---------------------
 X'mas AC198 Part XII
~ A Moment of Haven ~
---------------------
	"Duo."

	"Mmm?"

	"Tapping on my arm like that won't convince me that you're 
asleep."

	The restless fingers froze for a moment before twitching into a 
semi-relaxed state.  "Oh.  Sorry."

	Heero exhaled calmly as he settled his mind back into the sleep 
state, but the intangible wakefulness of the young man by his side kept 
him from succeeding.  "I think I like you better when you don't think."

	"Oh?  You just like me for my good looks!"

	"Mm-hm.  Inside and out," he intoned piously.

	Duo puzzled over that one, trying to pin down just what was 
wrong about that answer.  "...I think that sounds better if I say you 
like me just 'cuz I'm beautiful, or something."

	"If I have to wait for you to call yourself beautiful before I 
can say something like that, I'm going to be waiting for a very long 
time."

	"Ha, you got that right."  The rightness made him feel warm and 
fuzzy inside, and he snuggled into a cozier position, his heart content 
with the world.  Unfortunately, his mind was slow to follow.  It turned 
three times in place, chasing its tail in an effort to get comfortable, 
failed, and then tried again.  "Take it where you can get it, huh?" he 
muttered, half to himself.

	Heero responded.  "Aa.  That's always been our MO.  Take 
advantage of the opportunities as they present themselves. ...Why?" he 
concluded reluctantly.  He knew Duo's question was neither idle nor 
entirely rhetorical, but that didn't necessarily mean he wanted to 
acknowledge it and thus grant it power.  More power, that was.  Tricky 
little thing had already gained a foothold on his companion's 
consciousness.

	"Oh..."  Duo's fingers dropped a ponderous roll of beats upon 
Heero's forearm.  "Nothing really."

	Heero made a doubtful sound.

	Yeah, Duo hadn't really believed it either, but it was always 
worth a try.  A guy couldn't get anywhere in life if he gave up too 
easily.  "The guys were fooling around today.  Don't remember where you 
were at the time.  We were just talking, doing our normal thing, and, 
hm, I think it was Wufei?  He was like, I don't know how Yuy puts up 
with you!  And I stuck my tongue out in your defense and said you were 
just special like that."

	"Hn.  Thank you."

	Duo pressed his lips to Heero's flannel-clad shoulder.  "So 
anyway, I thought, what if that really does make you special?  Like, 
what if you really are the only one that could put up with me?"

	Being special wasn't always a bad thing.  "What's wrong with 
that?  Not that I'm agreeing that it's true."

	"I don't know... Not like I think this is 'taking what I can 
get' or anything."  Because he was *so* not sleeping with Trowa.  "If 
that was the case, well, damn, turns out I could get an awful lot.  
But... hell, feels almost just like dumb luck that we managed to get 
together, then.  Do you know how many people there are in this world?"

	And out of those billions, for the two of them to manage to find 
each other?  "I wouldn't call it 'dumb luck'.  Sometimes, luck is just 
luck."

	"It's just dumb luck that we managed to be in the same place at 
the same time," Duo insisted.  "Well, not really so much that part.  
Maybe it's more like dumb luck that I happened to board that one 
transport that happened to house the secret base of rebel operations for 
the L2 cluster, and maybe it's dumb luck that you happened to... I don't 
know, what was it?"

	"Happened to be in the right alley at the right time."  Though 
sometimes, he questioned the coincidence of it.

	"Yeah, that.  'Cuz that stuff happened to put us on a collision 
course."  Duo shook his head, cheek rubbing against soft cotton.  He'd 
have to shave in the morning.  "Dumb luck, man."

	"I wouldn't call it 'dumb'," Heero refuted again, staring at the 
ceiling through the darkness as if he could find an answer up there.  
"Maybe I wouldn't even call it 'luck'."

	"Don't give me any crap about 'fate' or 'destiny'.  I know you 
don't believe in that, either."  As romantic as the guy was, there was a 
big fat line drawn in the sand between sentimentality and reason.

