Saving Grace Part 2
Heero glanced at his watch. It had been three hours since he had begun his frustrating attempt to control Duo's raging temperature. After the first hour, he had removed Duo's thoroughly saturated shirt and pants, striping the torrid Boy to his underwear.
A long ragged scar ran diagonally across Duo's right shoulder. A second down his inner arm ending just above the bend of his elbow. Heero knew from experience the slicing wounds could not be more than a few weeks old. "Someone cut him good." Heero thought a little surprised at the unexpected find.
Something shone with a golden shimmer on Duo's glistening chest. In the muted bedroom light Heero's hand touched the shape hanging from a matching gold chain. A simple, unadorned cross slipped into his fingers. Heero turned the cross noticing how the reflective light seemed to give it a soft glow.
"Well I'll be damned." he sighed letting the spiritual symbol slid back onto Duo's moist skin. "Maybe there is more to this Boy than I thought."
He undid the chestnut braid that kept winding around Duo's neck and getting in the way. Heero guided the long strands through his fingers, gathering the silky tresses, twisting them into a tangle pile on the pillow.
The next hour he applied wet cloths to Duo's fiery forehead, wiping down every inch of parched skin. Using every means to encourage Duo to wake up long enough to get him to drink enough water to fight off his rapid dehydration.
Duo's state of mind would travel between periods of somewhat lucidity into his own private night terrors with such volatile succession it was all Heero could do to keep ahead of the cascading tide. Then he would be so quiet Heero found himself checking to see if desperately ill Boy was still breathing.
At each turn, each roadblock to Duo's recovery, Heero felt complete helplessness and utterly frustration. He was losing more and more of his own previously strident emotional mastery. Yet another layer of control was breaking down and it seemed he could do nothing to halt the devastating downwards spiral.
All his years of training. All the days and nights spend purging his mind of sentiment or remorse. All the hours spend filling the empty spaces in his heart and mind with apathetic numbness. In one compassionate measure of time, all was destroyed and made null.
But strangely, Heero was not overwrought by the fraying threads of his emotional stability. In a way he welcomed the release from the fretting cords that had for so long bound him to duty. The damned meticulous attention to details. The stealthy stalking of his prey. The pouncing and death bite he had so long ago perfected.
Now instead of taking a life, he was fighting to save one. Strangely, curiously, it felt good. Perhaps, just maybe, that one small spark of humanity he had tried to smother with his dampened emotions still glowed somewhere in his stony heart.
Yet, through it all, Heero never gave up hope for both the Boy who had so suddenly took over his heart and his own hope of normalcy.
About 3:30 in the morning the fever mercifully broke. As if to get in one good final assault, the fever built up, turning Duo's face pallid and trying its best to drown him in its downpour of sweaty moisture. Then, with just as much force, the soaring temperatures let go with a shuddering release. Chills set in from the sudden drop in the feverish heat. Adding another blanket Heero took from the empty room across the hall did little to alleviate the raking chills.
Heero pulled Duo's shivering body against his chest, wrapping both blankets around his quivering limbs hoping his added body heat would help overcome the frigid currents coursing over Duo's slender frame. After about a half-an-hour, Duo's body regulated somewhat, at least the shivers were not a severely bone jarring. A healthier glow replace the ashen color and Duo's breathing settled into a more rhythmical pattern.
Heero eased his arm, that was now half asleep, from under Duo's back and carefully lowered him onto the bed. Smoothing the covers over his mostly naked form, Heero once again marveled at the pure, innocence the sleeping Boy displayed. If Heero hadn't known better he would never have guess in a thousand years Duo had come from the streets.
But he knew the city and all its vices and dangers had not always been Duo's cast in life. No, something told Heero, quite strongly, that the city's cruel circumstances had not ruled Duo's life forever. Not long enough to ruin the precious Boy's natural, inner beauty. That unspoiled, inborn, inherent goodness. Heero heart ached for the Boy and wondered what happened to place him in such dire conditions. He heart also ached for he own lost innocence that could never be reclaimed.
Now absolute exhaustion of mind and body overtook the last of Heero's fading energy. His shoulders slumped under the overwhelming weight. With great effort he stripped down to his underwear, tucked his gun under the nearest pillow and warily slipped under the rumpled covers beside the peacefully slumbering Boy.
Switching off the bedside lamp, the old boarding house's shabby room was bathed in darkness interrupted only by the streetlamp's steady glow through twisted blinds covering the dirty window. On the second floor only muted street noise drifted in from outside. Traffic and voices fading into the sound of Duo's quiet breathing.
Tuning on his side, Heero slid one hand under the pillow letting it rest lightly on the cold steel of the weapon that had become his only safeguard in life. The only thing he trusted. His other hand reached over until it, too, rested lightly on Duo's velvet arm. Giving up his last bit of self-control Heero closed his fingers about Duo's slim wrist, feeling the pulsing of his heartbeat through is skin.
