(no subject)
Title: Lovely
Author: Dreaming of Everything, dreams_of_all
Series: Gundam Wing
Characters/Pairings: Duo, Heero, Wufei, Quatre, Trowa, Duo/Heero
Rating/Warnings: T for various things, not really pushing the rating. Slash.
Summary: A retelling of Beauty and the Beast. When someone stumbles into an enchantment hidden deep within a forest, he trades his life for the lives of one of his slaves... 1x2 shounen-ai.
Author's Notes: My eternal thanks to Lady_Friselle for being fantastic beyond words. (She betaed, for the record.)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
FFnet link
“Because we, in our foreseeings, our having been right
Are repulsive to ourselves, fat and immobile, like toads.
Not toads in the garden, who after all are what they are,
But toads in the tale of death in the desert of sludge.”
--Cassandra, Iraq by C. K. Williams
oOoOoOo
Time passed slowly on a day-to-day basis in the haunted castle, minutes seeming like hours and hours seeming like days, but at same time the days slipped by with unnerving speed. Two weeks took forever and, at the same time, slipped by like quicksand.
Duo, according to Wufei, made the time pass considerably more slowly than it would otherwise.
Days for Duo, Quatre and Trowa were spent poking around the castle, sometimes in the company of Wufei, and playing on its grounds; Quatre generally took some time out of the afternoon to teach Duo how to read. He proved good at it, earning a measure of grudging respect from Wufei, to nearly everyone’s surprise. The library and the lessons provided another distraction from the incredible boredom of life in the castle.
Duo ate dinner with Heero each night, which translated to Duo chattering at Heero (or the wall; they were about equally responsive) when he wasn’t eating; when his mouth was full, there was heavy, pointed silence. On occasion Heero would offer a muffled snort or acidic comment. Heavy silence was the general rule in the second dining hall, where Quatre, Trowa and Wufei ate, despite Quatre’s attempts at conversation.
Perhaps most noticeably-it was startling how quickly life, even in a cursed castle, fell into monotony-Quatre and Trowa hadn’t met Heero yet, despite the length of time they had been his ‘guests.’ They had heard reports of Duo’s dinners with him (and many, many complaints about his silence and, when that was broken, general lack of decency and people skills) but had yet to even so much as catch a glimpse of him.
Duo’s first dinner with Heero had been the most successful; it was the only evening they had had anything approaching a civil conversation, that being the one about the plague. Duo had put up with Heero’s prickly barriers for a while but had quickly gotten tired of making up excuses for him and started giving as good as he got-most evenings ended in at least one set of bruised tempers and feelings.
Duo had slowly grown less edgy in Heero’s presence, though it didn’t show; he had taken care about that from the first. He had grown more comfortable just when it came to being around him-slowly, his natural exuberance was replacing the one he had manufactured as a custom-made mask for the situation-and more comfortable when Heero asked for his hand in marriage each evening, and he refused, as he began realizing that Heero really didn’t react.
It was at the two week mark exactly when Duo finally lost his temper. He had had exactly 14 dinners with Lord Yuy, just the two of them, and he had yet to hear a nice word out of him. Hell, he had yet to get a non-critical remark in response to anything he said. Some evenings he was lucky with a response at all. And neutrality really wasn’t all that much to ask for when he was the one who had gotten dragged into this curse thing in an attempt to free Heero from it.
And he certainly wasn’t the one who had been cursed to spend eternity here. He just had a handful of months, maximum, before he was released, and he certainly wasn’t going to spend it encouraging the most inhuman person he had ever met, regardless of physical appearance. Looking like an out-and-out monster was one thing, but he didn’t have to put up with someone who insulted him at every half-chance.
Admittedly, Wufei wasn’t much better-maybe Heero’s physical appearance bothered him more than he had thought, or at least admitted to.
But that wasn’t fair. Wufei was as uptight as Heero, but he had moments of decency, and he was fair. He had at least given Duo a chance, eventually. Heero’s clearly-shown hatred hadn’t wavered since Duo had shaken him slightly with his introduction, despite Duo’s best efforts to at least reproduce the experience. It helped that he spent more time around the bunch of them than just the required dinner.
So Duo was frustrated. He wasn’t asking for friendship, or even tolerance, just a touch of decency now and then. A response. Or at least a release. For all the good the dinners were doing he might as well have eaten them with a brick wall. An imposing, admittedly scary brick wall, but still a wall. Actually, the wall would have been better company.
Duo wasn’t above switching tactics…
oOo
Heero walked into the dining room and was surprised to notice that it was empty. Duo had, in the past, been slightly early or exactly on time; Heero had always made it a point to be slightly late, arriving after Duo had.