	He sighed silently.  "Sometimes, good things happen.  The same 
as bad things happen.  Maybe we're 'fortunate' that a good thing 
happened to us.  But I wouldn't call it luck.  Things worked out in our 
favor.  That's all."

	"Good things happening randomly?  I call that dumb luck."

	"Maybe we're lucky that the great pseudo-random number generator 
in the sky happened to be seeded with a number that was good for us, but 
other than that, the world is mostly deterministic.  It was an orderly 
progression of events that put us in that alley and on that ship, which 
led to our meeting."

	"Call it what you want, Yuy.  I still call it 'dumb luck'.  
Maybe your pseudo-random number generator's only pseudo-random from the 
point of view of the head honcho upstairs, but down here, 
pseudo-random's as good as random.  And that's dumb luck.  Seed it with 
a different number, and we'd be somewhere else entirely."

	"And maybe there are an infinite number of parallel universes 
out there seeded with a different number, but from the point of view of 
us little people down here, they're as good as non-existent."  He knew 
Duo hated it when his own logic was turned against him, but it was 
usually the most effective approach.  He twined their fingers together 
loosely, half in apology, half to further his point.  "-This- is all 
that matters."

	Duo frowned, but it wasn't as if he wanted to deny it.  "I don't 
like dumb luck.  It's unreliable."

	"Sounds like something I would say."

	"Hey, I didn't say it was 'inefficient' or something.  Just 
unreliable.  I've got every right not liking 'unreliable'."

	Heero had a long and documented history of not liking it either.  
Maybe he didn't agree about this 'luck' thing, but he definitely agreed 
about the dependability of the unplanned confluence of events.  Since he 
hadn't been experiencing any unease about their relationship for that 
reason, he knew there was a way around it floating around in his head 
somewhere.  It took him a few moments to find it.  "It isn't 'dumb luck' 
that keeps us together, Duo.  Maybe it brought us together physically, 
but it wasn't dumb luck that brought us -really- together.  And it 
certainly doesn't keep us together."

	Duo was silent for half a minute, dwelling on that.  "What, good 
relationships require work, and all that jazz?"

	"Things require regular maintenance, if you want them to last."

	"Heh, now there's something I understand."  Heero always did 
seem to have a knack for putting things into a perspective that 
resonated with him.  "I do like maintenance, keeping things in good 
working order.  And you like keeping things squeaky clean."

	"Things can be hidden beneath the dirt."  Well, that and he just 
liked things squeaky clean.  Neat and orderly.  Ready for anything.

	"So I guess between the two of us... we get a lot of maintenance 
done."

	"Aa."

	Duo chuckled suddenly.

	"Hm?"

	He shook his head, nuzzling Heero's pajama-covered shoulder 
again.  "Nothing."  He'd just had a sudden thought on the topic of lube 
jobs.  "Good night, Heero."

	Heero placed a kiss upon the crown of his head.  "Good night, 
Duo."  With a soft sigh now that that was taken care of to his 
satisfaction, he cleared his mind of everything but the contentment and 
composed himself for sleep once more.  Several minutes later, he exhaled 
almost audibly.  "Duo."

	"Hm?"  It only crossed Duo's mind to sound sleepy after the 
fact.

	"You're still not asleep."

	"Neither are you," he pointed out softly, making it more a 
statement of the obvious than a defensive line.

	"That's because you haven't fallen asleep yet."  At least Duo 
hadn't been tapping his arm this time, but there was still something in 
the air that spelled activity.

	Duo gave up any pretense at all of sleepiness in favor of 
indignation.  "That's unfair.  Totally chicken and egg.  Maybe I haven't 
fallen asleep yet because you haven't fallen asleep yet.  Ever think of 
that, flyboy?"

	"Then why am I more asleep than you are?"

	He faltered, nonplussed for just a moment before he realized the 
utter fallacy of the claim.  "You are not."

	Not anymore, certainly.  "Duo...."

	"Argh, don't look at me like that."  It may have been dark, but 
he could hear the shift of Heero's head upon the pillow, and Heero had 
always had a weighty gaze.  Lips touched his forehead, ghosted around up 
there before descending.  He found himself lifting his head the final 
few centimeters to bring their mouths together, where Heero tacitly 
conveyed a patient question.  Duo pulled back and let his head thump 
back against the pillow.  "I like it better when I don't think, too."