Pushing away any remaining thoughts of assignments or duty or what he had lost in their domination of his life, Heero set his breathing in time with the beautiful Boy's breathing and drifted into a perfect state of nothingness.
*********
Heero shifted drowsily. Something had stirred him from his restive sleep. His blurry eyes blinked twice before they forced on Duo's serene face. The Boy laid on his side in a loose fetal curl, a hint of a smile showed on his rosy lips. They laid so close together Heero could feel the wisps of Duo's breathing on own his own cheeks. Pale colors of dawn painted the room with a pinkish hue.
Then Heero's entire body jumped as the noise that had initially roused him came again from outside the door. The knocking was loud and insistence. Heero hauled his pistol from under the pillow. Laying it on the bed, he quickly pulled on his pants then grabbed up the weapon.
He stood to one side, shoulder against the wall out of direct range, should the person pounding on the other side decide to shoot through the door. Curling his fingers about the pistol's butt, Heero took in a steadying breath. "Who is it." he called in answer to the continuous knocking.
"It's me." came the muffled reply through the wooden door's thickness. "Come on, Heero, let me in."
Heero relaxed, but only a little, at the sound of his contact's voice. He hadn't worked with the man long and, in his street-smart cautiousness, Heero was far from ready to trust completely his Organization assigned go-between.
The opened door revealed a tall man with coal black hair and equally deep ebony eyes. Chang Wufei stared at the relative stranger he had worked with for all of two months. "What took you so long?" the Chinese man growled out the question, "And stop waving that damn gun in my face." he declared harshly.
Heero lowed the pistol with a curt puff, "What do you want?" he asked tensely leaning on the rough doorframe. He head felt heavy, stuffed with cobwebs, from lack of sleep and stress and he really didn't want to carry on a lengthy conversation.
Chang frowned back mirroring Heero' cloudy countenance. "You are suppose to be gone by now." he announced, "If I hadn't checked with one of my street informants I would have not known you were still here." he stated trying to peer passed Heero's head to see into the room beyond. "Like I said, why are you still here?"
Catching a glimpse of a shadowy form in the bed, it didn't take much imagination to guess what had delayed Heero's leaving. Wufei leaned forward, "Let me in," he ordered, "I don't like standing out here in the open like this, too exposed." he confessed.
Heero couldn't very well protest Chang's wishes, not without arousing unwanted suspicion. He back away letting Wufei stroll inside. Chang paused a moment taking in the shabby room with its faded wallpaper and drab furnishings. "A lot different than last time." he commented remembering the classy, deluxe hotel that was his and Heero's last base of operations.
Heero mumbled something under his breath laying the pistol on a scratched table then spoke more clearly, "Don't worry I'm getting out of here soon." he proclaimed rubbing the nape of his neck where unaccustomed tension pulled the muscles taut.
"I guess that's the reason for your delay?" Chang asked the rhetorical question with a disapproving sneer in his voice. A head nod towards Duo accented his blatantly rude denouncement.
Heero easily donned his perfected mask of indifference not wanting to give Wufei the slightly hint the sleeping Boy meant anything to him. "Oh him." he indicated with a glance of his brooding eyes, "After the job went off without a hitch I figured, what the hell, I might as well enjoy myself. You know, a reward for a job well done." he paused reading the reaction in Wufei's eyes. Heero could always tell how someone was thinking by looking in their eyes.
"I was coming back here," he continued the lie, "and this Boy was hanging around the corner on 10th Street. I knew that's where a lot of the whores "strutted their stuff" so I asked the Boy if he was interested in a date." Heero grinned wickedly to add credence to the falsehood, "We came up here and you know. He was better than I expected and ended up spending the night. I had to pay out more than I had intended but he was well worth it."
Chang shook his head in agreement having had a few nights like that himself.
"You think that was a good idea? He knows what you look like now."
"No problem, I was far enough away from the target site for him not to know where I come from. With what I paid him he will be happy. Hell, I won't be anything be a good memory by this afternoon." Heero reasoned trying to steer Wufei's thoughts in another direction.
"Yeah, its morning now and the funs over." Chang declared putting his own memories of some other willing boy back on track.
"I guess between business being so good, the last assignment and the hurried travel schedule, I was more wiped out than I thought." Heero stated matter-of-factly. "But I going to put the Boy's ass back out on the street and get ready to leave." he promised confident Chang believed every word of his factitious account.
"Want me to wait?" the Chinese man grinned casting a longing look at the silken chestnut hair spreading sensually over a sweat stained pillow. Wufei, too, saw that the Boy was beautiful. A completely involuntary tightening of Chang's crotch and a throaty grunt reinforced his sudden realization.
Heero's trained eye picked up Chang's sexually coerced subtlety. A coy smile lifted the corners of Heero's mouth as he again read his fellow Agent's thoughts and his acutely clear body language.
