Smells Like Teen Spirit
by Link Worshiper

(x) X (x)

Game 48
Golden Slumbers

(x) X (x)

“Once there was a way
To get back home....”

Duo wasn’t quite sure why the dreams were coming back to him like this, but there they were. Lately, he’d been dreaming almost regularly of his childhood, although his dreams felt more like memories of his times growing up on the streets and in the Maxwell Church before it burned. There had been little to tie the dreams together besides that, other than the fact that all of them seemed to recount times Duo had spent with his best childhood friend, the silent boy named Wing.

Like tonight, for instance, his mind’s eye watched as Wing comforted his young self just after he’d been returned to the orphanage for the fourth time. Nestled together in their choir loft hideout, little Duo was curled in a nest of blankets beside the young, dark-haired boy, who sat beside him on a large pillow, rubbing circles on Duo’s back and singing an old lullaby-like tune.

“Once there was a way
To get back home!
Sleep pretty darling;
Do not cry.
And I will sing a lullaby.”

It was a warm, pleasant dream, much kinder than some of the other, more nightmarish ones that Duo had experienced in the past. Even in his sleep, he found himself wondering if these comforting dreams had anything to do with sharing a bed with Heero almost constantly.

Ironically, no sooner had he thought these things, when a loud, creaking sound, like a foot on an old floorboard, echoed throughout his dream, drowning out Wing’s gravelly voice entirely. Moments later, the sound resonated again, and Duo found his eyes snapping open, blinded by white shadows as he throttled bolt upright in bed. A thin sheet that hung over Duo’s knees and was draped over Heero, who still lay slumbering on his stomach beside Duo, was the only material that separated their warm bodies from the cool air circulating through Heero’s bedroom. Still, Duo felt a little too hot, and, not quite knowing why he had this sudden feeling of foreboding, he flung the sheet aside, the cloth billowing down and puffing gently over Heero’s back.

Looking around, Duo let his eyes adjust to the darkness, something that he was able to do quickly thanks to his rough-and-tumble childhood. He was unable to detect anything out of the ordinary about the room: the door was still closed, one of the windows was still open a crack, and all the shadows seemed to be in the right places. Just when he was about to call himself paranoid, roll over and spoon back up against Heero, he heard that creaking noise again, and he put himself back on alert. “Heero, did you hear that?” he asked, though he made no move to try and nudge his lover awake.

Apparently the sound of Duo’s fearful voice was enough to stir Heero awake anyway. The Japanese lacrosse player made a low, waking groan in the back of his throat, and tiredly rolled over onto his side, looking up at Duo in the gloomy dark. His midnight blue eyes seemed to shine like twin moons. “Hear what, Duo?”

“That groaning noise,” answered Duo as he nervously flipped his braid over one shoulder. “Like someone’s creeping around downstairs.” Spending as much of his life as he had in a gang, Duo’s street senses were far above those of the average person, and his hair-trigger reactions to even the slightest sounds had yet to dull even after so much time.

“It’s probably just Catherine or someone,” murmured Heero, his voice muffled slightly by the pillow he was using. Heero was acting awfully laid-back about the situation, tired or not. “Go back to sleep, Duo.”

“Well, I want to look anyway,” Duo decided resolutely. “Where’d you toss my pants?”

Face crushed into his pillow once more, Heero made a lazy, waving motion with one hand, and before Duo knew it, the torn jeans he had been wearing before they’d fallen in bed together came flying up from the shadowy floor and landed in his lap.

As Duo started to pull his pants on, he found his gaze wandering to Heero’s slim, muscled back again, eyes trained on the angel wings tattooed over the scars above his hips, and the sheet tossed lazily over his lower body. “You’re really worried about your brother, ain’t’cha?” Duo concluded after a few quiet moments of watching his tired lover snooze. Heero had been very fatigued over the past week, and this added development regarding Trowa certainly was no help to the Japanese boy’s state of being.

One blue eye peeked back up at Duo, blinking owlishly in the moonlight. “Is it really that plain?”

“If you’re looking for it,” Duo answered with a shrug as he buttoned the top of his fly. Finished with fastening his pants closed, he turned his gaze back on Heero, adding, “But then again, maybe it’s only obvious to me.”