	"What's on your mind?"

	"Almost nothing, really.  So not important.  Doesn't mean a 
thing."

	"But you can't stop thinking about it."

	It was just one of those nights when his brain just wouldn't 
shut the hell up.  It didn't necessarily mean that he was thinking about 
anything worth thinking about.  "Sheesh," he complained, rolling away 
from Heero's side.  "I'm going to be over here.  You go on to sleep."

	As if Heero could do that, knowing Duo wasn't doing the same.  
"But it's cold over there."

	"Maybe it'll take my mind off things, then."  Heero rolled 
toward him, but Duo batted him away with his hands.  "No, shoo, back to 
your side!  Sleep!"

	With an amused sigh, Heero returned to his former position and 
started a countdown for how long it would take before Duo came back.  In 
good conscience, he did give Duo the benefit of the doubt, but the 
subtly restless shifting from the other side of the bed made clear the 
results of his efforts.  "Duo..."

	"Dangit, I hate thinking!" he burst out quietly, turning back to 
his favorite bed-warmer.  "Distract me!"

	Heero reached out to the bedside table and flipped the light on.

	"Ow!" he hissed, reversing course and burying his face in his 
pillow.  "I didn't say blind me!"

	Blinking calmly as his eyes adjusted, Heero placed a hand 
lightly on the back of Duo's head.  "I don't feel like talking in the 
dark tonight."

	"I didn't say 'talk' to me," he grumped, withdrawing from the 
pillow and squinting at his partner.  "I said, distract me."

	Heero made a sound of exasperated affection.  "Whoever said it 
was right.  How -do- I put up with you?"

	"By distracting me?" he answered hopefully.

	Both exasperation and affection increased, rendering Heero 
helpless to resist pecking Duo on the cheek.

	Hardly a distraction.  Duo had better ideas, and they involved a 
much more firm application of lips to lips.  He convinced Heero of his 
superior plans with little difficulty, moving happily back into the heat 
they had generated before his short-lived camp-out in the cold.  It had 
been long enough to leech some of the warmth from his extremities, and 
he supposed the way the blankets slid off his shoulders as he moved 
against his playmate didn't quite help with the heat issue, but ooh 
there was Heero all warm and snuggly and he bet that skin was all hot 
and just begging to be touched.  He unbuttoned Heero's shirt lazily and 
slid his hands inside, pulling the good kind of shiver out of Heero as 
cold air hit and his cooled fingers ran over smooth skin.  It wasn't 
long before he withdrew with a mild pout.  "You know, these really 
aren't as fun to play with when the cold has made them all pointy on 
their own."

	"Hm?" Heero blinked groggily at him.

	He flicked a hard nipple.  "Quick, give me something else to 
play with."

	"Like wha--aah, cold~!"

	"Heh, oops, sorry."  He pulled his hand out of Heero's pants 
quickly.  "Hey, you weren't complaining before."

	"You weren't anywhere so sensitive before," Heero answered 
wryly, granting him a mild glare.

	"Ah.  Sorry."  He apologized with a butterfly kiss on the lips 
and hoped the incident wasn't enough to create any negative associations 
for his would-be lover.

	Heero took his wandering hand and warmed it between his own.  
"Just tell me what's on your mind, before you go freezing my balls off, 
okay?"

	His snicker turned into a sound of resignation, and he fell back 
into a neutral position off to Heero's side.  His chin made acquaintance 
with a shoulder that was still covered by flannel, but his hand found 
some old friends on Heero's bared abdominal muscles.  Three of his 
fingers dipped cautiously just a couple of centimeters under the 
waistband of Heero's pants, chasing those bumps south.  "Buttoned or 
unbuttoned?" he asked as a stalling tactic, rationalizing that it was 
only friendly of him to offer to put back what he had displaced.

	The irrelevant question cost Heero a few seconds' thought, but 
eventually, he ended up choosing option C.

