it, and I didn't complain, didn't say a damn word to him about how he treated me because of it.

Or maybe because he was trained that way, and I always knew that.

But I don't know how

What some people don't understand, or won't… is that it isn't that I'm unhappy with him. I enjoy spending time with Heero, being with him… being his. But I just can't accept that I can be so completely enamored of him, so totally wrapped up in this life we are supposedly sharing, that it can be so entirely one sided.

That's my problem with the whole situation.

Call me, call me

[ Heero was gone by the time that I woke up and the craziest dream wouldn't leave my head. It was my fantasy of how our first time would have been. In the dream he was tender and considerate. As I rolled out of bed to go take my morning shower I found that the reality and the dream were far separate cries from each other.

I hobbled around that morning attempting to go about my daily routine before I gave up entirely and got back in bed, hoping for a respite from the daily toil of school and missions. I wasn't nearly as lucky as I thought I would be getting Heero as my bedmate. He climbed the stairs with an English muffin and a glass of milk and began nudging me with his kneecap to try and wake me.

He didn't pull the gun until I swiped at his knee halfheartedly. The click of the safety being removed woke me up to my fullest, and my eyes traveled around the room and finally up the sights of the gun and his face. I considered banging my head into the headboard but he set the food down and started putting on his shoes.

It was when he started tying his shoes that I started to feel like a prostitute, in a way. I got no response at all for my troubles the previous evening. 'Heero might like me,' I reasoned with myself, 'but he isn't in love with me, and he doesn't even care enough to ask if I'm in pain.'

So I gingerly got to my haunches and bean to eat the English muffin like I hadn't seen food in years and slipped into my shoes while I wolfed down the milk.

He was waiting, agitatedly, at the doorway, while I carefully picked up my books so he wouldn't know how badly he'd hurt me. He began tapping his watch exasperatedly when I decided that the pretenses I was holding up could go to hell and just yanked my bag up and shuffle-stepped after him to keep from jarring my battered insides too much.

The day passed in silence for me, everyone could see I wasn't feeling well, and if they couldn't, one look at Heero's dour expression cured any curiosity. I almost burst into tears at that point, so I excused myself and sort of ran to the restroom.]

The sad thing is that despite it all I didn't care. I thought, naively, that it made me special, in some way, because we had sex. I laugh when I look back at it, since it really wasn't that great and it really wasn't that important.

I was just an accessory to the mission, then.

But still…

Let me know it's alright

I don't know when it was that I first saw the two of them together and actually thought that they would make a good couple. The first time I saw her, when she showed up at school and he made a quick escape of her presence, I thought it was because of me. Obviously, she did too.

Relena Peacecraft.

I really never got to know much about her, back then in the first couple of meetings, other than that she was dumb enough to try and interfere with his mission… not something any smart or sane person would do. I knew that.

And I knew that she hated me for being close to him.

But she didn't understand that I really wasn't.

He only lets people as close as he wants to, and he only let me as close to him as he had to in order to maintain the physical intimacy he'd decided he would have of me. Yes, I could have refused him, but I liked him… I respected him. And so I decided that if the only way he would let me be a part of his life was like a lover, then I would take it.

It wasn't like I wasn't attracted to him.

But something in his eyes whenever she showed… shows… up…

I think I'm just the consolation prize.

[ I stand at the payphone and stare at it quietly. Outside there's a line of people waiting to use it, but I just can't seem to make up my mind. I knew this was going to happen, I knew it. From the moment I set out to leave him I knew that it would be hard to do, and I knew I would miss him and I knew…

But… I didn't.

I had no idea how much it would hurt to be without him, to miss his arms around me at night, the faint tickle of his breath against my neck… The lazy way he curled his fingers in my hair…

Angrily, I turn and leave the phone booth, giving my coins to the woman next in line.]

[ That night I was determined to get revenge, but I didn't get the chance. I had a mission the following morning and wouldn't have time to even think about Heero, let alone revenge, since I had insomnia and would have to fight to fall asleep. It wasn't much different though. Heero entered the room quietly and pushed me into the mattress some, and he fucked me silly. It didn't hurt much by that time.