But something had changed. He reviewed what Duo had done that day, what had happened at the dinner they had had the evening before; there was nothing out of the ordinary about either event, nothing to warrant the sudden change to the previous patterns. It was…Strange for a habit to be so suddenly broken. Duo had even left to get ready for dinner at the same time as he normally did…
A few minutes after he had settled himself into his customary chair the door banged open and Duo entered, dressed much more informally than he had on previous evenings; he had ignored formal clothes altogether, wearing what he had worn that day, simple black pants and a rough, non-descript shirt.
Duo simply nodded to Heero, not even leaving enough time for a response before switching his attention, foregoing his typical greeting, which was loud, involved and informal. He swung himself into his chair and served himself, still silent, with a perfectly formed façade that said that this was perfectly normal, exactly as things always happened.
In the beginning, actually, minus the aberrations of his arrival and appearance, it was much as it always was: dead silent while Duo ate and Heero watched. Eventually he would slow down on stuffing his face and begin bombarding Heero with a near-unintelligible barrage of questions, comments and observations.
But he didn’t. He kept on eating and, because he wasn’t pausing to talk, finished much faster than he had previous evenings. The silence was much heavier, to the point where it was nearly painful it was so in-your-face obvious, even by Heero’s standards.
“’Night,” he said shortly to Heero the instant he finished, standing to leave without any further comments, pausing slightly to give Heero the time he needed to ask his question.
“Will you marry me?” The lord managed to grind out.
“No,” said Duo sharply, not adding any excess onto his answer as he had the other evenings, as he had gotten more comfortable around Heero.
He left the room quickly, stride quick, purposeful and lacking his usual bounce. There was nothing in his body language that would indicate acceptance or tolerance for anything more from Heero.
Idly, Duo wondered how many days of the same treatment it would take before Heero either changed his behavior or confronted him about his own changes.
He smiled grimly to himself. Duo didn’t give him long.
oOo
Heero was truly startled.
Within the space of a day-or even less-Duo had completely shattered everything he had expected of him. He had just reached the point where maybe some of Duo’s chatter wasn’t all that bad, all things considering, and it had changed. He had shut down, closed in; clearly something he didn’t come by naturally; it was about as far as you could get from his natural inclinations, as far as he knew.
And, as Duo had just proved so spectacularly, he clearly didn’t know him as well as he thought he had.
He certainly didn’t act that way around the castle’s other inhabitants; Heero knew, because he had taken to watching them interact during the day, with nothing else to do. They were all, even Wufei, treated the way he had been, with slight variation, up until this evening.
Why was he the one person who had been singled out? Logic said that it was a direct result of being held captive, expected to fall in love with Heero. With a monster.
But it had taken him two weeks of treating him exactly as he had treated all the others-the human ones, the ones unconnected to the curse, or at least not responsible. That… made no sense.
Heero had thought that he had begun to understand the loud brown-haired boy and how he worked.
Clearly, he had made an unforeseen mistake. This warranted further investigation…
It had been a long time since he had been wrong about somebody.
It had been five hundred years…
oOo
“How was your day?” asked Wufei formally as he came up beside Heero, falling into step with the larger man. He could tell he was irritated-he was walking faster than was normal for him, the movements more tightly controlled, jerkier.
“I don’t understand.” That was a major concession for Heero to make. “He’s just…Stopped. He’s not talking unless it’s necessary. Not… looking at me. Interacting at all, unless it’s unavoidable. He didn’t talk all through the meal…”
Wufei raised an eyebrow, already planning on how to make Maxwell’s future as unpleasant as possible while leaving him somewhat unharmed.
Heero’s better-than-human eyes picked up the gesture even in the half-lit gloom of the darkened hallways. Wufei couldn’t see more than where the walls ended and the hallway began, and the outline of Heero’s hulking shape against the windows.
He had gotten used to these late-night walks over the years.
“And he hasn’t changed his actions around anyone else. Other than this event, his behavior has been consistent, and continues to be so. It’s opposite of his natural personality… It’s inexplicable.”
Interesting, thought Wufei, that it had taken him two weeks to start this. What had happened, to cause such a sudden change?
He had the feeling that nobody but Duo knew the answer to that.
Well, then, it sounded like he needed to have a conversation with the ex-slave.
oOo
The sun was barely clearing the horizon when Duo was roused from his sleep by an angry Wufei pounding on his door and shouting.
Neither person was particularly happy at the moment.
“What do you want?” bellowed Duo through the door.
“We need to talk, Maxwell. If you are lucky, you will not be bleeding by the end of the conversation.”
“And what does this have to do with getting me out of bed at quarter-to-fuckit-early in the morning?”
There was a -thump- from the next room over before a door opened and Trowa stuck a disgruntled head through it.
“You have neighbors. Shut up.”
“God, even Trowa’s still asleep!”
“Quiet, Maxwell.”
oOo
Five minutes later, a scowling Duo presented himself outside his door.
“The fuck is this about?”
