fic - for promis'd joy - part 2 [novella]

[turnippatch]

Title:  For Promis'd Joy
Part:  2


For Promis'd Joy
sequel to Gang Aft Agley
Part 2

The problem with taking certain upper division courses was that, after a certain point, the administration expected a person to work on projects instead of take tests.  The problem with certain professors was that they all thought that they could assign homework to a person as if they were that person's only professor.

Result: the unfortunate convergence of lots of work.

Solution: deal with it.

Duo refused to be one of those people that asked for extensions.  Extensions didn't happen in the real world.  Extensions were only given to those people that the professors felt sorry for, the people that really seemed like they couldn't handle the work.

Duo could handle it.  That didn't mean he'd be a happy camper while he did so, but he could do so.  He tried not to think about it.  The work went much more smoothly if he just concentrated on getting it done instead of dwelling on how much it all sucked.  That was one of those handy little things he'd learned from Heero.

The afternoon was wearing on, and he was just starting to think with a scowl of some annoyance that it was supposed to be his turn to cook dinner tonight, and the hired help had to take off for the day, so Howie was manning the register downstairs.  Maybe they'd just call for takeout?

And then a meal unto himself came walking in through the door.

"Hey, Heero, what's up?" Duo called, always willing to spare some time for his boyfriend.

Heero left his backpack against the sofa, went to the kitchen and dropped off a bag, then crossed over to where Duo was sitting at the table and stood beside him, putting himself in range for Duo to slip an arm around his waist and pull him close.  He rested his arm over Duo's shoulders in return of the sideways hug.  "Busy?"

Duo groaned and tried to hide his face in Heero's side.  "Don't remind me.  No time to play.  It's going to be an all-nighter, I just know it.  I don't think I have time to eat even, let alone cook."

"Ah, well, I come bearing food, so one problem solved."

He glanced over at the bag Heero had left on the kitchen counter, then looked up at Heero with large eyes.  "You're kidding me.  No?  You know, we could have just grabbed some takeout or made something instant-y."

"That's not good for you," Heero answered primly.

"But-- Well, never mind.  You really didn't have to do that.  But thank you, thank you, thank you! anyway."  He squeezed his boyfriend tighter.  "Can it wait another hour or two?  It's still early-ish."

"No worries.  It'll take some time to cook anyway."

Duo blinked, replaying the words in his head to make sure he'd heard them correctly.  "Cook?  You're going to cook?"

"Aa."

"You're... you're going to cook?  For me?"  He'd eaten a Heero-cooked meal before, and he'd subjected Heero to his own not-so-shabby cooking before, but that had always been on account of the 'it's no fun cooking for one' philosophy.  A mere matter of convenience was nothing compared to Heero actually cooking for him.

"And Howard and myself as well, but yes.  For you."

"Now you...  I...  you really...  Well, golly gee."  He slid his arm up Heero's back and pulled him down for a kiss that expressed his thoughts much more clearly than his words.  "Hmmm.  Now I really don't want to work."

Heero straightened enough to study the array of work.  "How much work you figure you should be able to do in the next couple of hours?"

"Hm?  Oh.  Ugh, well, I've got a plan, so at least that's a good start, right?  I'm working on the paper now, and kinda doing a half-hearted job of it.  I've got all the reading for it done, so I'm just cranking out a bare-bones version of it for now.  Then I figure I'll do the project analysis for Durond, which will probably take a while since it involves research and stuff and is kinda mid-termy, then do a quickie job on my thermo homework, which is just slogging through calculations and the like, and then go back and do some quality control on my paper.  I figure that'll take me to the wee hours of the morning.  Sound like a good plan?"

"Yes, but for the next couple of hours?"

"I should be able to finish the first draft of my paper, I guess.  In theory.  Why do you ask?"

"Well, then.  No food for you until I see a completed first draft."

"What?!"

"You want to eat, you get your work done."

"Heeeero!" he whined, grabbing onto Heero's hand and tugging it back and forth.  "That's so not fair!"