"No." Heero finally replied removing the smile from his lips before Wufei noticed. "I would rather be alone when I wake him. Who knows, I just might be able to talk him into a free "quickie" if I ask really nice."
"And if he refuses?" Chang inquired grinning more than before.
Heero let the smile return knowing, this time, it would not be out of place, "You know me, if I want something badly enough I get it." he stated with certainty, "Besides I have other means of persuasion other than my irresistible charm." he declared nodding at the gun laying within easy reach.
Chang shook his head letting out a soft sigh, "You are something else."
"Yeah I am." Heero agreed allowing the self-pleased smile to grow wider.
Chang let his sight fall briefly over Duo's exquisite form once more and headed to the door. "Get out this morning, that's an order." he stated firmly, "Hide out in the Safe House until the heat cools down and then I'll be in touch with your next mission." he instructed stepping into the hall. "Damn you have good taste!"
"And good luck with your "quick relief"." Chang called over his shoulder as he reached the stairs.
Letting out a breath he didn't realized he was holding, Heero shut the door quickly throwing up a barrier between himself and the exiting Agent. A thousand thoughts all vied for his attention at once. "The next mission." the words bounced inside his mind bringing on more tightest in his neck and shoulders, creeping behind his eyes with a dull ache.
"Next mission, hell!" he hissed under his breath. "There's not going to be a next mission!" he stated with a forceful puff to chase away the gathering tension.
Focusing his wildly scattering thoughts into some semblance of order, Heero made his way to the bed. Sitting beside Duo, who had slept contently through the two Agent's entire exchange, Heero closed his surprisingly quivering hand over Maxwell's shoulder.
"Duo." he called increasing the pressure and adding a firm shake to help stir the Boy awake. "You have to wake up now." He insisted with an anxious edge to his voice.
The Boy shifted letting a long breath escape over his lips. Heero could see Duo's eyes moving under his still tightly closed eyelids. Maybe he was finishing up a dream Heero had so rudely disturbed. "Duo. Now!" Heero called louder to break through the sleepy stupor.
Slowly Duo's eyelids parted just enough to take in a narrowed view of Heero's troubled face. They closed once more not wanting to let in the intrusive light of morning. Another centered shake encouraged his slumber dulled senses to come around. "What?" Duo whispered with more than a strong hint of annoyance in his ragged speech.
Heero was persistence, "You have to wake up now." he repeated, "I have to go."
"Go where?" came the next, perfectly sensible, question.
"I have to get out of here and you have to go somewhere safe."
"Safe" Duo repeated what he thought was Heero's odd choice of words.
Heero took Duo by the arm sitting him up against the bed's headboard. He hope he could get through Maxwell's obviously groggery mind, make him understand the dangers of their situation.
"A man was here a few minutes ago." Heero began, "He is my contact for my assignments. He told me to hide out for a few days and then I would get my next mission. But I don't want anymore missions." Heero blurted out the statement before he realized the words had left his mouth. "No more damned missions!" he exclaimed curling his fists into rage tighten balls.
Duo took a moment to digest what was Heero was saying. To try to comprehend the full meaning of his words and anger driven actions.
"You want out." Duo stated suddenly seeming older and much wiser than his youthful years.
All Heero could do was swallow hard to wash down the dry lump clogging his throat and nod his head heavily.
"When that is what we will do!" Duo proclaimed without even so much as a reconsidering pause.
Heero's head snapped up, his eyes glared at the Boy's wide-eyed innocence as he gazed back at the cold-hearted Assassin sitting before him.
Suddenly Heero grabbed Duo arm with such force Duo cried out in surprise and pain. "Heero! Stop!" he yelled at the unexpected attack.
Heero neither loosened his powerful grip or redirected his acidic glare. "WE!" he hissed loudly, "Where in the hell do you get "we"? Damn it, Boy, you don't understand!"
Duo's sight softened. His violet eyes quietly studied the troubled, anguished face staring back. He knew the danger. He had learned, all too well, the hard, painful lessons the street had taught him. Knew how unfair life could be. How, unforgiving and cruel, the fates often dealt with man's mortal soul.
Duo also knew, firsthand, the terrible pangs of separation and loss. Danger was not a newly born infant, but a tough and mature child of the street. And, unfortunately, death was also no strange to Duo Maxwell either.
"Yes, I understand." came Duo's placid reply, "I understand all to well."
Heero's body sagged exhausted from its never ending fight to control his feelings and keep up his stoic facade.
"No you don't, nobody does." he whispered lowly as a slight shiver drew up his slumping shoulders.
With quiet reassurance, Duo leaned forward wrapping his arms about Heero's trembling frame. Heero's first reaction, the conditioned, reflexive response of his disciplined training, was to pull away.
TBC...
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