Wufei merely glared and motioned at a door; Duo vaguely recognized it as the one that led to the castle grounds. Sighing loudly, recognizing that he wasn’t going to get any more out of the scowling lord unless he followed his orders; he headed off down the hallway, Wufei following closely at his heels.
“So, sunshine, what’s this all about?” Duo spat out.
“Last night. Explain.”
“Well, I ate dinner with his Lordship Grumpypants I’m-gonna-kill-you Yuy. Or at least, I ate dinner and he glared at me, ‘cause he makes a point of not eating and he’s a big fan of that whole ‘glaring’ thing. And then I talked with Trowa and Quatre for a while and went to bed. Hell, I didn’t even see you last night. What has you all up-in-arms?” Duo continued as they walked across a sweep of the palace’s lawn, the grass stiff with frost.
“Oh, is that all, Maxwell?” sneered Wufei. “Heero seems to think differently. Explain. Now.”
“Ohhhhh, that. He noticed? And here I was, thinking he didn’t even bother enough to listen to what I say. Or, at the very least, he was hoping that I was going to eventually 'shut my useless mouth before it got me killed'-and I’m quoting here!-because in that case I think he’d count it as a plus.”
Wufei sighed, deflated slightly. Maxwell-Duo-had a point. He had never seen the two of them interact, but it was definitely something Heero would say. To Duo in particular. He had known these two would be a bad combination…
Still. He had known Heero for fully 500 years longer than he had known Duo-and the former was a lot less annoying than the latter.
His eyes narrowed into a vicious glare. “Please keep in mind the actions your ideas cause on others. It would be a good thing to keep in mind. Not everyone will react well to you. Not everyone is what they seem right from the first. Not everyone is as obvious as you. Try what you pulled again and I will be sure that you will remember this very, very well.”
Duo’s eyes widened momentarily, then narrowed before returning to normal. Lop-sided grin on his face, he replied with a flippant note in his voice. “I’ll be sure to keep it in mind, certainly.”
“You do that.”
oOo
After ensuring that Maxwell had returned to his room and, presumably, his own bed, Wufei headed off to find Heero.
He found Heero lurking around the corridors of the Eastern Wing, trying to look like he wasn’t doing what he was doing, which was brooding.
He nodded slightly at Wufei in recognition.
“I’ve talked to Maxwell.”
Heero didn’t react, except to look sharply in Wufei’s direction.
A few moments passed quietly.
“Early. And why?” The question was slightly emphasized-Wufei had no doubt trespassed onto what amounted to the unstable ground of Heero’s mind. He wouldn’t like the idea of Wufei “protecting” him-not that Wufei had done it for the reasons Heero thought he did-and Wufei was starting to get the impression that there was more going on for him than what was immediately obvious when it came to Duo Maxwell. That made sense. Maxwell could be incredibly pervasive, worming his way around any barriers, physical or emotional. And he was annoying-phenomenally so.
He knew that that must be hard for Heero, to have to deal with someone with that sort of personality after so many years of near-solitude. And Duo didn’t know that, and had reacted naturally enough, if highly inadvisably.
“I wanted to know what had changed.”
“It’s none of your business,” said Heero, voice taught, the strain in his tone nearly tangible, and Wufei looked at him in quickly recovering surprise.
“Yes, it is,” said Wufei easily. Not the most diplomatic response, but it was true, and maybe rising to the slight hint of challenge Heero had given would help things along.
This was not going to be an easy discussion either way.
“And what makes you think that?”
“I am as much involved with this curse as you are and-and- Damn it, Yuy, I worry about you and how people react to you and how you look at yourself and how you react with that hyper, over-bearing idiot of a being the curse has picked out for you.”
There was a weighty silence, the two of them frozen with a combination of their natural reserve and a righteous indignation. Dust motes swirled lazily in the golden patch of rising sunlight that was pouring through a window; Heero shifted slightly away from it, trying to keep to the shadows he used to hide himself as much as possible.
Wufei finally conceded a harsh sigh, the sound somewhere between hurting and aggrieved. “Maxwell is an idiot, but you can be just as thick-headed sometimes.”
Heero gave a low growl of irritation before silencing the inhuman noise, slit-pupiled eyes flashing briefly with hurt, that such an animalistic instinct would come so quickly, so insidiously, so naturally, to him.
Wufei found the words to continue. “If you don’t talk to him, don’t acknowledge him, don’t treat him civilly, he’ll react eventually. It doesn’t excuse anything, but that is what happened.”
It made sense to Heero, too much sense. How had he missed something so painfully obvious? Some irrational part of his mind blamed it on Duo, on how he complicated things, confused them, bore them up and brought them crashing down.
Heero managed a stiff nod, but it was hard to admit that he had been doing something so utterly wrong, that he had been at fault for the situation. Maybe not entirely, but he couldn’t completely blame the boy who had been pulled into this cut-off, surreal pocket of the world they all lived in-existed in, not lived-now.
