Endless Summer Part 13
Riptides...
When the four of them got to Pipeline, Duo was amazed at his own overwhelming gratitude when Wufei, Relena, Catherine, Dorothy, and Hilde all ran up to them. He found himself counting heads, making sure no one he had met in the last week and a half was missing. The girls were all accounted for. Same for the guys. Everyone he knew was safe.
Safe. He felt as if his knees would buckle with relief. Heero stood next to him, a steady, solid, comforting rock. But Heero's expression was harsh and dark and guarded, as if the scene was all too familiar to him. Wufei and Trowa stood at his side, arms crossed over their chests, almost identical serious scowls on their faces, a scene that would have been almost comical under separate circumstances.
The shoreline was a panicked mob of people, and it didn't take the eight surfers long to find the site of the drowning. There was a large circle of people-mostly surfers-quickly forming around the victim, the kind of jostling crowd that always seems to center around schoolyard fights, suggestions and shouts flying fast and loud.
Duo looked around at all of it with a dazed kind of calm. / I'm going crazy... wheee... /
One girl was shrieking behind him. He heard a sharp slap and the quiet, no nonsense tone of Relena's voice. "Quit it, you just quit it, Jess. Dammit."
"Lay him out flat! Somebody call the flashers!"
"Hold his nose!"
"Oh, Jesus..."
Duo elbowed and fought for a position where he could see.
Someone was leaning over the grom, giving him mouth-to-mouth, pumping the guy's chest with desperate vigor. Duo didn't know the guy, and he was so grateful for that that he had a hard time feeling sorry. It was just a face to him, and if someone had to die, that was exactly the way he wanted it.
He didn't even know why they were bothering with trying to resuscitate the guy. He had seen a lot of dead surfers on the beach, and he couldn't imagine anyone looking more dead than this guy. The boy was as limp as a pile of rags, pale hands palm-up on the sand, dark hair plastered to his cheeks, mouth slack. A little blood, not a lot, but a little, trickled down the side of the boy's head where he had hit it, probably against the corals.
In Duo's professional opinion, just about all the advice the other surfers were shouting was stupid. The surfer lying on the sand was deader than a doornail. Nothing ticking but his waterproof watch.
Surfers and swimmers circled like sharks, hands cupped over their eyes to cut the glare of the sun, which was shining rather cheerily for such a grim scene. It was the thing Duo noticed over everything else. Other than the drowning, it was a nice day. The palms were swaying, the sun was high, and the surf was higher. But none of that mattered now, because someone was dead.
The languages and accents were all over the place. Someone, a girl, was sobbing and shouting in an Australian accent so thick Duo could barely understand it.
Suddenly, a jeep and an ambulance with blue flashing lights on the top of it cut its way through the mobs, sirens blaring. Two policemen-check that, a policeman and a policewoman-were driving the jeep, hitting the horn and shouting for people to get out of the way. The surfers scattered like gulls on the beach.
The policeman got out before the jeep had even come to a stop, making his way through the crowds. The first thing Duo thought when he saw the older man was that the guy most definitely did not look like a cop; he looked more like he should be out there on the bumps with the rest of the surfers. The cop's long blonde hair was pulled back into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck. Ice-cold blue eyes surveyed the scene, falling directly on the dead boy.
"Back off!" That rasping, deep voice was enough to push back the most persistent of crowds. He kneeled in the sand, putting two fingers to the boy's neck. He held them there for a moment, then stood.
"Someone give me a beach towel, please."
Relena came up with one in her arms. She spoke quietly to the blonde cop, too quietly for anyone else to hear, and he nodded to her before throwing the beach towel over the surfer's body. When he did, one of the girls started crying harder, sobbing the boy's name. Further down the beach, someone had collected his board. It was broken in half. The leash was ripped.
"Noin, get those paramedics down there, then go get an accident report from those kids. The Australian ones. I've got to make a call to the embassy."
Relena was taking the sobbing girl around the shoulders, leading her away. The rest of the wahines surrounded them like a protective flock, keeping people away from them.
Duo noticed that Heero was still and silent at his side, as if trying to keep anyone's attention from falling on him. He slipped his hand into Heero's without thinking twice about it, not caring how many people could see them. He squeezed it. "You know that guy, Heero?" he whispered.
"... Not the boy. The cops."
As if he heard his name spoken, the blonde cop looked up, walking towards them. "Heero Yuy. What are you all doing down here? Did you see what happened here?"
Trowa spoke up, his voice almost a purr, serious and quiet. "We weren't down here when it happened, Milliardo. We were at Ponderosa Point. You can ask anyone."
"Nobody's accusing anyone of anything, Barton. Pipeline is dangerous. Everyone knows that." Milliardo brushed the quiet boy off dismissively, still focusing on Heero. "Haven't seen you in awhile, Heero. Not since my sister dumped you. How are you doing?"
Heero met Milliardo Peacecraft's eyes steadily. "Fine."
"Right. You never were a big talker after what happened. I'd forgotten." The blonde's cold blue eyes slid over to Duo. "Maxwell. Why am I not surprised? Couldn't you find another beach to ride? This is going to cause hell with the newshounds."
Duo swallowed hard. "We weren't at this beach," he said, repeating what Trowa had already stated, amazed at the calm in his own voice. "We just heard what happened and came to see like all the other rubbernecks."
He felt the cop's eyes slide to where his fingers were intertwined with Heero's, and he blushed under that gaze, feeling the urge to jerk his hand away, but not giving in to it. He squeezed Heero's hand again instead, feeling the calluses there. Heero's hand was shaking in his, and Duo wanted to get away from all this and ask Heero what was wrong.