"Why not?"

"But... But you're going to be standing there and cooking it!  Right in front of me!  And if it's going to take that long to cook, then it's probably going to smell really damn good!  That's... that's evil!"

Heero gave him a comforting kiss before pulling back and chirping, "Yup."  He disengaged himself calmly and strolled leisurely over to the kitchen.

"Come on, minus the conclusion?" Duo tried to bargain.  "I overestimated.  You know, just wanted to make myself look better than I am.  Trying to impress you, you know?  But only because I like you so much.  So a thorough outline?"

"A completed first draft."

"Dammit!  This better be worth it, Yuy."  He knew it would be.  Heero was a good cook, had to have been for him and his stepfather to have survived so long.  Duo muttered disgruntledly about it anyway.  "I thought you didn't like being a good influence."

"Ah, but now I'm an evil good influence, so it's okay."

Duo sighed dramatically and got back to work.  Just thinking about the upcoming meal was making him hungry, but Heero had set a price tag on it, and wasn't the kind of person to make idle threats, so Duo shifted around the little circular table, enough so that his back was to the kitchen and he couldn't watch his boyfriend in action, and set about finishing his draft.  The bargaining had been done merely on principle: he thought it was manageable, especially since Heero hadn't specified a minimum quality, but he still didn't think it was a nice deal.

He managed to block out the sound of Heero washing and chopping things, although his internal counter marked at least three, maybe four different items that went on the block.  The homey noises were almost comfortingly distracting.  Heero cooked with a sure confidence that could be identified from sound alone.  The knife against the chopping board struck lightly and rhythmically.  Water was set on the stove, and came to a boil just when the ingredients were ready.  It was no less than he should have expected, but still managed to be startling in its reassuring domesticity.

Duo firmly devoted himself to concentrating on his work before his mind could go off spinning the tangents of a delightful homelife with Heero, and when his thoughts got back into order, the idyllic situation became nothing more than soothing background.  Once he realized the mouth-watering scents of good food cooking had reached his nose, he blinked and found his productivity to have reached an unexpected height.  He smirked to himself, thinking how nice it would be to be able to present more finished work than they had agreed upon to the chef, and rewarded himself with a moment to take a deep breath.  "Oh, God, Heero.  Is that... curry?"  He turned around to confirm the guess, and privately concluded that all the scene was missing was an apron and some quiet humming.

"Aa."  Heero adjusted the heat on the stove, peered into his pot one last time to make sure things were evenly settled, then covered it with its lid.  "All done.  Now we just wait a while for it to finish cooking."

"You didn't have to go through all the trouble," he protested mildly, watching as Heero drifted back to the sink to wash a few of the things he'd used in his preparation.  "I mean, it's not like you make curry every day."

"It may take a little longer, but I assure you it's very simple.  Besides, this will make it easy to bring some dinner downstairs to Howard, and you'll have extra so you don't have to cook tomorrow, either.  Or I can take it, if you don't want to keep it."

If it tasted as good as it smelled, he'd be keeping it.  "But... I'm sure you have work of your own to do, Heero," he attempted one more time.

Heero shrugged nonchalantly.  "I'll do it later."

"You're procrastinating?"

"No, I'm prioritizing.  Good food will help you be more productive.  Not having to worry about dinner will make you more productive.  Since I have time and you do not, I will cook for you.  I can also proof that paper for you, once you finish it up."

"You don't have to do that."  Duo was pretty sure he'd said that several times already.  Now he was starting to feel bad.

"You probably won't be very coherent by the time you edit your paper," Heero answered reasonably, letting the water drip off the knife before he added it to the dish rack beside the sink.

"You've got the time for that?  God, I could just hate you CS majors sometimes."

"I do have some work, Duo.  I just have longer deadlines to work with."

"And you don't have any eight o'clock classes!  Or nine o'clock classes, for that matter.  Your ten o'clock isn't even a core class.  You suck."