“Try getting to know him,” said Wufei, a sarcastic note in his voice, hiding the worry he felt about the situation. They were two lit fuses, Maxwell and Heero, growing dangerously short. “Try talking to him. Figure out why he was a slave in the first place. He may not break the curse, but you can at least make things as easy as possible in the meantime.”
oOo
Duo was maybe, just a little bit, regretting what he had done.
Sure, he had expected a reaction, that was why he did it. He was getting damn sick of Lord Yuy’s superiority and constant annoyance and refusal to even try to get alone. He wasn’t the one who had been forced into this by threats to the person who controlled him unequivocally. He wasn’t the one who had done whatever had caused the curse in the first place. Duo was the one who had ended up making the effort and trying to get along, really, and then given up.
Or not given up, exactly, so much as tried a different tactic. Fighting fire with fire-but clearly it hadn’t worked.
He hadn’t expected that Heero had held views about him beyond the ones he had voiced-total, unaltered contempt in every sense of the word.
Duo suspected that Wufei had told him a lot more than he had meant to when he had come barging into his room like that, all up-in-arms.
For one, he knew that Heero had cared about what he had done-and probably hadn’t reacted favorably. That wasn’t certainly new information. He had expected that Heero would notice, the man was damned observant, but not care, particularly, except for maybe slight relief. He had been expecting some sort of wait-a challenge, part of his mind had labeled it-before his silence finally got to Heero. He had spent the past five hundred years with nobody but Wufei for company, and he definitely wasn’t chatty by nature-unless Duo had misjudged him even more than he already had-and he had been far from positive that the pointed silence would even work.
Apparently, it had, and more dramatically than expected. Wufei had found out about it, and he didn’t know how much Heero had told him, but probably not much, considering the people involved.
Wufei had been upset by the fact that Heero had been upset. That said something, certainly.
There was a definite element of guilt to what he was feeling, mixed up with all the confusion and resentment and-maybe-loneliness. He hadn’t expected Heero to actually care that he had changed like that, that he had shifted away from his attempts at friendliness. He had expected it to bother him, sure, that was why he had done it, but he had also resigned himself to the fact that Yuy was a heartless bastard, despite his no-doubt impeccable heritage. And apparently, that wasn’t true. He cared about Duo to some extent, to the point where it upset him when Duo brought out the uncaring-and-heartless act on his own.
All this raised an important question: Was the guy so emotionally stunted that he actually thought that monotone grunts and unregulated sarcasm were the best way to make someone like him? Because, if that was the case, his people skills were potentially worse than the worst sides of Duo, Trowa and Wufei put together, which was pretty damn bad, all told.
oOo
Heero hadn’t thought that Duo would just get tired of being decent to him. He just hadn’t… realized. He didn’t like people’s actions when he wasn’t commanding those actions, didn’t like overlooking such obvious things. He didn’t like being affected by silly, childish actions like that. Didn’t like the delicate noose Duo now held, circling his own neck.
He wanted to blame Duo, and knew that that wasn’t fair, but it was also partly correct, which made it all the worse.
Once-upon-a-time, he hadn’t needed to worry about this. He had been in control, the end-all and be-all of the world his castle was.
And that was why he was-the way he was now.
Cursed. Powerless. Hated.
Alone.
And he didn’t-he didn’t-
…He was surprised that Wufei had defended him like that. He was nearly as reserved as Heero himself was, and he hadn’t known that he had… cared… …That he would bother to defend him that way.
He didn’t like being defended. He was more than capable of it himself, but still…
It was somehow nice, maybe, but that was a weak emotion, a flaw in his perfection, the icy shield he had created for himself, and he shouldn’t allow it.
Heero still didn’t think that he would tell Wufei that. Wouldn’t discourage him any further to not do that in the future either. There was no point in bringing it up past the event, anyways, and Wufei didn’t make a habit of it, so it was alright…
And it had been nice.
Nice, like evenings with Duo had begun to become, comfortable and familiar even though they were new and somehow warming and annoying, an irritant, but good despite that, and he wasn’t supposed to want it, to miss it, wasn’t supposed to care at all.
He wasn’t sure which of his voices he wanted to listen to, which side of his divided mind.
Heero didn’t know how to react to Wufei’s… advice. Not the perfect word, but the closest one. The inaccuracy was annoying.
His recommendations were good ones, but he wasn’t sure how to go about them without hurting (Duo, himself) …hurting.
Somewhere away from the formal dining hall, with it’s arched ceiling lost in shadows and echoing length and separated chairs and heavy, breathless atmosphere, suffocating and painful.
Somewhere where he would be less...Horrifying, less real, less immediate. More forgettable, more human.
…It had been a long time since he’d visited the castle grounds. He had started avoiding the light because-because- it hurt…
No reason to have stopped, so no excuse.
But he should wait. Wait at least until tomorrow…
No.