Heero huffed out another long sigh and flipped back over onto his back, splaying his arms out on either side of him, one of his hands falling on top of Duo’s thighs. “Sometimes I wonder to myself if I think too much, if I’m too worried over trite things. But I’ve always been used to doing things by myself, taking the whole weight of the world on my shoulders and never complaining aloud once... so....” Heero hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure how to continue his train of thought, or even where he was going with it. “Am I too melancholy?”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with a little thinking or a little melancholiness, ‘Ro,” said Duo in a rather cheerful voice, considering the topic, patting the open palm of Heero’s hand as he spoke. The again, that oddly placed cheer was part of Duo’s charm and the character that made Duo so undeniably Duo. But then a sheet of of graveness fell over Duo’s face as he pressed his hand hard against Heero’s, sandwiching it between Duo’s own palm and his thigh. “That was my problem, once upon a time, you know. Never thought about anything once I had it in my head, and when anyone would try to call me on it, I’d be off looking for an interruption, so I wouldn’t have to.”

“Did you ever think about it the other way? That thinking might just serve to prove something you already knew? To make your beliefs stronger?” Heero’s eyes were lost somewhere upon the ceiling overhead, its white expanse painted a light, silvery-blue in the nighttime. His profile was perfectly silhouetted with that same moonlit colour, which almost seemed to make him glow like a ghostly angel. “I think it’s good to be so sound in a belief, that no matter what angle you look at it, you always come back to the same place.”

“Is that why you’re always so sure of yourself?” Duo blurted, his mouth once again proving to be faster than his head. “Because you’re always thinking? How do you handle it all?”

“I don’t,” Heero answered with a small grunt. “I told you, I always find myself taking everything on my own, and after a while, I was easily crushed by it all. I think about everyone but me, and I get lost....” At this, Heero turned his eyes from the ceiling back to Duo, and Duo found himself being overwhelmed by the saddened, desperate look he found crystalized in them.

“That’s silly, Heero,” said Duo, still crushing down on the other boy’s hand. “You’re the type who sees what he wants and then reaches out to get it, no matter what. You know where you’re going, how to get there... everything! You’ve got so much more control than someone like me....”

Unexpectedly, Heero sat up, his hand flying from Duo’s grasp as he did so. He himself to face Duo, the sheets rolling off his legs as he repositioned himself. “Duo, how could you say something like that!?” Heero wondered, his voice surging with an ardor that seemed to have sprung from hardly anything at all. “You, more than anyone I’ve ever met, has had that direction and that resolution you were talking about! Just because you were wrong once doesn’t mean that everything else you do is wrong too! Don’t lose that fire, Duo, that passion of yours, because that is what gives you such life!”

They lingered in silence for a few moments, quietly eyeing the other, as if each was trying to figure out whose insecurities were more founded, forgetting the noise Duo had heard for just a moment. Duo had never thought that Heero has such a complex inside, yet another facet to the Japanese youth that layered his character and scraped away at more of the grime that hid his humanity. It was only after these things and a recap of what had just been said passed through Duo’s head that he realized how truly similar he and Heero were; for while each had a distinct personality, they also were both trying to hide the same things, both beaten and bruised by the same rusted, angry world. And when this finally dawned on Duo, he found himself breaking the dark quiet with a sunny smile and a question. “So then, Heero, do you sleep, or do you dream?”

Heero blinked twice in confusion, a little muddled after their brooding silence. “What?”

“Well, I don’t sleep; I dream,” Duo said, that warm smile still brightening the room. “What about you?”

“Are you looking to dig my dreams?” wondered Heero, who still seemed a little unsure about this sudden turn in conversation. “If that’s so, then I can guarantee you won’t have to dig too deep, but you should be prepared for anything.”

“So you do dream,” grinned Duo triumphantly. He started to stand up, ready to proceed with his initial task of going to see what was making all that noise. Staring out the nearby window, Heero’s reflection softly etched in the glass, Duo added softly, “I always knew you were a dreamer.”

“I know,” murmured Heero almost as quietly as he watched Duo’s back, which was splattered with black and silver blotches of shadow and moonlight. The simple phrase answered for so much more than just that one statement Duo had just made. “They can be scary, sometimes, but I... I think I’m glad I dream.”

Turning around once more, Duo said, “You’ve been so sad, it makes me worry, Heero. Why not smile a little more?”

“If you’ll not be afraid to shed a tear now and then,” Heero countered easily, still sitting on the bed, clothed only by starlight. In the contrasting black and silver, Duo thought he could almost make out a pair of real angel wings rising from Heero’s back in the patches of light that shone through the window.

As he slowly made his way around the bed towards the door, hands on his hips, he commented, “It’s scary the way we fit, man.” As he neared the bedroom door, his hand already reaching out for the brass handle, he went on, “It’s like I’ve known you all my life.”

Heero refrained from saying anything as he watched Duo pull the wooden door open. He had never known anyone as well as Duo, nor had he known anyone who understood him as well as Duo in turn, and somehow, he doubted he ever would. When he was with Duo, he felt like he was whole again, that half of him he’d lost somewhere along the way, the half that still held a little piece of him.