Unsurprisingly, Heero heard this complaint often from Duo.  It didn't help that Duo was not a morning person.  "And since I have nothing for tomorrow morning, I will stay up with you."

There was a moment during which that sentence failed to compute.  "You what?"

"It's easier to stay up and be productive when you've got company, especially when Howard's going to be sleeping and you can't have the lights on all the way."

It still didn't compute very well.  "Uh..."

"Or you could come over to my place after dinner and work there," Heero added.  "That way you won't have to worry about Howard."

"No," Duo answered automatically.  That would definitely make him feel bad.  "Howard's used to it.  He can sleep through anything.  You don't have to stay up with me."

Heero just smiled and shrugged at him.  "We'll see.  How far along are you?"

Duo proudly displayed his progress to Heero, and in due time, got his dinner in return.  He took a taste and moaned dramatically.  "Wow, that's good.  Where did you learn to cook, anyway?"  He wasted little time in taking a second bite.

Heero shrugged casually.  "'Kaasan."

He'd picked up a few words in Japanese, and 'mother' was one of them.  He heard that one more often than the rest since Heero actually thought of his mother as 'kaasan more than 'Mom'.  Japanese was the language of Heero's childhood, when he had still had his mother, and he let it out once in a while, even less often than the Japanese pronunciation of 'Duo'.  The slight accent and the occasional sound effect emerged when Heero was comfortable, but the language shifted when he was nostalgic.  Duo had hopes it might come out in moments of intimacy as well, because frankly, he found the way those liquid syllables rolled off Heero's tongue stupendously sexy.

Since Heero's answer was so typical, he accepted the explanation for a few seconds before he did the math.  "Come on, Heero.  Really.  You must have been, what, six, seven?  You're joking, right?"

Heero smiled faintly.  "Well, maybe I didn't learn any specifics from her, but the important things, the kind you learn from impression.  I guess the answer you're really looking for is Mrs. Barton.  That, and the Internet, and recipes, and trial and error.  But I remember Mrs. Barton curious as to where I'd learnt a few small things, because she hadn't taught them to me.  Like how I held my knife when I was chopping, or the way I always twisted a bottle after I poured something so it wouldn't dribble down the side.  Little things children don't usually think about.  That's what I learned from my mother."

The way he could tell a story made Duo feel rather nostalgic, too.  He might have called Heero a momma's boy, if he himself hadn't suffered an attack of separation anxiety at the idea of leaving his uncle.  Besides, he rather liked the way Heero unashamedly loved his mother.  It somehow made Duo feel better about having such a crappy mother of his own.  He had to bite down on some inappropriate commentary regarding what he had learnt from his mother.  "So you learned from Mrs. Barton while you were a kid?  Well, I guess someone had to learn how to cook in your household, huh?"

The kettle on the stove began to whistle, and Heero got up to take care of it.  "Odin's not a bad cook.  You don't take a number of chemistry classes and not learn how to keep an eye on things when it's over an open flame, and stir if things need stirring.  He's just not a very interesting cook."

"What's that?" Duo asked, eyeing the container Heero had fished out of his bag.

"Tea.  Jasmine-green blend."

"You brought your own tea, too?  Gee, you got dessert hiding somewhere as well?"

Heero snorted softly as he dropped a proper amount into the teapot without having to measure it.  "You're on your own for that one."

"Hmpf.  That's it.  No tip for you."  When Heero paused before pouring the water over the leaves to raise an eyebrow at him, Duo backed off.  "Kidding.  Just kidding.  So what's a jasmine-green blend taste like?"

"Like jasmine and green mixed together."

"...You know, I should have seen that coming."

He smirked mildly and brought the teapot to the table, along with two cups.  "I liked green tea, and Wufei liked jasmine, and eventually we found a compromise."

"Mmmm, that smells good.  Is there some reason in particular we're drinking tea?"

Heero smacked Duo's hand when it reached out to take a cup.  "Not done yet.  Let it steep.  Tea helps your digestion.  And I imagine you wouldn't mind a little bit of caffeine for tonight."  He returned his attention to his dinner.