--End Chapter--
Author: Dreaming of Everything, dreams_of_all
Series: Gundam Wing
Characters/Pairings: Duo, Heero, Wufei, Quatre, Trowa, Duo/Heero
Rating/Warnings: T for various things, not really pushing the rating. Slash.
Summary: A retelling of Beauty and the Beast. When someone stumbles into an enchantment hidden deep within a forest, he trades his life for the lives of one of his slaves... 1x2 shounen-ai.
Author's Notes: My eternal thanks to Lady_Friselle for being fantastic beyond words. (She betaed, for the record.)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
FFnet link
“Because we, in our foreseeings, our having been right
Are repulsive to ourselves, fat and immobile, like toads.
Not toads in the garden, who after all are what they are,
But toads in the tale of death in the desert of sludge.”
--Cassandra, Iraq by C. K. Williams
oOoOoOo
Time passed slowly on a day-to-day basis in the haunted castle, minutes seeming like hours and hours seeming like days, but at same time the days slipped by with unnerving speed. Two weeks took forever and, at the same time, slipped by like quicksand.
Duo, according to Wufei, made the time pass considerably more slowly than it would otherwise.
Days for Duo, Quatre and Trowa were spent poking around the castle, sometimes in the company of Wufei, and playing on its grounds; Quatre generally took some time out of the afternoon to teach Duo how to read. He proved good at it, earning a measure of grudging respect from Wufei, to nearly everyone’s surprise. The library and the lessons provided another distraction from the incredible boredom of life in the castle.
Duo ate dinner with Heero each night, which translated to Duo chattering at Heero (or the wall; they were about equally responsive) when he wasn’t eating; when his mouth was full, there was heavy, pointed silence. On occasion Heero would offer a muffled snort or acidic comment. Heavy silence was the general rule in the second dining hall, where Quatre, Trowa and Wufei ate, despite Quatre’s attempts at conversation.
Perhaps most noticeably-it was startling how quickly life, even in a cursed castle, fell into monotony-Quatre and Trowa hadn’t met Heero yet, despite the length of time they had been his ‘guests.’ They had heard reports of Duo’s dinners with him (and many, many complaints about his silence and, when that was broken, general lack of decency and people skills) but had yet to even so much as catch a glimpse of him.
Duo’s first dinner with Heero had been the most successful; it was the only evening they had had anything approaching a civil conversation, that being the one about the plague. Duo had put up with Heero’s prickly barriers for a while but had quickly gotten tired of making up excuses for him and started giving as good as he got-most evenings ended in at least one set of bruised tempers and feelings.
Duo had slowly grown less edgy in Heero’s presence, though it didn’t show; he had taken care about that from the first. He had grown more comfortable just when it came to being around him-slowly, his natural exuberance was replacing the one he had manufactured as a custom-made mask for the situation-and more comfortable when Heero asked for his hand in marriage each evening, and he refused, as he began realizing that Heero really didn’t react.
It was at the two week mark exactly when Duo finally lost his temper. He had had exactly 14 dinners with Lord Yuy, just the two of them, and he had yet to hear a nice word out of him. Hell, he had yet to get a non-critical remark in response to anything he said. Some evenings he was lucky with a response at all. And neutrality really wasn’t all that much to ask for when he was the one who had gotten dragged into this curse thing in an attempt to free Heero from it.
And he certainly wasn’t the one who had been cursed to spend eternity here. He just had a handful of months, maximum, before he was released, and he certainly wasn’t going to spend it encouraging the most inhuman person he had ever met, regardless of physical appearance. Looking like an out-and-out monster was one thing, but he didn’t have to put up with someone who insulted him at every half-chance.
Admittedly, Wufei wasn’t much better-maybe Heero’s physical appearance bothered him more than he had thought, or at least admitted to.
But that wasn’t fair. Wufei was as uptight as Heero, but he had moments of decency, and he was fair. He had at least given Duo a chance, eventually. Heero’s clearly-shown hatred hadn’t wavered since Duo had shaken him slightly with his introduction, despite Duo’s best efforts to at least reproduce the experience. It helped that he spent more time around the bunch of them than just the required dinner.
So Duo was frustrated. He wasn’t asking for friendship, or even tolerance, just a touch of decency now and then. A response. Or at least a release. For all the good the dinners were doing he might as well have eaten them with a brick wall. An imposing, admittedly scary brick wall, but still a wall. Actually, the wall would have been better company.
Duo wasn’t above switching tactics…
oOo
Heero walked into the dining room and was surprised to notice that it was empty. Duo had, in the past, been slightly early or exactly on time; Heero had always made it a point to be slightly late, arriving after Duo had.