I fell asleep like a baby almost as soon as the hand he wrapped around me slacked off after orgasm, and to my delight, we stayed that way for a while. He lay on top of me during most of the night, and I just sort of rested with my face on his forearm while his other arm snacked around my waist and down so his hand rested on my inner thigh. At some point we must have turned to one side because I woke up and he was spooned behind me, fingers gently kneading my thigh. I still had one cheek pressed against his forearm, and his breathing was tickling my exposed ear.

I thought then, 'I don't care how much it hurts, just so long as I can wake up like this more often.' I carefully extricated myself and showered, dressing quickly in the dark pre-dawn blackness of the room. He moaned and shifted, hand pulling the pillow closer and fingers groping at the sheets.

I slipped out, my smirk firmly replaced despite the lingering pain in my movements. Piloting Deathscythe was certainly different that mission than it ever had been, but I rose to the challenge, I think, rather well.]

Call me, call me

Don't you think it's 'bout time

[ It continued like that for a while.

We'd be separate, something would happen, we'd end up together, and he'd fuck my brains out nightly. Trowa gave me a little secret advice on how to handle the pain, and it worked. Heero eventually got around to jerking me off while he did it, and I started to… enjoy him having his way with me. I began to look forward to it, even.]

And then the impossible happened. The indestructible Perfect Soldier finally managed to get himself like he had planned on in the beginning when he jumped off without opening his parachute.

Please won't you call and

[ I had asked him to take one of the routes the MDs would be shipped along, and he just gave a noise I had learned to treat in the affirmative. Ten hours later and I was watching Wing blow up in a bright flash of light. He just had to step out on the edge of the platform, didn't he? At least I know his body was in one piece, even if he was dead to me, and the world.

Quatre was falling apart next to me, grabbing his heart, and I tried to comfort him when Trowa appeared on our screens and said some meaningful bullshit while he picked up his body. I beat my hands against the consoles around me, and Quatre looked up at me.

"Give him back!" I screamed, not realizing that my radio was on. "No, HEERO!"

And then it was over, and the Maguanacs had us going to some base and… he was dead! I cried for a few hours, well I wanted to, anyway, but just because that unfeeling raping bastard was dead didn't mean the war was over. Hell, if I didn't go on he'd get a better spot in heaven for fighting until the end. So, numbed by my anger and tricks to hide the real hurt, I followed Quatre and his pals into the base and said a few silent farewells before yanking my one memento from the screens in front of me and wrapping it around my cross.]

Every night I woke up screaming, gasping for breath, and waited for him to chastise me.

And then slowly, surely, the realization that he wasn't in bed with me, or at his laptop, or glaring down at me from where he was standing over the bed or by the window would creep in and I would feel utterly and completely sick. I think I drove Quatre almost mad by it.

He knew, of course, that there was something more going on than what I had presented to him and to the others. He knew, or at least he had some idea, that I was hiding something. Not lying to anyone, because no, I wouldn't do that, even for him.

[ Quatre had a gun aimed at the bed and he was staring at me funny. I just continued to pant and put a hand to my forehead to wipe away the cold sweat there. I stared through my hand, and Quatre dismissed the guards and sat down on my bed.

"Do you want to talk about these nightmares you're having, Duo?"

"Perceptive," I murmured, feeling his comments even in the darkness. "No I don't, Quatre."]

Ease my mind

Sadly enough even when he was bad, worrying about himself and nothing else, he was still satisfying on some very basic level. Something deep inside me was horribly, horribly afraid of the whole war, sometimes. The little boy inside me that saw his parents killed, and the orphanage burned, and his best friend killed by a plague there was a cure for. That little boy got really scared sometimes, and when he got scared, even Shinigami couldn't control him fully.

He had the run of my body when he got scared and I let him.

I was never quite strong enough to believe in the strength Deathscythe and I had together, and he could take over when it was very… inopportune.

The nightmares… were almost always about being dead and not seeing any of the people that we both knew were waiting just across death's threshold for us. Father Maxwell… Sister Helen… Solo…

The long forgotten people that are my parents…

And sometimes it got so horrible that I couldn't tell myself from the dead people… I was no better than those I had killed on the battlefield because there was, like with all of the pilots, this bubble around me where people just couldn't get inside. Oh, sure, Hilde tried, came pretty damn close I'll give her credit where it's due, but I couldn't let her get too close because she was just another innocent civilian, in the end, and I couldn't stand to see her hurt, even though it meant that I would be all the lonelier.