He absently found himself nodding as Duo asked him if he would like a hot drink since he was going downstairs anyway. But it wasn’t until Duo had closed the door on his way out that Heero actually opened his mouth and said anything else; “I’ll settle for a cup of coffee, but you know what I really need.”

(x) X (x)

There had been a point in Duo’s life where he found the Barton house to be one of the creepiest residences he had ever set foot in. The townhouse was rather old, a colonial sort of building that seemed rather out of place in a Californian beach town, its creaking, wooden floors uneven, and its corners dark and shadowy. Even in broad daylight, the house seemed to hold the strangest shadows. Despite that, Duo had found that the more time he spent in this house, the more comfortable and homey it felt, sometimes even more so than his own loft, and could understand why the Bartons had never had any inclination to move. Duo wondered for a moment if Heero had experienced a similar feeling of belonging the first time he’d ever set foot inside.

The groaning creak that had awoken Duo in the first place drew the long-haired mechanic from his thoughts as he quietly descended the stairs in his misty form. Duo deduced that the noise had come from somewhere near the back of the house, and he soon found himself solidifying just outside the door to the family room at the bottom of the stairs. Peeking around the door frame, Duo quickly surveyed the room to see if anything was out of place, his eyes sweeping from the piano at one end of the room, to the sofa by the fireplace at the other.

Shit, someone is in here, he thought, noticing that one of windows by the fireplace was wide open, the night breeze gently rustling the curtains hanging around it. Whoever’s there probably went through the other door into the foyer, Duo concluded after deciding that the intruder wasn’t in the family room anymore. Fuck, that means he could be behind me!

Instinctively, Duo whirled around, his braid smacking loudly against the wall, much to his embarrassment and worry. What if the intruder had heard that? Having lived as long as he had on wiles alone, Duo was not one to underestimate the danger even the slightest sounds could be in delicate situations such as these, especially when one was not completely sure what kind of adversary he was up against.

Then, there was a loud clatter and the sound of rushing water, like someone had dropped a pot or something onto the tiled floor of the kitchen. Without a second thought, Duo let his body seep into its misty form and darted forward, past the stairs and the grandfather clock, and straight into the kitchen ahead of him. Sure enough, standing in front of the sink was a tall, shadowy figure, who was surprisingly washing his hands under the running faucet; at the figure’s feet was a dropped tea kettle. Dizzily wheeling around the island in a cloud of particles, he zoomed downwards, returning to his natural form in the middle of a forward roll. “Hands up, fucker!” Duo shouted as he leapt to his feet, one hand grabbing the intruder’s shirt, while the other pulled back, ready to lash out a rough punch.

“Whoa, Duo?” said a familiar voice as the figure put up his hands.

Squinting his eyes, Duo let the adrenaline seep out of his body and looked harder at the person he was currently holding. Moonlight poured in through the window over the sink, illuminating a gaunt face that was hidden by a sweep of amber-brown bangs and a shimmering, green eye. “Tro?” Duo gasped, his fingers loosening their grip on the taller youth’s button-up shirt. “Trowa! It is you!” Duo exclaimed, flinging his arms around the startled goalie’s shoulders when certainty dawned on him.

“You were expecting maybe someone else?” he asked good-naturedly when Duo finally released him.

“Fuck yeah. I was expecting a ten-foot White Fang thug to be standing in here with barbed-wire baseball bat, that’s what I was expecting,” Duo said with a small shrug of his shoulders. “But fuck, it’s not! It’s you, and that’s happy!” he said with a smile. “Heero will be really glad to know you’re not dead or something.”

“The punk is happy to see the jock? Did I miss something?” Trowa grinned maliciously as he leaned against the counter and turned off the faucet, which had still been running. “Or perhaps Heero’s been working some kind of magic on you since I’ve been away.” He paused for a moment, smiling a certain, private smile to himself, and then suddenly turned back on Duo, springing an unexpected question; “Just what are you doing here anyway?”

Duo’s cheeks caught fire, but lucky for him, they only appeared to be a pale, rosy pink in the cold moonlight, saving him from what could have been a particularly sticky bout of humour at his expense. (Trowa may have seemed like the most laid-back person on the planet to the casual observer, but people who knew him well also knew that he had a wicked sense of humour and was not afraid to wield it with no uncertain amount of skill.)

“Uh huh, well, I figured as much,” Trowa brushed it off with a shake of his head, his long bangs swishing back and forth as he did so.