"Isn't the caffeine in tea pretty unlikely to do anything for me?"

"I'll not have you drinking soda with curry.  That's just wrong.  If you feel the need for more caffeine later, fine.  Just save it for later.  Do you think Howard will want any tea?"

Duo stopped before his next mouthful reached his mouth and he shrugged.  "We can ask him later."  A feeling overtook him after a brief moment, something warm and fuzzy, probably the coziness, the thoughtfulness, of the whole situation catching up with him.  The warmth spread through him from the inside out, and probably had nothing to do with the dinner filling his tummy.

Heero paused, noticing the pleasantly spacey smile hovering on Duo's lips.  "What?"

Oh, he didn't want to say.  Having to give a verbal answer would force him to think about it, analyze it, and if he had to think about it, some errant thought would probably come along and ruin things and his bubble would pop, and he didn't want that, so he just shook his head and went back to eating.

After dinner, Heero insisted on cleaning up.  That wasn't normally the deal.  When one of them cooked, the other cleaned, but Heero brushed off Duo's offers to assist and informed him that if it was really so important to him, he could do some extra cleaning another time.  Left to his own devices, Duo probably would have come up with something a little more interesting to make it up to his boyfriend, but whether it ultimately turned out that way or not was irrelevant for the night.  He still had work to do, and he obediently drank his tea as he did so.

"Damn, Heero, you know I must like you a lot when I drink something the color of ripe piss, just for you."  Heero's blank look hinted at offense, which Duo entirely did not intend, so he clarified his random thought.  "I mean, it doesn't taste bad or anything.  I kinda like it.  No, really.  It does seem, what's that word, uh, clarifying or something."  Heero continued to look at him skeptically, so he bulled on forward.  "Oh, come on, Heero, I said I liked you something awful."

"Duo."

"Yeah?"  He waited nervously to hear that he'd somehow just insulted an entire culture or something.

"...You drink Mountain Dew."

"...So?"

"It's radioactively green."

Ah, was that what the look had been for?  "So?"

"It curdles milk."

"Really?  Cool."  Mountain Dew cheese.  Not that he'd want to eat any, but still.  Cool.  He'd have to try that some day.  But in his defense, he really didn't drink Dew regularly.

"People have become addicted to it, its caffeine content is so high," Heero continued.  "And you object to drinking tea?"

Well, he wasn't really objecting, but he thought he'd play devil's advocate, just for a little fun.  "Tea is made from boiled leaves and/or tree bark."  He made a point of nonchalantly sipping at his tea so Heero would pick up on the fact that he didn't think it as outlandish as he was saying it was.

"And Dew is made from... God knows what.  Probably nothing that occurs in nature."

"Radioactivity is natural," Duo answered innocently.

Heero blinked at him, waited a few seconds, then blinked again.  At last, he sighed, hiding a fond smile beneath a wry twist of his lips.  "Never mind.  Get back to work."

True to his word, Heero stayed up with him, and in retrospect, Duo realized that perhaps Heero had been so insistent about doing all the cooking and cleaning because he needed to stretch his tasks out long enough to fill all the time.  He knew for sure that Heero was working ahead in his classes.  What was Heero going to do with all that spare time he was generating?  Well, stay up with his boyfriend for no reason other than thoughtfulness, for starters, Duo supposed.

It was around six o'clock when Duo finished up his work.  With his remarkably productive pace, he hadn't expected it to take so long, only he'd been well on his way towards what he thought was a good, valid solution for his problem analysis, only to run across a footnote in his research materials that proved otherwise.  With a quiet sigh, he shut his books, organized his papers and checked them one last time to make sure everything was in order, and then glanced over at the sofa.  Heero had fallen asleep about an hour previous while reading a little book for his Japanese class.  Duo had freed the small novel from his grasp, marked its page and set it aside, then draped a blanket lightly over the slumbering form.  One hour later, he found Heero had made himself a little more comfortable on the couch, sliding down the cushions until he could lie against the pillows at his side.