No one could touch me.

Touch is one of the most basic human forms of communication, along with sight. But the eyes are more easily fooled than the skin, they can be played tricks on, as the Zero System showed me…

And Heero… he walked right up to me, disregarding that damn protective bubble, and he showed me how alive I really was. It hurt, sometimes, but the pain was all a part of the reality that existed. The pain was real, at least, I could tell, with the sweat and the adrenaline and the pain… that I was living.

He gave me that.

A thing I desperately needed.

He showed me that I was alive, even if he wasn't doing it out of love, at the time.

At least he cared, in some manner.

Reasons for me to find you

[ My stomach lurched from something other than the G-force and I envisioned his face when he would see me next. I could just see his eyes that evening staring at me from across the room as he snapped his laptop closed and stalked over to me. 'I've missed you,' his eyes would say to me. 'Come to me and I will make sure you know I'm alive, you will not doubt. Surrender to me.']

And still the next time I saw him it was just the same way. Even though I knew that his first word had been her name, even though I expected him to shoot me and leave me dead and dying in that cell on the colony, I still couldn't deny that it was good to see him.

And sadly, yet again, he still turned me on.

Peace of mind

[ This dank, smelly cage smells worse than Relena and her pink limo. Suddenly he isn't so wonderful anymore as he points the muzzle of his rifle at me. I can understand why he has to do it, I'm only glad I got to gaze into his eyes once more. I think that will make up for the bullet, and my life. He can have it all since he gave me my last request.

"Can you walk?"]

It was those words that made me pause, stock still. I had opened my eyes to look him in the face, so that I could see his eyes… those empty blue masterpieces, and have the image of his face engrained as my last living sight.

And then he didn't pull the trigger. It was the oddest, most unexpected feeling and I looked up at him, puzzled. It would be better for him to shoot me, take away the liability I would present.

It would be better for him to move on and find someone else that was a convenient fuck toy for the rest of the war. Someone he wouldn't have to fight alongside or get captured and need to be rescued.

What can I do

I'm very glad that he didn't.

to get me to you

He didn't shoot me, and I suppose that should give me hope that he cares for me, but it really doesn't. I mean, he didn't shoot her either and he had just as many chances to shoot her as he has to shoot me. I don't think being on even footing with her is as good as being without him would be.

I had your number quite some time ago

[ "Why do you… why do you call out that guy's name all the time when you wake up like this, Duo? Did some- Was there something between the two of you?"

"I said that I don't want to talk about it, Quatre. It isn't going to change tonight."

Timidly he got up and drifts over to the doorway, turning off the light. "But you will… talk about it with me sometime, right Duo?" my name sort of slipped off his tongue and I looked up quickly, but he was gone.

Sighing heavily, I lay back down and stared up at the ceiling. I tossed my pillow up in the air and then started kicking it around the room. "Damn you J!" I seethed, tearing the poor thing to bits in my fury.

Finally exhausted in a foreign manner, I sank to the floor and curled up in a ball to try and keep out the memories and the cold, and succeed in falling asleep.]

Back when we were one

It's really funny. I think Quatre has always been more for our relationship than we have been. The little guy seems to spend more time patching up our life together, if you can call it that, than we do. I feel like he should be in this position instead of me, since he can appreciate it so well and he cares about what happens between us so much.

[ I balled up the remains of the pillow and threw them away, heading for the shower, and for once, I went naked, just like he did. Like he was in the room, just then, and he could see me. I smiled just for him and then hurried downstairs… sort of refreshed.

"Sorry about the…" I stopped in shock, having run straight into Rashid.

"Oh, there you are, master Duo, I was just going to get you."

Nodding my lack of thanks, I passed Rashid and entered the kitchen. Quatre was sitting by himself at the table, not a Maguanac in sight, with a tray of eggs and bacon out for the two of us.

"What's all of this, Quatre?" I asked as I sat.

"You haven't been eating enough, Duo."

"Sure I have."

His face went pale again, "You haven't been eating at all, Duo. I know, I've watched you."

"I snack, ok."

"You do not!" Quatre placed the flat of his hand firmly on the table, jarring a little of the full pitcher of orange juice so that it fell over and spilled on the white cloth. Quatre's hand went to his throat again, and I felt suddenly sorry for my façade.

