Author: CleverYoungThief
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, Shounen ai, Yaoi
Pairing: 1+/x2
Archive: Gundam Wing Addiction
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Don't sue. College kids are like L2 kids; we got nothin'.
Imperfection
Clack.
Click clack.
ClicketyclackclackclickclackCLICKCLACKCLICKETYCLACK
That noise is driving... me... insane.
Heero is driving me insane.
He sat down at that computer and has not moved in three hours, twenty-three minutes, and fifty-seven seconds. Fifty-eight seconds. Fifty-nine seconds.
It's raining. It's Saturday. There's no classes. There's nothing to do outside, because of said rain. We've been prohibited from leaving campus because of flash flood warnings. I'm trapped here. There is nothing to do.
Except sit in here and listen to Heero clack away at the keyboard. Which-on top of the pounding sound of the rain on the roof-is driving me up the wall. I put on a pair of headphones and turned my portable CD player on full blast. But I can still hear him in the background. Clickety-clack.
/ Yuy, if you don't get off that computer, you're a dead man. /
Don't get me wrong. I have tried every possible means of distracting him. It's my job.
I've jumped on the bed. I've jumped from one bed to another and back again. I've sung loudly... and purposely... off-key, thinking of every obscene song I've ever heard, then switching to musicals. Nothing.
Finally, I just flopped across the bed, watching him type, memorizing the lines of his profile, watching the little muscles in his arms flex as he typed. He was leaning back in his chair a little, lifting the two front legs off the floor, scowling in concentration. Even when he was ignoring me with that perpetually annoyed expression on his face, he was still drop-dead gorgeous.
He was also about as sexually inclined as a brick.
"Hey Heero."
No response. Heero glared at the computer screen as a password locked him out of a security network, and he set about trying to go around it. Clacking like a maniac. My sanity was hanging by a thread.
"HEERO THEY'RE COMING!" I shrieked at the top of my lungs.
He didn't turn to look at me, but those gorgeous Prussian blue eyes did cut in my direction. "If you scream like that again, I'm going to break your jaw."
I swallowed hard. Nothing can hold a relationship like ours together but mutual respect and a few liberal doses of me getting my ass whipped. Let's put it this way: taking judo is quite different than receiving judo.
Either way, I didn't try that little stunt again, because he probably wasn't kidding.
"You want to come play cards with me? Strip poker or something?"
"Hn."
"How about Monopoly?"
"Hn."
"Parcheesi?"
"...hn."
"How about I cover you in peanut butter and lick it all off?"
"Hn... nn... nani?"
I laughed. He was almost listening to me. I reached over and poked him in the ribs.
And got a very, very interesting reaction.
Heero laughed.
Then he coughed to try and cover it up. And he glared at me. "Touch me again and I'll break your arms."
/ Oh no. That ain't gonna work again, buddy. /
I had just found the weakness of the Perfect Soldier, and I was going to utilize it to the best of my ability. I grinned. I couldn't believe my luck.
Heero was ticklish.
I did the only thing I could think of to do. Don't ask me why I did it now; if it was a murder charge, I'd plea temporary insanity. I pulled backwards on the chair as hard as I could, sending him toppling to the floor. Our scuffle for dominance was a mad dance on the carpet of flailing arms and feet. Heero hit the floor hard enough to lose his wind, growling ferally under my restraining hands. If I didn't get him down and under me from the beginning, he'd pin me. And then I could probably look forward to a trip to the emergency room in the near future.
Suddenly, I was on top of him like a tiger on a lame deer, viciously tickling his ribs, under his arms, across his stomach. I was so into my new pastime, caught up in the surreal moment and the sound of Heero's free, unafflicted laughter, that I almost forgot he had tortured and killed people for lesser attacks on his person.
Meanwhile, Heero was howling with laughter on the floor. He was trying to attack me, but the laughing was messing with his reflexes. Besides, Heero might be a strong son of a bitch, but I can hold my own, too. People forget that sometimes. We're pretty evenly matched.
He couldn't quite control himself enough to really make a move against me. He tried curling up into a ball to protect himself, but I learned how to tickle from the best.
"Duo... heh... Duo... stop... I'm gonna... haha... yamatta....I'm... ahaha... kill you... soon as you stop... hahahaha... stop..."
"That's not a real good reason for me to let you up."
"Hee... haha... break every bone... in your body... hahaha..."
Finally, I did stop. But only when Heero was so out of breath he was about to pass out. He laid beneath me, his breathing ragged.