Suddenly, the room was bathed in bright yellow as the overhead lights were flicked on. Both Trowa and Duo spun around towards the door by the stairs to see a confused and tired-looking Heero standing there in a pair of loose-fitting, black pajama pants, rubbing his eyes. “Trowa?” he wondered with a yawn. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Uhm, Heero, I live here,” Trowa pointed out easily, blinking at his brother.

Meanwhile, Duo found himself staring at Trowa’s clothes, the uniform of the town’s police force. Reaching out to poke the patch sewn on the sleeve of Trowa’s light blue shirt, Duo asked, “Trowa, what the hell is with the copper getup?”

“Hm? Oh, this,” Trowa said nonchalantly as he pulled at the tails of his untucked shirt, glancing down at it casually as he spoke. “Nothing much. Just a little something I’ve been busy with for the past week or so.”

“I’m not even gonna ask how that happened,” Duo decided as he quickly retracted his hand from the shirt as if it might have stung his fingertips. “You know, I almost don’t even want to.”

“That’s a lie and you know it,” said Heero flatly. He had walked into the room after dimming the lights a little so they weren’t so bright and glaring. Now he sat across from Duo, hoisted up on the island and swinging his legs in a most child-like fashion, something which Duo found strangely endearing. There was something attractive about the way Heero’s slim feet poked out from beneath the long, loose pajama pants that were clearly a bit too big for him, flexing and pointing them with every twitch of his legs.

“Oh, okay, fine! You called me on it,” Duo huffed. Begrudgingly, he asked Trowa, “Okay, friend, where have you been for the past week, and why did you break into your own house?”

“First off,” Trowa began, “I didn’t break in. I came in civilly, through the back door like any self-respecting person who lives somewhere would.” Once he had gotten that out, he slowed his speech and looked away from Heero and Duo, his eyes tracking something on the other side of the room, near the door. “As for where I’ve been, well, I’m sure you’ve gathered by now that I’ve been hanging out at the police station. For what reasons, I’m also sure you can easily guess.”

Like the light that had just flooded the kitchen when Heero had walked in, so understanding began to flood into Duo’s head. However, it was actually Heero who beat Duo to the punch; “Quatre,” he said simply, which earned him a nod from his brother, confirming the statement.

“Yeah, but Tro, how did you manage to pull this off?” Duo wondered, obviously somewhere between flabbergasted and awed. “I mean, it’s not like you wake up one day, say to yourself, ‘Well, boy howdy, I’d like to be a cop,’ wander into the station and walk back out with a job and a nice uniform. The world just ain’t that easy, man!”

Trowa laughed, his voice a rich baritone that rolled easily through the quiet air. It was a nice thing to hear a normally quiet person like Trowa do, but for some reason, it didn’t quite feel the same to Duo as when he heard Heero laugh. Duo supposed that if he were, perhaps, Quatre, then he might have felt differently.

“Of course it’s not that easy! If the world were that easy, then Quatre would be here with us right now, wouldn’t he?” said Trowa as his laughter subsided to mere chuckles. Sobering, he became serious again. “No, I had my great-uncle pull some strings here and there. He’s good with things like that.”

Duo cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “Just what kind of man is this S guy anyway?”

Trowa shook his head, a tiny grin quirking his small mouth. “A surprisingly clever one,” he said.

“This I gotta see. Kid says, ‘Make me a cop,’ and poof! He’s a cop. Crazy,” Duo muttered under his breath, not really intending for anyone to hear the comment.

“If you’re that curious to meet him, I can introduce you one day. I rather think you’d get along with him and his colleagues,” said Trowa, who had obviously heard Duo’s low grouse. Even Heero, who didn’t have the same super-sensitive hearing Trowa did, had been able to catch Duo’s unconscious grumbling.

“I should be interested to meet him too,” Heero spoke up, catching both Trowa’s and Duo’s attention. “I hear you speak about this S so much, like he’s your mentor, and still, I have yet to meet him in the flesh.”

“We all have our secrets,” Trowa said cryptically, eyeing Heero with a particularly strange look in his eyes.

“So it would seem,” Heero bit out a little rougher than he meant to. His eyes glinted sharply, like he was fighting to swallow some other comment.

Violet eyes darting back and forth between the two brothers, Duo detected a bit of sibling animosity brewing. In a rather surprising display of tact, Duo quickly changed the subject. “So, Tro, what are you doing here at this ungodly hour anyway?”