	Duo watched with a pleased grin as Heero tugged the shirt off 
entirely.  "Mmmm, now you're distracting me," he murmured against skin 
once Heero had settled back down again.

	"Be distracted, or talk.  One way or another, you're getting to 
sleep."

	He licked at a collar-bone half-heartedly, finding himself too 
distracted by bad things to be distracted by the good thing.  
Disgruntled, he retreated.  "You're going to tell me it's nothing."

	"But I doubt that will be enough to get you to sleep, so out 
with it."

	Finding another way to delay, Duo pulled the displaced blankets 
back over Heero's chest and tucked it in around his shoulders, but the 
task was finished soon enough, leaving him with no more defense.  "How 
much maintenance do we really do?"

	"What do you mean?" Heero asked carefully.

	"I mean... how hard have we really worked on our relationship?  
What has there been to work on?  Things have gone pretty smoothly, don't 
you think?  A little too smoothly?"

	"Smooth is good, isn't it?"

	"But how can we do maintenance if there's nothing going wrong?"

	"Isn't the point of maintenance to keep things from going 
wrong?"

	"It's to keep big terrible things from happening, like your 
engine falling out.  That doesn't mean there isn't even a screw loose 
that needs just a tiny bit of tightening."

	Oh, there were plenty of screws loose tonight.  "Maybe we've 
been tightening enough that we barely even notice."

	"Well, okay, maybe there was that one notable exception where 
we, erm, disagreed.  But those were extenuating circumstances.  All the 
maintenance in the world ain't gonna help you when meet a beam scythe 
slicing through your cockpit."

	"It didn't go through our cockpit," Heero replied, a little 
testily.  "If it did, we wouldn't be here right now.  And maybe 
maintenance kept our reaction time high so we could partially dodge the 
blow."

	"There's gotta be stupid little things we don't agree on," Duo 
muttered, not really responding to Heero's last remark.  He had already 
moved on to other things.

	"There are plenty of stupid little things we don't agree on."  
Did this one count?  "We just don't make a big deal out of them."

	"So does that mean we're just ignoring them?"

	"No, it means we're intelligent enough to know what matters, and 
to let the little things go."  He'd thought this was obvious.  "We're 
both really quirky people, Duo."  To put it mildly.  "We'd never get 
anywhere if we didn't learn to let things go."

	"But that's not really the same as maintenance, is it?"

	"Maybe it's the letting go that's maintenance," he tried.  
"Maybe every time you acknowledge these little things, and then decide 
to let it go, maybe that's maintenance because you're reminding yourself 
of what really matters."

	The short silence implied Heero was getting through to him, but 
it was broken with an amused snort.  "I was talking to Quatre today."

	"Uh-oh."

	"No, this was good.  He apologized, see?"

	"For what?"

	"For getting you into trouble."

	"He apologized to you, but he didn't apologize to me?"

	"Hey, you agreed to go along with him of your own free will."

	"Hmph."  What sort of free will was there when one was with 
Quatre hellbent on a mission?  "So if it was so good, then...?"

	Duo waved his fingers vaguely a little.  "He was just doing his 
usual thing, trying to convince me how completely weird we are."

	"I bet he doesn't have to try very hard."

	"Yeah, normally I'd agree, all things considered, but he's 
really not very good at it, strangely enough."  He paused a moment to 
puzzle over that fact before setting it loose with a mental shrug.  "He 
brought up the penguin thing."

	"Penguin...?"  Heero flipped through his memory bank for 
references to penguins, found the cross-reference to Antarctica, and 
figured it out.  "Oh.  What about it?"

	"He thought I totally blew you off when you were having your 
little penguin crisis."

	"You -did- blow me off."  And it was really more of a pristine 
nature crisis.  The penguins were just a convenient vehicle for 
representing that.

	Duo rubbed his belly, like that would make everything better.  
"Well, yeah, I know, but I apologized for that, and we talked the whole 
thing out later that night, which makes it okay.  And you weren't like 
on your knees bawling or anything.  You were just kind of grumpy.  And, 
you know, home's a different place.  Anyway.  Okay, yeah, I guess that 
qualifies as a disagreement, but that was just once in how long?"