But something had changed. He reviewed what Duo had done that day, what had happened at the dinner they had had the evening before; there was nothing out of the ordinary about either event, nothing to warrant the sudden change to the previous patterns. It was…Strange for a habit to be so suddenly broken. Duo had even left to get ready for dinner at the same time as he normally did…
A few minutes after he had settled himself into his customary chair the door banged open and Duo entered, dressed much more informally than he had on previous evenings; he had ignored formal clothes altogether, wearing what he had worn that day, simple black pants and a rough, non-descript shirt.
Duo simply nodded to Heero, not even leaving enough time for a response before switching his attention, foregoing his typical greeting, which was loud, involved and informal. He swung himself into his chair and served himself, still silent, with a perfectly formed façade that said that this was perfectly normal, exactly as things always happened.
In the beginning, actually, minus the aberrations of his arrival and appearance, it was much as it always was: dead silent while Duo ate and Heero watched. Eventually he would slow down on stuffing his face and begin bombarding Heero with a near-unintelligible barrage of questions, comments and observations.
But he didn’t. He kept on eating and, because he wasn’t pausing to talk, finished much faster than he had previous evenings. The silence was much heavier, to the point where it was nearly painful it was so in-your-face obvious, even by Heero’s standards.
“’Night,” he said shortly to Heero the instant he finished, standing to leave without any further comments, pausing slightly to give Heero the time he needed to ask his question.
“Will you marry me?” The lord managed to grind out.
“No,” said Duo sharply, not adding any excess onto his answer as he had the other evenings, as he had gotten more comfortable around Heero.
He left the room quickly, stride quick, purposeful and lacking his usual bounce. There was nothing in his body language that would indicate acceptance or tolerance for anything more from Heero.
Idly, Duo wondered how many days of the same treatment it would take before Heero either changed his behavior or confronted him about his own changes.
He smiled grimly to himself. Duo didn’t give him long.
oOo
Heero was truly startled.
Within the space of a day-or even less-Duo had completely shattered everything he had expected of him. He had just reached the point where maybe some of Duo’s chatter wasn’t all that bad, all things considering, and it had changed. He had shut down, closed in; clearly something he didn’t come by naturally; it was about as far as you could get from his natural inclinations, as far as he knew.
And, as Duo had just proved so spectacularly, he clearly didn’t know him as well as he thought he had.
He certainly didn’t act that way around the castle’s other inhabitants; Heero knew, because he had taken to watching them interact during the day, with nothing else to do. They were all, even Wufei, treated the way he had been, with slight variation, up until this evening.
Why was he the one person who had been singled out? Logic said that it was a direct result of being held captive, expected to fall in love with Heero. With a monster.
But it had taken him two weeks of treating him exactly as he had treated all the others-the human ones, the ones unconnected to the curse, or at least not responsible. That… made no sense.
Heero had thought that he had begun to understand the loud brown-haired boy and how he worked.
Clearly, he had made an unforeseen mistake. This warranted further investigation…
It had been a long time since he had been wrong about somebody.
It had been five hundred years…
oOo
“How was your day?” asked Wufei formally as he came up beside Heero, falling into step with the larger man. He could tell he was irritated-he was walking faster than was normal for him, the movements more tightly controlled, jerkier.
“I don’t understand.” That was a major concession for Heero to make. “He’s just…Stopped. He’s not talking unless it’s necessary. Not… looking at me. Interacting at all, unless it’s unavoidable. He didn’t talk all through the meal…”
Wufei raised an eyebrow, already planning on how to make Maxwell’s future as unpleasant as possible while leaving him somewhat unharmed.
Heero’s better-than-human eyes picked up the gesture even in the half-lit gloom of the darkened hallways. Wufei couldn’t see more than where the walls ended and the hallway began, and the outline of Heero’s hulking shape against the windows.
He had gotten used to these late-night walks over the years.
“And he hasn’t changed his actions around anyone else. Other than this event, his behavior has been consistent, and continues to be so. It’s opposite of his natural personality… It’s inexplicable.”
Interesting, thought Wufei, that it had taken him two weeks to start this. What had happened, to cause such a sudden change?
He had the feeling that nobody but Duo knew the answer to that.
Well, then, it sounded like he needed to have a conversation with the ex-slave.
oOo
The sun was barely clearing the horizon when Duo was roused from his sleep by an angry Wufei pounding on his door and shouting.
Neither person was particularly happy at the moment.
“What do you want?” bellowed Duo through the door.
“We need to talk, Maxwell. If you are lucky, you will not be bleeding by the end of the conversation.”
“And what does this have to do with getting me out of bed at quarter-to-fuckit-early in the morning?”
There was a -thump- from the next room over before a door opened and Trowa stuck a disgruntled head through it.
“You have neighbors. Shut up.”
“God, even Trowa’s still asleep!”
“Quiet, Maxwell.”
oOo
Five minutes later, a scowling Duo presented himself outside his door.
“The fuck is this about?”
