Moments of Haven Part 24
Lean On Me
Duo slipped into the room silently, as he was accustomed to doing, opening the door just about enough to let himself in and no more, but stopped himself before deliberately shutting the door behind him without a sound. Instead, he closed it like a halfway normal person, the quiet thud sure to announce his presence to any sharp ears that may have been within, even over the muted sounds of the shower floating through the hotel suite. Idly divesting himself of the leather Preventers jacket that was suddenly too warm for the suite, even for his cold bones, he tossed it onto a nearby chair and wandered into the next room. The concept of a hotel suite with one small sitting room, one larger sitting room, a bathroom, and two bedrooms still amused him.
As expected, he found his partner there, and he paused in the doorway to watch him. Heero was leaning against the frame of one of the large bay windows, gazing moodily out over the downtown view of L1. The illumination in the room came only through the glass, and from the light spilling in the doorway he had stopped in. Heero didn't acknowledge the newcomer's presence, but Duo was sure he was aware of it. The face in profile was less neutral than it normally was, but not in a good way. There was no easy relaxation there, nor even the sharp attention that would be present if he were watching over the city as a silent sentinel. Duo interpreted it as some sort of melancholia, and decided to do away with it.
Heero sensed Duo's approach easily, as the braided one made no attempt to conceal it, but the arms that wrapped themselves around his middle and gave him a warm squeeze were rather unexpected. He turned his head to the side to meet Duo's eyes as his partner lifted his head from the other's shoulder and untangled himself with a bright expression. "What was that?" Heero inquired, his eyebrow raised.
Duo shrugged nonchalantly, glad that he had managed to derail Heero's cheerless thoughts. It was visible as the blankness slid gradually off his face, to be replaced with a little more interest in his surroundings. "It's almost guaranteed that anyone who looks that gloomy needs a hug," he announced, smiling slightly at the bland amusement that was expressed in Heero's answering blink. He snagged another nearby chair and turned it around, straddling it backwards with his elbows crossed over the top. "Now, tell Best Friend Duo all about it."
Heero's shoulders lowered themselves a fraction of an inch when he exhaled softly, the breath just this side short of a sigh, and reverted his gaze out the window. "I don't know. Maybe I'm just feeling... especially mortal tonight."
"Ah," Duo nodded sagely. "This is a good thing, coming from Mr. I Feel Like Jumping Out of a Building Without a Parachute."
He shook his head slightly, a bare quirk in the corner of his mouth from the memory making itself known. "Not like that. I mean, tired, maybe."
"Ah," Duo responded again. "You mean, mortal as in not superhuman. This, too, is a good thing." A comfortable silence descended for a short moment before he spoke up again. "You're not, you know. Superhuman, that is. You're not responsible for everything. You should realize that, sometimes."
Another short period of quiet followed. "That's hard, sometimes. When everyone's counting on you to get things done."
"Were the organizer fellows today that useless?"
"Yes." Duo waited patiently for an elaboration he suspected might follow if he made his expectation almost tangible in his silence. Heero acknowledged it. "This new administration is... lacking in some areas."
Duo smiled briefly. "More diplomatic than I would have put it. The good citizens of L1 appointed themselves a fine bunch of... lackers."
Heero shrugged minutely. "They got what they asked for. They wanted to move away from a wartime administration."
"And they moved rather admirably away from anyone with any practical experience, too," he noted dryly. "We're talking the Foreign Vice Minister, Former Queen of the World, here." He nodded his head in the general direction of the bathroom. "I don't care what kind of peaceful world we're in, they should have realized that some preparations would need to be made to secure her appearances tomorrow."
"I would have liked to have you with me today, Duo," Heero confessed softly. "I don't-- It was good being able to trust you with handling our side of things, but... I would have preferred it if you could have handled these others instead. I may be from L1, but that doesn't mean I can communicate with the officials here any more effectively."
"You shouldn't be so competent, Heero," he chided gently. Heero had a good head for details, but he didn't appreciate micromanagement when he felt that those under him should have been competent enough to handle themselves. Further complications arose since there was just something quietly authoritative about his demeanor that made people automatically defer to him or expect him to take charge, and dealing with people had never been his strong point. He usually left that to Duo. "People expect the world from you because you can give it. You have given it. You make a good crutch. You're reliable for leaning on."
The sound from the shower ceased as the water was cut off. The silence seemed suddenly loud. "But whom do I get to lean on?"
"Hey, I'm here for you, buddy," he reminded him. "Whatever you need, you got it. Just give me a holler. Or a whisper. Or a look. Or something. I'll be there. That's what I'm here for." He smiled encouragingly when Heero looked askance at him.
"Will you lean on me, too?" Heero asked suddenly, a small crease gracing his brow.
"Me? I think you have enough stuff on your plate as it is, without adding me to the stack," he reassured, but when there was just something fleeting about Heero's expression that struck him as crestfallen, he thought perhaps he had misunderstood the question somehow. "Why? Do you want me to?"