	Heero let out a puff of air.  "I'm not sure where you're going 
with this, Duo.  You think we should fight more often?"  Was that what 
couples were made of these days?

	"Well, no, but... it's making me antsy, you know?"

	Not at all.  "Why?"

	"You know I hate waiting for the big shoe to drop."

	"Which shoe would that be?"

	"The really big one that comes out of nowhere because we haven't 
argued about anything stupid for a while and it's high time we did."

	"No, it's not."

	Duo huffed impatiently, waiting for Heero to catch his drift.  
"We have to reconcile these things, man!  Who knows when they'll spring 
on us?  So come on, there's gotta be something about me you don't like!  
Some stupid thing I do that you can't stand."

	Heero inhaled, held the breath, then exhaled it carefully.  "You 
have a few quirks, Duo.  I love you anyway."

	"Not the point.  ...I love you, too," he appended as a quick 
aside, congratulating himself for remembering to get that in there.  
"But so not the point.  Come on, it can't be that hard.  Be pig-headed 
about something.  Do it for me?"

	He would do a lot of things for Duo, and some of them quite 
irrational, but this?  That was up in the air.  "Duo... we've wandered 
down that path before.  The notable exception, remember?  I don't want 
to do that again."

	Duo's eyes grew wide.  "You mean there's another notable 
exception lurking out there?  Dammit, I knew it!  I hate it when I'm 
right."

	"That's not what I meant.  I mean... why are we trying to find 
something wrong again?"

	"I know there are things about each other that we can overlook.  
But I refuse to believe that we're so stupidly in love that there isn't 
anything at all we don't agree on.  I'm not talking about big 
philosophical issues, here.  I'm talking stupid little things.  We can't 
be that ridiculously happy.  Ridiculous happiness is a symptom of a 
terrible, terrible problem.  So come on, give it to me straight: what is 
there about me that drives you nuts?"

	"...Does this count?"

	"No."

	"Hn."  Geez, did they have to do this *right now*?  Apparently, 
yes, judging from the way Duo was sending out enough nervous energy for 
the both of them.  "Calm down, already.  I'm thinking."  Stupid little 
thing, Duo had said.  So now wasn't the time to bring up his utter 
inability to have faith in anything simply good.  Heero didn't know if 
he'd bring it up, even if it was the time.  It may have been irritating 
on occasion, but it was a large part of Duo's personality, and he didn't 
really have a problem with Duo's personality.  Not as a whole.  A few 
small parts here and there, maybe, but if they changed, then the whole 
would change, and that wouldn't be any good at all.

	Duo's foot started to jiggle.

	"Okay, why don't you go first?" Heero challenged.  "Is there 
something that I do that drives you nuts?"

	"Umm."  Well, he could think of a lot of things, really, but 
none of them things he really wanted to bring up.  Besides, attacking a 
guy's martyr complex was like torturing puppies.  He said stupid little 
things, right?  "Erm."

	"So there."

	"Shut up.  I'm thinking."

	They lapsed into silence.  Heero held out hope that maybe, just 
maybe, they'd fall asleep before either of them could come up with 
anything, but he wasn't counting on it.  So he stared at the ceiling, 
Duo stared at the fabric of their comforter, and they thought.  And 
thought.  And thought some more.

	Heero broke first.  "You know those cookies you buy sometimes?  
Those lemon tea cookies, or whatever they are?"

	Duo's heart almost skipped a beat.  "You don't like them?"

	"I like them.  I just..."  Was he really about to say this?  He 
glanced at Duo out of the corner of his eye, and decided yes, he really 
was.  "I just... don't get why you have to pull the two sides apart 
first before you eat them separately."

	Duo stared at him for a few seconds, blinked a couple of times, 
and then let out a strained chuckle.  "Shit, talk about stupid little 
thing.  You don't like the way I eat my cookies?"

	"If they had meant for you to pull them apart before eating 
them, they wouldn't have glued the two sides together with cream."

	"You're friggin' annoyed by the way I eat my cookies?  Why 
didn't you ever say something?"