"I'm sorry that I lead you on, Quatre."

"Duo, I realize how you feel about Heero. I may even understand it to some degree, but I realize how you feel. I don't think he's dead, Duo."

"Well if he isn't he'll probably just go running off to that girl again. I can't care about him, Quatre!" I began to eat, and Quatre sipped his tea. I stared down at the plate miserably.

"Duo, I only wish I could somehow prove to you that he's alive. I…"

"I'm a lost cause anyway, Quatre. You'd be doing both of us a favor if you just stopped hurting yourself over me. I hate seeing you in pain. Besides, it's almost like a sign, buddy," I felt the tears welling up in my throat. I pushed them down, deep so that I wouldn't cry in front of Quatre. I should have been able to, but no. It would cause him more grief, I could tell. "If he's going to blow himself up to get away from me, he can't care for me."

Quatre leaned forward and set his head down on the table dejectedly. "Stop thinking of yourself that way, Duo, please. It causes me more anguish to see you feeling down about this and sorry for your own existence than…"

"I don't want to think mean thoughts about this, Quatre, please."

"You mean a lot to me, Duo!" he snapped. "I care for you, and we've only ever shook hands. Duo, I… I can't see how he could feel nothing for you if he has spent time in close proximity with you. It's impossible."]

But I had to grow

[ "Nothing is impossible Quatre, not for him. I'll say this. If there is anyone who could survive that explosion and that fall, it's him It's my… It's Heero, ok? I'll give you that. But even if he comes back, I'll bet it's for the 'mission' and his duty to end the war, not because of me. If someone has the choice between death and daily…"

"Duo, why are you saying these things? You obviously care about him. Why does it hurt you so much to think of him loving you?"

"Because it wasn't like that, Quatre. I want to believe it. Every time I see him, I believe it, but when he's gone it always catches up to me that it was just sex. In order to love someone… I think you have to give them a part of… a part of your soul," I duck my head away from him, "and I never got a part of anything from him."

Quatre frowned and turned to glare at the wall angrily. 'You stupid son of a… why can't you just see that he does care about you, like you care about him?']

I'll always be his. It's sad, but it's true. I'll never stop wanting him.

It's why this has continued so long, I think, as it has.

Ten thousand years I've searched it seems and now

[ "Our duty and his is different. I couldn't have blown myself up. I couldn't have let him go like that. Not now. Quatre, I need him. I need him to shove me into the mattress tonight with no words and just fuck me stupid. I need him to fall asleep on top of me and keep holding me when I wake up tomorrow. Even if it's only a feeble wish, that he'll hold me, he did it once. I remember he did. And I needed it. It was right after the first time, and I was really sore all day and I wanted to tell him to lay off me, but then he did it again and I was hurt until he…"]

Gotta get to you

It was always very one-sided, back then. It was about him, and that was all there is to it. Any pleasure I got out of it was incidental, his actions afterwards told me that plainly. I couldn't expect any special treatment, and I didn't.

But I accepted it that way.

And I loved him that way.

But I can't do that anymore. I can't. I can't handle the look but don't touch rules that hang in the air between us every evening as the sun goes down. I can't take not being able to torment him just a little how he torments me.

I can't love him if he keeps me locked out, if he won't let me be with him more than just at night. He says she makes him miserable…

But he never does anything about it.

Won't you tell me how

[ Fate put him in contact with Heero Yuy.

He had never believed in love at first sight, but afterwards he found himself seriously rethinking that belief because the minute he laid eyes on the tousled head of hair and too-pretty face, despite the other boy's disposition, the moment their eyes met something gave Duo this sick feeling in his stomach. What happened then were just the reflexes of his training reacting to the situation. Duo was trained for everything. Seduction, infiltration, thievery, the list went on and on.

Duo was proof of female seduction so much that he hated the sight of women. They, in response, flocked to him like flies to a bug zapper. But the minute that intense glare landed on him, Duo lost it all. He caught a chill, and his heart started beating rapidly. He started blushing, and his sense of self-preservation lit the flare at that point. Feeling like he was dying of some untreatable disease that the other boy had given him with just that look was not healthy. All signs pointed to no and his mind forced his reluctant body to respond. After it all was over, and he was running swiftly away, Duo knew that the stoic boy wasn't dead, not at all; the owner of those deep blue eyes wasn't any deader than he himself was.