Duo thought it over and decided there was really no point in going to sleep at this hour.  He had class at nine.  It seemed much more reasonable for him to seat himself on the floor in front of the sofa and watch Heero sleep instead.  That was where Howard found him almost an hour later, still awake, though with a somewhat dreamy, introspective look on his face.

"Hey, kid," Howard whispered quietly, cautious of the sleeping man between them.  "All done?"

It took several blinks before Duo roused himself out of the vaguely trance-like state he'd gotten himself into.  "Yeah.  Figured I might as well just stay up, though."

"Well, at least now you got a good excuse to take a nap with Heero later this afternoon.  Looks like he got a head start on you, though," his uncle observed, nodding at Heero and noticing how Duo had loosely taken a hold of his hand some time in the early morning hours.

"He lasted 'til about five.  'Course, he didn't really have a pressing reason to stay up."  Only me, he thought.  He gave up sleep and did all his work early just to keep me company and help me out a bit.  It all felt very much too right.  He didn't know if he was ready to feel this way yet.  A whole field-ful of butterflies roused themselves from slumber to yawn, stretch, and lazily take to flight.

"Hey, Howie?"

"Yeah, kid?  Howard was ready to turn away and get ready for the day when Duo's soft voice stopped him.

Duo thought about all those things he was feeling, about that hazy mass of doubts that plagued him, about those inexplicable convictions he had, and realized he wanted to ask profound questions that had no answers.  "...Never mind.  Just having crazy need-some-sleep thoughts.  Think I'll take a shower after you finish using the bathroom.  Wake me up if I pass out, will ya?"

"...Yeah.  Sure."  Despite his willingness to help, Howard couldn't help but feel he'd just dodged a bullet.  Duo would have to sort through all the things going on in his head by himself.

"Do you think it's as weird as I do?"  Spring break was great and all, but sometimes having time to do something other than study left the mind free to ponder things that did not require pondering.

"What?" Trowa asked.  They were hanging out in Trowa's room at the moment, waiting for their friends to make an appearance at some undetermined time, and so they were left to their own contemplative devices.

"That I'm..." Heero began, thinking through all the things he could mean.  There just seemed to be so many of them.  "Well, for starters, that I'm involved with someone."

"Do you think it's any less weird that I'm involved with someone?" Trowa countered.

"Well.  Yes."

"The grass is always greener, isn't it, Yuy?"

"But you... okay, I guess I don't know the particulars of your relationship, and I'm not really anxious to find out about them, but... I never imagined.  Did you?  For yourself, I mean."

"Hmm.  Nothing in particular, I suppose.  I figured I'd meet a nice girl one day and settle down eventually, maybe."

"I didn't.  Not really.  If anything, I probably figured I'd be something like my dad.  A bachelor, well-established in my ways for quite a few years.  Then maybe eventually, someone quiet, more like a good friend than anything else.  Certainly not... Duo."  Not to say Duo wasn't a good friend, but he was definitely more than just a good friend.

"Someone so... not-quiet?"

"Sometimes... sometimes we're quiet.  And sometimes... we're not.  Sometimes it's so very... not-quiet between us."  And he didn't mean in a loud sort of way.  More like a burning, breathless sort of way.

"You can be a very not-quiet person, you know."  Maybe Heero bought into the hype of his own anti-social behavior, but Trowa had long since learned to look past it.

"And Duo can be quiet.  I think it's when he's not-quiet and I'm quiet that I see the largest discrepancy between the two of us."

"I thought you were over that a long time ago."  He hadn't heard about it for a long time, anyway.  It seemed to him that they had settled it, given the level of comfort they appeared to have with each other.

Heero's response was a little while in coming.  "It's better than it was.  And then some days it just sneaks up on me."

"You have a day in particular," Trowa observed.