“Well,” Trowa started, as he stooped down to pick up the tea kettle that was still lying on the floor by his feet, “Quatre was starting to get a little despondent, and I know how much he loves his tea, so I figured I’d surprise him with a pot to go with breakfast.” Setting the tea kettle in the sink, Trowa turned the faucet on again and tested, ran his fingers under the water for a few seconds, and then proceeded to fill the kettle. As he set the kettle on the stove and turned on the gas flame beneath it, Trowa went on, “They don’t have very good teas at the station--just plain English tea and stale coffee--so I figured I’d just come back here and make it. Besides,” he said, lifting the lid off of a jar that sat by the stove and pulling out a tea bag, “Quatre likes this jasmine tea best.”

Duo rolled his eyes and shot a knowing glance at Heero, who was smiling. “Well, ain’t that just adorable,” Duo drawled at Trowa as the tall goalie went digging through one of the cupboards for a thermos. Still speaking to Trowa’s back, Duo’s voice dropped into a more serious tone; “But really, Tro, I can see why you’re doing this, but what’s it going to accomplish? There’s very little any of us can feasibly do for Quatre.”

Trowa stopped moving for a moment as he took the time to answer. “We still have to try.”

“Yeah, but try what?” countered Duo.

“Something. Anything,” was Trowa’s calm reply. The sounds of rustling Tupperware filled the kitchen again as Trowa resumed his hunt for a thermos. Meanwhile, on the stove, the kettle was starting to steam and hum a little.

“He’s right,” Heero commented, sliding off of the counter and striding over to the stove as the kettle started to whistle louder. He turned off the gas and pulled out a tea bag from the jar beside the stove. “The greatest mistake a man can make is to do nothing,” he said as he ripped the little packet open and dropped the tea bag into the thermos Trowa had just produced from the cabinet. The steaming water gurgled from the tea kettle’s spout as Heero then poured it into the thermos, filling the silence that had fallen between the three of them. It wasn’t until Heero was replacing the empty kettle on the burner that he spoke again. “What is it like, then? For Quatre, that is.”

Trowa merely shrugged as he stared down at the steeping tea in front of him, one long hand curled around the thermos to feel its burning warmth. “He’s in a holding cell, just waiting to hear what will happen next. I think it’s that waiting that’s eating him alive.”

“Is he lonely?” was Heero’s next question, words that were stolen right out of Duo’s half-open mouth.

A smile that was somewhere between nostalgic and sweetly reminiscent pulled at Trowa’s lips. “Well, before I infiltrated the station, he’s had another cellmate for company. Just a funny old man in for some petty crimes, is all. But yeah,” Trowa said, his voice growing softer as he neared the end of his sentence, “I suppose he is a little lonely.”

“I see,” said Heero.

Duo moved over to the stove as well, standing beside Heero and examining their warbled, upside-down reflection in the metallic tea kettle. He could also just make out Trowa’s image on the convex surface as he pressed the black lid onto the thermos. Then his eyes dropped down to the stove, noting Heero’s nearest hand, which was laying gingerly on the edge of the appliance. Wordlessly, he reached up to cover the solitary appendage with his own, finding comfort in the way Heero’s boney knuckles pressed against his palm.

“Loneliness is the worst thing in the world,” Duo commented quietly as he gently stroked the side of Heero’s hand with his thumb. “To be forgotten is worse than death, I think.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Heero bow his head slightly, as if contemplating something sadly his lips silently mouthing some word of agreement. Trowa was also nodding his head slowly, as if the very idea of being without Quatre was just too much for him to handle.

Not wanting this moody discourse to continue as it was, Duo did what he did best: he smiled. With a laugh and a grin, he squeezed Heero’s hand tightly and said, “Well, lucky for Q, we haven’t forgotten him! And we never will, right?”

“Of course not!” snorted Trowa indignantly, in a rare display of offense.

Suddenly, Duo banged the hand that wasn’t clasped around Heero’s against the edge of the stove, eliciting a loud clang. “Say, I know!” he said, his grin widening. He leaned forward a bit so he could see around Heero and grab Trowa’s attention, “Let us come with ya to see Q! It’ll be a party!”

Trowa spent a few moments quietly pondering this to himself, and when he came to a decision, he barely had time to nod his head before Duo let out a happy whoop of joy.

The long-haired boy bounced a little, lifting his arms and flinging them around a somewhat shell-shocked Heero. “Heero, ain’t it exciting!? We’re gonna see Q!”

A slow smile spread across Heero’s face as Duo buried his nose into the crook of his neck. “Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “It really is.”

(x) X (x)

a.n.: So if you haven’t noticed, SLTS will no longer be on stupid ff.net. Guess it’s okay, because then you come here! Sorry that I’ve been lazy with this, but the drive to write has been a little dull lately. The insert song is Golden Slumbers, which is a Beatles tune. (Fades into Carry that Weight, which, incidentally, is the last line of Cowboy Bebop.)