Heero laying beneath me. Oh, heaven. Somebody shoot me. Oh wait, just give Heero a minute to catch his breath, I'm sure he'd be more than happy to do it himself.
I looked down into his face. Those cobalt eyes looked up at me with a mixture of fury, frustration, joy, and something else. I've never seen one expression so confused. He had recovered enough to attack me, and he... wasn't attacking me. Interesting, since he had just threatened to break every bone in my body less than five minutes before, and he was a guy who usually followed through on his promises.
We were so close our noses touched. He was exhausted from laughing, too breathless to kill me at least. He'd probably still have the energy to put me in the hospital, if that's what he wanted. I sure as hell wasn't going to move if he didn't make me. I crossed my arms over Heero's chest and rested my chin on them, looking into his eyes.
We were close enough to kiss. It was amazing to me, to be so close to him, close enough to notice a faint, small scar across his cheek, close enough to feel his breath like a soft warm puff of wind against my face.
It had always been an unspoken rule between us. Whenever we touched, it would be violence. It had been the rule ever since the day we met when I shot him. We just didn't touch. I treated him like an electric fence. He treated me like he treated everyone else, as if I was just a part of the scenery for him.
And now we were in uncharted territory. Floundering in the storm.
Without the sound of that damned keyboard, the muffled roar of the rain pouring down outside was very loud. Thunder rumbled through the room.
I caught his bottom lip in both of mine, softly, and then with my teeth, nibbling gently. He remained passive beneath me, as limp as if he was unconscious. But his eyes were open. He was watching me while I did it. I could feel his heartbeat thundering under my wrists.
It was getting dark, and lightning lit up the twilight, flashing across his face. It threw deep shadows into the corners of the room.
He didn't stop me. He never tried once to stop me. I gave him every opportunity, to pull back, to push me away, to bite or protest or hit me. He didn't do a damned thing. I wasn't sure whether it was a good sign, or a bad one.
"Why did you do that?" he asked quietly, and there was something plaintive in his voice that hurt me. Something that said he really didn't understand. "I can show you how to die a little at a time... I can show you a way to keep it from hurting," I whispered. "But you have to trust me."
He closed his eyes, then threw me off of him so quickly I hadn't even realized what was happening until I was pinned under him, my arm twisted up behind my back, between me and the floor. Heero's hand was clenched in a fist, raised over his head. It took me a minute to realize that he had already hit me, and was about to do it again.
"Heero I'm sorry Gomen! Gomen nasai! Please!" I gasped between gulps of air, ready to cry. My lip was bleeding, I could taste the salty sweet metallic tang of blood there. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the only kind of physical contact Heero knew how to give.
He flinched when I cried out his name, breathing hard, his fist suspended in midair. "Duo." He said my name, as if he had to remind himself who he was about to hurt. He was reminding himself that I was his friend.
That he couldn't kill me, even though the soldier part of his mind was trying to convince him to beat me until my brains were seeping into the carpet. I had assaulted him. To the Soldier, that was inexcusable.
But looking into his eyes now, so angry and uncertain at the same time, there was a part of him, I knew, that hadn't wanted me to stop.
He was lying over me, now. The dominance had shifted. I reached up and grabbed his bicep, holding it firmly, not hard enough to bruise. If he was going to hit me, there was no way I could stop it.
I looked up at the ceiling and willed it to be over.
Heero sank against my chest, his clenched fist loosening to rest palm-down on the carpet, his other hand resting against my chest, clutching my tee-shirt desperately, where before it had been holding me down, pressing me to the ground so he could eliminate me; I was the only threat to his weakness.
He pressed his face against the front of my tee-shirt, voice muffled by the cotton. I rested my hand on his shoulders, feeling them shake beneath my fingertips. When Heero raised his face again, I saw that he was crying. It was only then that I realized I was too. Tears were tracing down the sides of my face to pool at my ears. They tickled, but for some reason, even though my hands were free, I couldn't wipe them away.
I didn't know what to do. So I did nothing. I just laid beneath him, waiting for the blows to fall.
He touched my chin gently, with a hand that could kill just as easily. He ran his hand down my jaw, down to my neck, tangling his fingers in the hair at the nape there.
Right before his lips pressed against mine, he spoke again. Just one last time.
Whenever I think about him now, I don't think about the perfect killer I fought beside. I thought about that one moment that seemed to last forever. Cobalt eyes that were, for once, not cold. That soft whisper expression, as naive as a child.
"I trust you, Duo."
OWARI
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