Milliardo straightened up, making a little movement like a bird settling its feathers. "Well. I've got things to do. Do us uniforms a favor and get the hell out of the way, hm? We have enough problems to deal with without having to work around a bunch of boarders who know better than to come down and hang around at a drowning. So beat it."
He walked off, pulling a cell phone from his front jacket pocket. The boy's body had already been loaded into the back of the ambulance, and was being hauled away as the ambulance driver moved slowly through the crowds, trying not to run anyone over.
Catherine groaned. "Too late. Here come the newsies." A flock of excited news crews were heading up the beach, handheld cameras and tape recorders ready, reporters fluffing in a last-minute check before they went on the air.
Wufei and Trowa and the others beat a quick retreat, grabbing whatever they could carry and heading up the beach to the cars. Heero dropped Duo's hand as they both moved to follow, planning to get a ride, but they were quickly drawn into the crowd of reporters.
A tape recorder was shoved in Heero's face, and he resisted the urge to jerk it away in a repeat of what he had done with Walker's camera earlier. "Heero Yuy, was the victim one of your contenders for the Billabong Pro?"
Another recorder was thrust in Duo's face, and he flinched back from it. "Shinigami, do you think your presence here had anything to do with the drowning?"
"What are the two of you doing here together, Yuy and Maxwell? There's rumors you too have gotten quite attached to each other... are you settling a little rivalry before the match, or is it something more?"
"Heero Yuy, does this bring back any memories of your family's tragedy from four years before? How are you taking all of this?"
The two of them exchanged a glance. They knew if they just said, "no comment", the papers would have "Death Causes Death On Pipeline!" and "Surfing Rivals Face-off In Deadly Match On North Shore!" and conspiracy theories about surfers drowning each other over the competition all over the front pages.
"We just got here, we don't know anything more than you do," Heero stated flatly, trying to walk away. But they were boxed in. A big shoulder cam was on the both of them now. Infuriated, the both of them recognized Walker in the back of the mob. He was wearing a smug grin that neither of them liked very much.
The questions came from all sides. "Did he drown, or did he hit the corals? Do you think anyone is going to die at the Billabong Pro? Who do you think your biggest rival is?" Heero grabbed Duo's hand again to keep them from being separated in the mobs. "Is this your new lover, Heero Yuy? Have you gotten over Relena Peacecraft?"
"Don't know. No. Yes. Yes!" He pulled Duo through the crowds, scowling. "None of your business! Ask Peacecraft and Noin! No comment!"
Wufei was motioning to them desperately. Trowa and Quatre jumped in Quatre's pickup truck, already driving away, Quatre's board thrown in the back. They followed Wufei up to the woody, jumping in the back. Wufei's board was already mounted on the roof. "Drive Wufei! Get us the hell out of here!"
They pulled away, leaving the flock of reporters in a cloud of sand and dust.
~*~
"Damn, what a mess," Wufei muttered, driving down the beachfront highway. "Yeah."
"I didn't know Milliardo would be there, Heero. Otherwise, I never would have sent Quatre to get you both."
"It's fine, Wufei. Don't worry about it." Heero's voice was tired and flat.
The there of them drove in silence for awhile, silent except for the humming whine of the highway under the woody's wheels. Heero was being quiet, Duo noticed. Much more quiet than he normally was. He sidled up against the Japanese surfer, putting his head on Heero's shoulder. Wufei decorously ignored them, keeping his eyes on the road.
"You okay, Heero?" he whispered. He wasn't quite as worried about the death of the Australian surfer at Pipeline as he was about its effect on Heero. The dark-haired surfer was leaning back against the seats, face pale. His hands were still shaking a little, and Duo took one. Heero looked at him. "I'm okay. Are you?"
"Yeah. But you don't look it."
"Just the whole thing, I guess. Brings back bad memories. It's been awhile since I saw flashers on the beach. And a long time since I've seen Milliardo. The last time I saw him, it wasn't exactly under the best of circumstances."
Wufei shot Duo a meaningful warning glare in the rearview mirror.
Duo's voice was quiet as he put his arms around Heero's neck, bringing their foreheads gently together, more for comfort than anything else Heero didn't need a lover right now. He just needed a friend.
He gazed into deep, dark blue eyes. The depth of grief in them was stunning to see. He had been so wrapped up in his own fear that he hadn't even seen it, and he felt a rush of guilt for that. "You don't have to say anything about it, Heero. It's okay. Really."
Heero shook his head a little. "I think I... need to. I just don't know if I can do it right now. Not after all this."
They were all quiet again for a few minutes. Finally, Duo leaned in, whispering softly in the other boy's ear.
"Later. Let's just go home."
Heero just nodded without argument, leaning against Duo. It was then that he realized the little beach house and its workshop had always just been a house to him. A box of walls and ghosts that never stopped walking.
And even all his friends, who often treated his house as their own and crashed there as often as he did, couldn't help to chase away the memories that met him around every corner. No amount of friendship would help to chase away the pain he had felt a couple of months ago when he had come across some of Mary's dolls and his family's photographs, hidden away in one of the closets in a box, probably by Wufei, who had not had the heart to throw them out. Even after four years, it hurt just as damned much as it had from the beginning.
The others reminded him over and over that there had been nothing he could do for any of them. That what had happened was out of his control, and that he shouldn't blame himself for their deaths. But not all the logic in the world could help when it was your family that drowned, and you were the only one left. The only survivor.
He let himself be pulled into the braided surfer's arms without fighting or so much as a single protest. Even though he had only known Duo for less than two weeks, he already knew deep in his heart what it took to make the house a home. A place where he could feel safe and happy and make the memories of that awful day fade away.
And that was Duo.
TBC...
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