Heero's slight nod was given ruefully.  "The other day... we were..."  He stopped to gain control of the blush that threatened to show itself.  "We were having a fine time, and things were progressing..."  He paused again, trying to find a suitable adverb that wouldn't be too embarassing or graphic.  All they had been doing was some normal kissing, and maybe their hands had gotten a little involved, too, but it was certainly nothing he would have thought would cause a problem.

Trowa nodded at him with a raised eyebrow to indicate his understanding of the matter without its exact articulation, freeing Heero to move on.

"Progressing.  And in the middle of this... 'progression'..."  The look on his face could have been said to be shamefaced, but it held a good bit of chagrin and a dash of self-directed irritation in it as well.  "Things were going great, and then I had to go and damn near start hyperventilating."

The elegant brow rose again, saying silently, 'Surely you're exaggerating.'

"It wasn't a full-on panic attack, but seriously!"  He ran a hand through his hair.  "I brought things crashing to a halt, and for no good reason.  I mean, what the hell?"

"How did Duo react?"

"He let it go, but he couldn't have liked it.  It's not like it hasn't happened before, but as you said, I thought I was over that.  If it's this annoying to me, I can only imagine how annoying it must be for him.  Things were... things were going very well, and then bam! I leave him hanging."  A horrified expression crept over his face.  "You know, I never thought this term would apply to me, but that's what I am.  I'm a goddamn tease!"

A muffled snicker made it through the slightly open doorway and into their presence.

Heero went still, except for a blink of faint mortification.  "Who apparently has a boyfriend who eavesdrops on his conversations...?"  He glared wide-eyed at the door as it slowly opened.

Duo cautiously stuck his head in through the opening and waved sheepishly at the two occupants of the bedroom.  "I was not eavesdropping.  I was just passing by, and happened to hear you two talking..."

"Ah," Trowa said, a mild smirk on his face.  "Well, in that case, I'm just going to pass on by out that door.  I'll talk to you later, Heero."  He left a trail of amusement in his wake as he opened the door completely, shooed Duo inside, and shut it behind him.  He opened it again half a second later.  "And don't do anything in my bed."  With that said, he departed once more and wandered downstairs to wait them out.

"Erm, hey, Heero," Duo started, a bright smile on his face.

With his arms crossed over his chest, Heero stared intently at him.  "If I ask you how long you were listening, will your answer be, 'long enough'?"

"Yup."  Duo plopped himself down on the bed in front of Heero.  "Definitely heard that last part."

"Stop that."

"Hm?"  He blinked innocently.

"Laughing."

Duo chuckled.  "But it's funny," he protested, reaching out to pry Heero's arms out of their closed stance.  Once he had freed a hand, he took possession of it, rubbing it soothingly.  "You're right.  I would never have thought you to be a tease, and you certainly aren't now.  You're no more a tease than I was."

He was favored with a suspicious look.  "Where do you come into this?"

"Ah, you've run into another part of my swooping parable.  I used to stop in the middle of things, too, you know.  I got called a tease once or twice, never really seriously.  I didn't run into those kinds of guys.  But still.  I wasn't a tease, and they knew it, and I knew it.  And neither are you, okay?"

The suspicious look merely deepened.  "But you stopped because you didn't want to go there with those people.  That's not the same."

"There were times when I thought I did want to go there.  And then it turned out I was wrong."

"You can't tell me you're perfectly okay with me suddenly putting a stop to a perfectly fine make-out session."

"Well, of course I'm not 'happy' about it," he had to answer honestly.  "But, I mean, duh, right?  I'm not happy, but I'm not angry about it or anything, either.  It's not like you totally freaked out or something.  It was just like... things got a little too breathless, is all.  I mean, if I really wanted to be an arrogant pig, I could just take that as a compliment to my prowess.  But one day we'll..."  He got momentarily distracted by the idea that he might one day be having sex with Heero.  He didn't not want to go there with Heero.  Wow.  "Uh, we'll not stop, we'll keep going, and, um, all will be right with the world.  I don't want you feeling like... like, you're holding this relationship back or whatever it is that's going through that silly little head of yours, okay?  You're not.  That's never been what this is all about, you know that, right?"