	"Because they're cookies, Duo," Heero almost but not quite 
snapped.  This was all Duo's fault.  He brought them to this place.  
"Cookies.  Not important in the grand scheme of things.  Besides... you 
obviously enjoy doing it.  It just... I'm not 'frigging annoyed'.  Yes, 
I don't find it to be very... 'civilized'.  But mostly, it just baffles 
me why you do this."

	Civilized? Duo thought.  His fingers tightened in the sheets for 
a moment before he consciously unclenched them and gathered his thoughts 
into a tight formation.  "Yes, I enjoy doing it.  Have I ever really 
thought about it?  Not really.  Maybe I just want to stretch them out or 
something.  It's like having two cookies for the price of one.  Maybe I 
just like to toy with my food.  I don't know why.  But... I guess I 
could try stopping."

	Heero sighed.  "You don't need to stop eating your cookies the 
way you want to eat them.  I think you'll find they taste the exact same 
if you eat them whole, but if you enjoy it, then go right on ahead and 
enjoy it."

	Reconciliation was fun and easy, see?  Though... maybe a little 
too easy.  Maybe there was something to Heero's theory that they were 
reasonable people, willing to accept and bend and compromise without 
much fuss.  Dammit.  "Well... if you eat both sides together, there are 
probably more crumbs.  'Cuz you got two sides crumbling at once instead 
of one, and it's harder to track them all like that."

	Slowly, Heero turned to look at him with a raised eyebrow.

	Duo shrugged.  He'd thought a cleanliness argument might win him 
points.  "Well, we'll see what happens the next time I pick up some of 
those cookies."

	Heero grunted neutrally.  "So?  Think of anything for me yet?"

	"Umm."  There had been one just on the tip of his brain before 
Yuy had spoken.  What was it again?  Oh yes.  "Well, I was wondering... 
You're a good cook, Heero.  Not getting into the discussion of who cooks 
better, but you make good food.  Solid home-cooking, and none of this 
frou-frou stuff you see out in the wild.  But..."

	"Just spit it out, Duo," Heero prompted with a roll of his eyes.  
He wanted to get at least some sleep tonight.

	"But... you know.  Maybe... experimenting with some spices or 
something might be interesting."

	"Why don't -you- experiment with spices?" was his grumbly 
retort.

	"Because -you- don't seem to like spices!" Duo answered, pretty 
much throwing up his hands.  "You like things mildly flavored.  Am I 
right?  I don't want to go spiking your food with weird things if you 
don't like that stuff."

	Great, so he asked Heero to spike his own food with that stuff?  
"I just believe that the natural flavors of whatever it is you're 
cooking should be present.  Otherwise, there's no point in cooking it."  
He paused thoughtfully, then urged himself into acknowledging the larger 
reason behind it.  "And... I guess I'm just used to heavy seasoning 
masking something."

	Duo was familiar with that.  "You mean like, spoiled food?"

	There was a possibility.  "Or... like poison."  He got a little 
defensive when Duo shifted to stare at him with a bland tilt of the 
head.  "What?  I don't think someone's trying to poison me, any more 
than I think there's someone out there targeting me with a sniper scope, 
but when you make your living by killing people stealthily, you think 
about these things."

	Duo grunted, but went back to a resting position.

	Heero counted to five before continuing.  "I can... try.  A 
little something.  I'm sure there are ways to season something 
delicately."

	"And... I'm sure that cookies taste the same whether you eat 
them whole or in halves."

	The count went to ten this time before Heero spoke again.  
"Okay, so now what?  We have found things that annoy us about each 
other.  The big shoe has... I don't know.  Revealed itself or something.  
Our relationship is now complete.  Can we go to sleep now?"

	Another long pause, and then Duo chuckled, shifting so he look 
his stalwart companion in the eye.  "How -do- you put up with me?"

	Heero kissed him since he was conveniently there and all.  "You 
have a few quirks, Duo.  But I love you anyw-- well.  I'll just say I 
love you and leave it at that."

	"Love ya, too, teanut."

	"Great.  So can we go to sleep now?"



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last modified : 6/18/2006 21:30:52 PST