Wufei merely glared and motioned at a door; Duo vaguely recognized it as the one that led to the castle grounds. Sighing loudly, recognizing that he wasn’t going to get any more out of the scowling lord unless he followed his orders; he headed off down the hallway, Wufei following closely at his heels.
“So, sunshine, what’s this all about?” Duo spat out.
“Last night. Explain.”
“Well, I ate dinner with his Lordship Grumpypants I’m-gonna-kill-you Yuy. Or at least, I ate dinner and he glared at me, ‘cause he makes a point of not eating and he’s a big fan of that whole ‘glaring’ thing. And then I talked with Trowa and Quatre for a while and went to bed. Hell, I didn’t even see you last night. What has you all up-in-arms?” Duo continued as they walked across a sweep of the palace’s lawn, the grass stiff with frost.
“Oh, is that all, Maxwell?” sneered Wufei. “Heero seems to think differently. Explain. Now.”
“Ohhhhh, that. He noticed? And here I was, thinking he didn’t even bother enough to listen to what I say. Or, at the very least, he was hoping that I was going to eventually 'shut my useless mouth before it got me killed'-and I’m quoting here!-because in that case I think he’d count it as a plus.”
Wufei sighed, deflated slightly. Maxwell-Duo-had a point. He had never seen the two of them interact, but it was definitely something Heero would say. To Duo in particular. He had known these two would be a bad combination…
Still. He had known Heero for fully 500 years longer than he had known Duo-and the former was a lot less annoying than the latter.
His eyes narrowed into a vicious glare. “Please keep in mind the actions your ideas cause on others. It would be a good thing to keep in mind. Not everyone will react well to you. Not everyone is what they seem right from the first. Not everyone is as obvious as you. Try what you pulled again and I will be sure that you will remember this very, very well.”
Duo’s eyes widened momentarily, then narrowed before returning to normal. Lop-sided grin on his face, he replied with a flippant note in his voice. “I’ll be sure to keep it in mind, certainly.”
“You do that.”
oOo
After ensuring that Maxwell had returned to his room and, presumably, his own bed, Wufei headed off to find Heero.
He found Heero lurking around the corridors of the Eastern Wing, trying to look like he wasn’t doing what he was doing, which was brooding.
He nodded slightly at Wufei in recognition.
“I’ve talked to Maxwell.”
Heero didn’t react, except to look sharply in Wufei’s direction.
A few moments passed quietly.
“Early. And why?” The question was slightly emphasized-Wufei had no doubt trespassed onto what amounted to the unstable ground of Heero’s mind. He wouldn’t like the idea of Wufei “protecting” him-not that Wufei had done it for the reasons Heero thought he did-and Wufei was starting to get the impression that there was more going on for him than what was immediately obvious when it came to Duo Maxwell. That made sense. Maxwell could be incredibly pervasive, worming his way around any barriers, physical or emotional. And he was annoying-phenomenally so.
He knew that that must be hard for Heero, to have to deal with someone with that sort of personality after so many years of near-solitude. And Duo didn’t know that, and had reacted naturally enough, if highly inadvisably.
“I wanted to know what had changed.”
“It’s none of your business,” said Heero, voice taught, the strain in his tone nearly tangible, and Wufei looked at him in quickly recovering surprise.
“Yes, it is,” said Wufei easily. Not the most diplomatic response, but it was true, and maybe rising to the slight hint of challenge Heero had given would help things along.
This was not going to be an easy discussion either way.
“And what makes you think that?”
“I am as much involved with this curse as you are and-and- Damn it, Yuy, I worry about you and how people react to you and how you look at yourself and how you react with that hyper, over-bearing idiot of a being the curse has picked out for you.”
There was a weighty silence, the two of them frozen with a combination of their natural reserve and a righteous indignation. Dust motes swirled lazily in the golden patch of rising sunlight that was pouring through a window; Heero shifted slightly away from it, trying to keep to the shadows he used to hide himself as much as possible.
Wufei finally conceded a harsh sigh, the sound somewhere between hurting and aggrieved. “Maxwell is an idiot, but you can be just as thick-headed sometimes.”
Heero gave a low growl of irritation before silencing the inhuman noise, slit-pupiled eyes flashing briefly with hurt, that such an animalistic instinct would come so quickly, so insidiously, so naturally, to him.
Wufei found the words to continue. “If you don’t talk to him, don’t acknowledge him, don’t treat him civilly, he’ll react eventually. It doesn’t excuse anything, but that is what happened.”
It made sense to Heero, too much sense. How had he missed something so painfully obvious? Some irrational part of his mind blamed it on Duo, on how he complicated things, confused them, bore them up and brought them crashing down.
Heero managed a stiff nod, but it was hard to admit that he had been doing something so utterly wrong, that he had been at fault for the situation. Maybe not entirely, but he couldn’t completely blame the boy who had been pulled into this cut-off, surreal pocket of the world they all lived in-existed in, not lived-now.