"I know that," Heero echoed firmly, if softly.  He looked down at their joined hands.  "I really do.  I'm sorry if it doesn't seem like that some times."

"Hey, no sorries, okay?  You'll make me feel bad."

Heero mustered up a faint smile for him.

"I'm willing to stick with this if you are."  Duo squeezed his hand reassuringly.  "Don't be afraid I'll break up with you over this or something."

"I don't doubt you, Duo.  Maybe I just doubt myself."  He said the words without thought, but quickly realized his error when all the warmth started sliding off of Duo's face.  "No, I don't mean that I'm not emotionally committed to this.  Not at all."  Disaster was averted as Duo's expression took on an expectantly puzzled cast instead.  Heero exhaled slowly and willed the words to come to him.  "I just don't see why I have problems doing this.  That bothers me.  You know how I am."

"Why does this bother you so much?  I get that you just don't like not being able to do something, but there's more to this than that..."  A strange look passed over Duo's face.  "I mean, they make pills for that sort of thing, if that's what you're worried about!"

Heero blinked at him, then blinked again.  His lips twitched, twitched a little bit more, and then he broke down and laughed quietly, his shoulders shaking as he tried to keep those sounds of humor from escaping.  His free hand rose to cover his mouth, but it didn't put an end to his amusement.  The laughter continued to wrack his frame for a good half minute as Duo watched him, containing a few embarrassed chuckles of his own.

Finally, Heero tackled him to the bed, shoulders still shaking as he pressed his face to Duo's shoulder and slowly put a stop to the tremors.  He kissed that shoulder, nuzzled his way inwards until he found the bare skin at the juncture with Duo's neck and kissed that as well, then withdrew to lie on his side next to his boyfriend.  "I can't believe you said that."

Duo stared at the blank ceiling, cheeks flushed with something.  "Neither can I.  It seemed like a reasonable conclusion at the time."

"I'm sure it did.  But I assure you, I'm not worried that..."  Lord, it felt funny to even say it.  "...I might have a problem getting it up."

"Well, good."  One last chuckle escaped him.  "So if that's not the problem, then what is?"

Heero sobered, albeit reluctantly.  He considered claiming innocence, but then decided concealing his opinions would not help anything.  He latched onto Duo's braid to calm himself before sharing his thoughts.  "I don't like that there's some part of me that isn't ready for this.  I think I'm ready.  I thought I was ready.  I thought I was committed to this.  I thought I wanted this.  I do, and I am.  And it just annoys me to no end that there's apparently some rebellious little part of me that thinks otherwise!"

"Well...," Duo said as he thought it over.  Heero obviously had a mental commitment to this, at least, and he claimed an emotional commitment as well.  Where was the problem?  "Maybe that's not it."

"Please.  I think I've already exhausted the 'still getting comfortable with it' idea.  If I haven't gotten comfortable with it after this much time, then something's got to be wrong."

"Well, I like to think that we're somewhere a little different from where we were, say, five months ago.  Maybe you're comfortable with five months ago, and then you had to get comfortable with four months ago, and then three months ago, etc., and maybe you're just having to get comfortable with now."

"...When I said 'get comfortable with it', by 'it' I meant the whole physical contact thing.  In general.  Not that every last square centimeter of my skin had to get comfortable with it."

"Well... say we went all the way.  Say we had mindblowing sex, and the next day, I suddenly did something new and odd, like, I don't know, say I developed a foot fetish or something.  I think you would be perfectly within your rights to jump a little if I started sucking your toes, don't you?"

A crinkle formed on his brow.  That was a distinctly unpalatable suggestion.  "That's different."

"It's always different, Heero.  You know as well as I what a lame argument that is."

"Something that gets me is that we're not stopping just short of having sex or something.  I mean, I'd get it if that were the case.  That's a big thing.  It would make sense to be hesitant about something like that.  But that's not where we are."