A fundamental knowledge just how he instinctively knew of the other boy's survival came to him much as easily as the feeling of how tight his already water-sopping wet pants were growing at the thought of him. Duo hadn't been trained to resist him. Boys, certainly, he could defeat every attempt at flattery and coyness anything on the earth threw at him, it was as natural by then as braiding his hair in the mornings, and he remained impassive to the point of boredom because not only was he used to the attention but he knew it was all because of his looks. But all the Japanese boy had to do was look at Duo and he fell apart. Those eyes and their telltale sorrow struck something deep inside the Deathscythe pilot that turned him to silly putty in his hands.]

Call me, call me

There isn't much else I can do, but leave him.

I've got world class competition, and who am I to go up against her?

[ Here I am again, standing in what seems like it's the same place… the same time, but isn't. This is a completely different phone booth, a completely different colony, as a matter of fact.]

Let me know you are there
Call me, call me

Just some orphan from L2 that managed to survive, against the odds, fight through the war and wind up so horribly in love with the wrong person that could never love him back…

I wonder how long it will take him when I'm gone to go running to her?

I wanna know you still care

Will he… will he even care?

Come on now won't you
Ease my mind

It's sometime… early… and I've already packed the car.

He's lying in bed across the room, blissfully unaware. Now is the time to do it, now is the time to…

He groans and turns over. I start as he wakes up and looks around the room with sleep-fuzzy eyes. "Duo?"

I hurry into the bathroom so that he doesn't see that I'm dressed. "Yeah Heero?" I call from the room in the hall.

"Ah… I thought you were gone, for a minute there."

What is that in his voice?

"Just… going to the bathroom right now."

"Mmm… come back to bed," he says in a throaty voice, I can just picture him stretching languidly across the sheets and waiting for me to appear. "It's cold tonight," his voice is impassive and yet I can hear the spark in it, and can almost see the look in his eyes.

"I'll be… just there…" I say, quickly stripping down. I hate how he can make me do that. I hate that just his suggestion of contact makes me run to him.

It's all one big empty promise, that when I get to him it'll all be better.

It's true, when I am with him, but the minute that he has to go out and do something and I'm stuck here or doing something by myself, the doubt floods my mind. I can't keep this up so much longer.

Finally down to nothing, I fold the clothes on the toilet seat carefully and loosen my hair, heading into the bedroom and scratching my scalp absently. His eyes follow me, watch my figure as I move through the darkness towards him. He makes room for me on the bed, giving up his warm spot as I climb in, and puts his arms around me.

Again, I don't want to leave right now.

Reasons for me to find you

But as soon as he's gone I'll be itching to get out. He nuzzles my neck and positions himself close to me, drawing the blankets up over us. I stare out the window, just so that I can look at something other than his bittersweet countenance, just so I can focus on something else other than just him. It's so easy to just focus on him, to let the world slip away to the sidelines and fall into being with him.

His eyes, his quickness… the look he gets when he's made up his mind about something… I can't get over it.

Peace of mind

And really, that's the sadness of it.

Even though I'm going to go, walk out on Heero, I'm never going to leave him. I'm always going to love him, always going to imagine doing the things I'm doing with him there by my side. I'll always get sad on Valentine's Day and Christmas and Thanksgiving, when everyone else is going about their own business with their family and their loved ones.

It even happens now…

I can hardly stand to go to the grocery store and see mothers or wives and their children or with their husbands trailing behind them as they go about their business. One or the other of us goes to the store, we've got too much to do to do it together.

And that's what I want… I want to do things with him, things that don't involve being naked in any way, and don't involve either of us being aroused or anything like that.

Ease my mind
Reasons for me to find you

[ "Duo?" Trowa asks as the two of them drive out to the house.

Some inane music plays on the radio and Duo pretends he doesn't hear the green eyed young man for a while. Trowa repeats his query. "Duo."

"Yes, Trowa?"

"You seem upset about something, do you… want to talk about it?"

Duo ignores the question. No, Trowa, I don't want to talk about it, not with you… anyway.]

Peace of mind

I broke up with him once before. It was a rather humorous sight because apparently he didn't consider that the two of us were 'going out' in a manner that could be broken up.