“Try getting to know him,” said Wufei, a sarcastic note in his voice, hiding the worry he felt about the situation. They were two lit fuses, Maxwell and Heero, growing dangerously short. “Try talking to him. Figure out why he was a slave in the first place. He may not break the curse, but you can at least make things as easy as possible in the meantime.”
oOo
Duo was maybe, just a little bit, regretting what he had done.
Sure, he had expected a reaction, that was why he did it. He was getting damn sick of Lord Yuy’s superiority and constant annoyance and refusal to even try to get alone. He wasn’t the one who had been forced into this by threats to the person who controlled him unequivocally. He wasn’t the one who had done whatever had caused the curse in the first place. Duo was the one who had ended up making the effort and trying to get along, really, and then given up.
Or not given up, exactly, so much as tried a different tactic. Fighting fire with fire-but clearly it hadn’t worked.
He hadn’t expected that Heero had held views about him beyond the ones he had voiced-total, unaltered contempt in every sense of the word.
Duo suspected that Wufei had told him a lot more than he had meant to when he had come barging into his room like that, all up-in-arms.
For one, he knew that Heero had cared about what he had done-and probably hadn’t reacted favorably. That wasn’t certainly new information. He had expected that Heero would notice, the man was damned observant, but not care, particularly, except for maybe slight relief. He had been expecting some sort of wait-a challenge, part of his mind had labeled it-before his silence finally got to Heero. He had spent the past five hundred years with nobody but Wufei for company, and he definitely wasn’t chatty by nature-unless Duo had misjudged him even more than he already had-and he had been far from positive that the pointed silence would even work.
Apparently, it had, and more dramatically than expected. Wufei had found out about it, and he didn’t know how much Heero had told him, but probably not much, considering the people involved.
Wufei had been upset by the fact that Heero had been upset. That said something, certainly.
There was a definite element of guilt to what he was feeling, mixed up with all the confusion and resentment and-maybe-loneliness. He hadn’t expected Heero to actually care that he had changed like that, that he had shifted away from his attempts at friendliness. He had expected it to bother him, sure, that was why he had done it, but he had also resigned himself to the fact that Yuy was a heartless bastard, despite his no-doubt impeccable heritage. And apparently, that wasn’t true. He cared about Duo to some extent, to the point where it upset him when Duo brought out the uncaring-and-heartless act on his own.
All this raised an important question: Was the guy so emotionally stunted that he actually thought that monotone grunts and unregulated sarcasm were the best way to make someone like him? Because, if that was the case, his people skills were potentially worse than the worst sides of Duo, Trowa and Wufei put together, which was pretty damn bad, all told.
oOo
Heero hadn’t thought that Duo would just get tired of being decent to him. He just hadn’t… realized. He didn’t like people’s actions when he wasn’t commanding those actions, didn’t like overlooking such obvious things. He didn’t like being affected by silly, childish actions like that. Didn’t like the delicate noose Duo now held, circling his own neck.
He wanted to blame Duo, and knew that that wasn’t fair, but it was also partly correct, which made it all the worse.
Once-upon-a-time, he hadn’t needed to worry about this. He had been in control, the end-all and be-all of the world his castle was.
And that was why he was-the way he was now.
Cursed. Powerless. Hated.
Alone.
And he didn’t-he didn’t-
…He was surprised that Wufei had defended him like that. He was nearly as reserved as Heero himself was, and he hadn’t known that he had… cared… …That he would bother to defend him that way.
He didn’t like being defended. He was more than capable of it himself, but still…
It was somehow nice, maybe, but that was a weak emotion, a flaw in his perfection, the icy shield he had created for himself, and he shouldn’t allow it.
Heero still didn’t think that he would tell Wufei that. Wouldn’t discourage him any further to not do that in the future either. There was no point in bringing it up past the event, anyways, and Wufei didn’t make a habit of it, so it was alright…
And it had been nice.
Nice, like evenings with Duo had begun to become, comfortable and familiar even though they were new and somehow warming and annoying, an irritant, but good despite that, and he wasn’t supposed to want it, to miss it, wasn’t supposed to care at all.
He wasn’t sure which of his voices he wanted to listen to, which side of his divided mind.
Heero didn’t know how to react to Wufei’s… advice. Not the perfect word, but the closest one. The inaccuracy was annoying.
His recommendations were good ones, but he wasn’t sure how to go about them without hurting (Duo, himself) …hurting.
Somewhere away from the formal dining hall, with it’s arched ceiling lost in shadows and echoing length and separated chairs and heavy, breathless atmosphere, suffocating and painful.
Somewhere where he would be less...Horrifying, less real, less immediate. More forgettable, more human.
…It had been a long time since he’d visited the castle grounds. He had started avoiding the light because-because- it hurt…
No reason to have stopped, so no excuse.
But he should wait. Wait at least until tomorrow…
No.
--End Chapter--