Heero was quick to shake his head. "No, I was just thinking. If I lean on you, then you'll have to lean on someone yourself, and it could go on endlessly. So I was just thinking that it'd work out better if you leaned on--" He shook his head impatiently again. "Never mind. It was a silly idea anyway."
"Hey, not silly at all. Well, maybe silly in that it makes total sense to me and it sounds like something I might think up, and sometimes I get silly. But really. I mean, even if I didn't want to, I think I do a little anyway." He chuckled ruefully as a thought struck him. "Just like everyone else, I suppose. You're very lean-on-able," he added apologetically.
"Hn." A faint honking from a car's horn came from the street below, and Heero's gaze flickered down to note the disturbance. A little while later and he was staring out at nothing at all. "...Tell me you don't need me, Duo."
"Eh?" The words caught him off guard, and he resisted the urge to pour a few meaningless filler words into the emptiness while he considered the request. What could he say to that? He didn't completely not need him, but what he needed from him was complicated. He just counted on him in a variety of ways, but in the end, it all boiled down to something very simple. "Well.... I wish I could give you an absolute affirmative on that.... But I just need you to be you. That's all. Is that okay?"
Heero didn't move as he considered the matter somewhere deep inside himself. "I think I can manage that."
The statement was uttered without a hint of a smile, and there was just something sad to Duo, about him having to actually think seriously about it, only to come up without a definite yes. But Heero had it hard sometimes, remembering that he actually had personal opinions. He had spent much too much time molding himself into whatever he needed to be at the time. "Okay then. So it does balance out after all. I'll lean on you, and you lean on me, and we can keep each other standing. And if you ever need to lean a little harder... I'm sure I can find some way to lean back just as hard, okay?"
Heero blinked himself back into the present, and a faint ease crept over his face. "Okay."
Duo opened his mouth to say something more, but just then the door to the bathroom opened, and Relena entered the room, freshly showered and jammied and rubbing her wet hair down with a small towel. "Duo," she greeted with a welcoming smile, walking across the room to turn on the lights. "You boys conspiring in the dark?"
"Nah," he answered easily, blinking a little as his eyes readjusted to the light. "I was just about to say to Heero that he needs a vacation or something. That's all."
"We'll be home in a few days," Heero protested mildly.
"And home is vacation. Riiight. Fine then. Relena, you need a vacation."
"Why me?" she asked.
"'Cuz you just got out of the shower, your hair is still wet, and you're already looking over the notes for tomorrow's conference."
She lifted her hand guiltily from the sheets scattered across the table she was standing in front of. "Well, it's tomorrow's conference," she said defensively. "I have to be prepared."
"I'm not saying you shouldn't be prepared, 'Lena," Duo countered readily. "Certainly, after all the work Heero and I put in today to see that things run smoothly for you tomorrow, you sure as heck better do your part to make this all work out nice and pretty. I'm just saying that you -- and Heero, I might add -- are just all too willing to work yourselves into the ground. Now I know that's just how you two are, but the least you could do is complain about it once in a while!"
"Duo," she started reasonably.
"We're your acting bodyguards, and it's our job to look out for you, and I'm only trying to look out for you by pointing out that you should take a rest for a bit. We're finally at the end of our tour, you're beginning to look a little burnt out around the edges -- aha! Look, you just tried to stifle a yawn."
"It's late, Duo." The yawn wormed its way out despite her best efforts.
"Not that late. And I bet you'll be staying up later anyway, just to go over everything again, and Heero's not going to say a word because that's exactly what he'd be doing, too. Heck, even I might be, if I were in your position, but at least I'd have the good sense to realize that I really shouldn't be. So as I was saying, we're at the end of the tour here, and since you've been just crazy enough to be toting around all the work from the office with you, you can't even claim that things have been piling up for you while you were out here, and since you're pretty much done with anything mission critical for a while, you really ought to take a break. Even if you just go home for a few days and curl up with a good teddy bear and sleep."
"And how is Blackie these days?" she inquired urbanely after the large bear she had given them a while back. Blackie, whose name was derived rather unoriginally from his color, generally resided in the corner of their couch.
"He's fine, thank you, and you are trying to change the subject," Duo scolded.
"I know," she answered with a bright smile.
He scowled at her unrepentance.
"The longer we stand about discussing this, the longer it will take me to go over my notes, and the less sleep I'll get tonight."
He scowled harder at her. "Alright. Get to work, then. We'll just have to talk more later." He stalked off to take advantage of the vacant shower. "Oh, shut up, Yuy!" he tossed over his shoulder grumpily before his exit.
It hardly escaped Relena's attention that Duo had somehow managed to pick up on the barely noticeable amusement on Heero's face without even needing to look. She smiled to herself and went to work.
OWARI
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