I proved him wrong, I think, but…

[ "What's all this, Duo?" Heero asked as he entered the small bedroom of the dormitory suite.

Zipping the last of his bags, Duo turned and smiled at him. "Nothing much."

"You're packed," the Japanese pilot's eyes narrowed. "What's going on, is it a mission?"

"No, it is not," Duo replied, "And for your information, my missions are my business."

Heero shrugged off that and asked, "So what is going on if you haven't received a mission?"

"I've decided that I'm leaving."

"To where?" Heero responded, folding his arms on his chest.

"I haven't decided yet."

"When are you coming back?" the Wing pilot asked further.

"Coming back? Coming back to what?"

"To…" Heero paused for a long while at the confrontation in that sentence. "To…to me," he finished quickly.

"I'm not."

No response came from the other young man in the room and Duo looked down at his bag as he concluded his response. "I'm leaving you, Heero… I'm breaking up with you."

"Excuse me?" Heero responded, shock and incredulousness apparent in his tone. "You're breaking up with me?"

Duo nodded, lifting the bag to his shoulder and turning to head for the door. "You got anything to say about it?" Duo replied, pausing briefly to look at his 'lover' from the corner of his eye.

"So you have no where else to go, no mission to go on, and you're just packing up and walking out on me?" Heero asked, voice low.

"Pretty much."

"I refuse."]

Reasons for living my life

We got into a fight about that. It was really painful in the end because after he body slammed me for the second time I couldn't hold back and I kissed him. The floor is nowhere near the most comfortable place to have sex in the entire world. I vouch for that and haven't ever had sex on a floor since. It made me hesitate, when he said that.

"I refuse."

As though there were some reason for him to refuse. The same thing when he finally admitted he was wondering when I would return to him. All the little things that give me hope that one day he will say the words to me that I want to hear.

But then there was also the possessive growl in his voice after we lay panting in a heap on the floor and his arrogant question,

[ "And you can honestly say you were about to walk away from something like that?"]

Ease my mind

I shoved him away from me, but he didn't do anything but wrap his arms around me and bury his face in my hair. His hands started massaging my back and I fell asleep, exhausted… It pushed back the day that it was going to happen. I've worked too hard and lost too many people who cared enough and were able to say that they cared about me to settle for a life with someone who…

Even though he is great in bed, beautiful to stare at, and can be quite tender when he wants…

… can't even open his mouth and say one fucking word to me in his native language!

I'm not even asking for it in English!

Reasons for me to know you

I don't remember when it went from just casual sex to something more. I don't even really know if I ever considered it casual sex, really. I know he did. For a long time I was nothing to him…

Thinking back it's probably why we fought so much, were always at odds when we were out in public. Couldn't stand the thought of him spending time with someone else when he could just brush me off during the day and then come pounce me at night. It just couldn't work that way for me.

We obviously aren't the same in that respect.

I suppose… it really must have started right after I broke him out of that damn military hospital. I was soo pissed that he decided to fall down the entire way and not open that damn parachute I'd gotten for him. He sniffed and ignored me until I brought his gundam out of the sea.

[ "There, I brought yours up too!"

He finished snapping his leg bone into place and stood up, turning and staring at the lifted figure of his gundam. I figured he was ungrateful and I climbed down, making some wise crack. He was very close as I started to go and he turned to regard me with a roguish look. "I suppose I'll have to find some way to repay you then, huh?" he took a step towards me.

I step backwards, kind of freaked that he had just snapped his own leg bone back into socket, and soon enough we had advanced and retreated until he had me with my back up to the crane housing.

"Yeah, a 'thank you' might be nice," I said, sarcasm becoming defiance as he stared at my face. "H-hey!" I yelped as he leaned forward and pressed a kiss against my lips.

He pulled back after a moment and looked at me quizzically.

"And if I don't swing that way?" I demanded.

"Don't worry," he said, turning and going to where they were already moving his gundam into the shop hangar with mine, "you will," he called over his shoulder.]

What can I do

[ This time, though, I pick up the phone and start to dial.

Not him… never him. I can't.

If I do call him it'll all be over. No…

I can't ever call him, not now, not in a year, not at all. Because I still love him…

So instead, I dial the only person I can think of that might help me…]

to get me to you.

[ "Yeah, Hilde… it's me."]