Uh, yeah, nowhere near sex, Duo thought, scolding his mind for even having thought of it before, no matter how logical a thought path it had been.  He wasn't disturbed by the prospect of sex, nor the prospect of sex with Heero.  He was just blown away by the fact that he was actually considering having sex with someone.  He'd never gotten that far into a relationship before, but since he still wasn't feeling very sexually frustrated, no matter how supposedly frustrating Heero acted, he wasn't looking into the option as something for the near future.  "Look, maybe that little part of you isn't balking like you think it is.  Maybe... you're just surprised.  I mean, I do that, sometimes.  Things will just be perfectly normal and then suddenly, some random little thing makes me freeze and go, 'Holy crap!' and I realize just where it is I am, or what we're doing.  That makes sense, doesn't it?"  He certainly hoped so, since it was what he thought happened to himself, and he'd been operating on that theory for a couple of months now.

"But that would mean... huh."

Duo waited patiently for him to finish the thought, but it didn't come, so he prompted for it.  "What?"

"...So, taking your case, for example..."

"Hey, why are we picking on me?"  He had rather liked the focus being on someone else.

Heero, apparently, had no regard for that preference.  "When we... had our 'thing' over winter break.  That was you just going... 'holy crap'... and then freaking out about it."

"Uh, yeah."  Though that didn't have quite the attractive spin Duo managed to put on it sometimes.  "I mean, I didn't have any real objections to our relationship, right?  I just... well, got surprised.  And over a cell phone, no less."

"Hmm."  His contemplative sound gave Duo some hope that the subject of his own failings might be dropped, but to no avail.  "And after you got over that and got used to the everything again, things went on.  Even if it did take a little while."

"Um, yeah.  Can we talk about you again?"

After a startled pause, Heero chuckled.  "Alright.  Back to my, uh, little quirks."

"Your 'little quirks'," Duo repeated with a little amusement.  "Mm-hm.  So say, I don't know what set you off.  Say your mind finally caught up with things and got a little pissy we started the fun without it."  Heero snorted, but did not disagree, so Duo continued.  "Then all we have to do is wait for your mind to get up to speed with the rest of you, and then all will be right with the world, right?"

He sounded just a little too chipper to not be trying to brush something underneath the rug, but Heero was willing to go with that for now, at least until something proved the theory false.  He hummed cautious agreement.

"Great."  Duo rolled himself onto his side so he could leer playfully at Heero.  "I think practice makes perfect.  We should give your mind more opportunities to get used to things.  What do you say?"

Heero rolled his eyes.  "Not in Trowa's bed, we won't.  Come on."  He slipped out from beneath Duo's presence and got to his feet.  Once he was standing, he offered Duo his hand.

Duo took it, smiled up at him, and shifted his balance to get up, but in the middle of the action, he came to a sudden halt.

"...What?" Heero asked.

Indigo eyes darted quickly from left to right.  "...Holy crap!"

"What?" Heero asked again, a little more sharply.  Was this another example of what Duo had just been talking about?  What was it that Duo was abruptly recognizing?

"Clowns!" the frozen young man choked out, shrinking in on himself a bit.  His grip on Heero's hand tightened.  "They're everywhere!"

... Oh.  Heero cast a glance at the clown decor that had been gracing Trowa's room for so long that he didn't even notice it anymore.  He supposed Duo had been concentrating on the occupants of the bed and hadn't noticed it, either.  He gave Duo's hand a tug, but it was unresponsive.  Duo's face was still fixed in a wide-eyed expression of deer-in-the-headlights.  Heero sighed minutely and thought it was a good thing Duo was so spaced out he didn't notice the tiny smile on Heero's face.  "Come on," he coaxed, shifting to stand directly in front of Duo, blocking off the view.  He set his free hand to Duo's face and gently refocused the shocked gaze on himself.  With a few more quiet words of encouragement, he got Duo to stand up, hide his face in Heero's shoulder, and let himself be led blindly out of the room.

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