---------------------
    Zero Tolerance
~ A Moment of Haven ~
---------------------
	I found Duo downstairs dusting the plants off.  Before finishing 
up with Henry, he gave the hibiscus a pat upon its leafy crown, as was 
his custom, before moving on to Kain, the bamboo.  I had initially 
rejected the idea of naming our plants, but 'Henry' was easier to say 
than 'the hibiscus', and what if one day we picked up another bamboo?  I 
would have to draw the line at naming the second one 'Abel', however.  
Duo had already gifted each of them with a personality; I could imagine 
what sort of trouble would ensue with names like those.  Luckily, Duo's 
sense of religious propriety would probably make it a non-issue.

	"Duo?  Have you seen my datalink cable?"

	He blinked a few times, not in surprise.  He would have heard me 
coming down the stairs, felt me enter the room.  Ever since we began 
rooming with each other back in school, we had made some effort to walk 
so that it didn't seem like we were stalking prey.  It had made both of 
us jumpy to have a silent assassin in the room, even if neither of us 
were assassinating at the time.  It was an engrained behavior.  Although 
one day, we sat down and analyzed it, and decided that we weren't really 
walking any more noisily than we had been.  Perhaps there was simply an 
intangible, ominous presence that we ceased to exude.

	So Duo blinked, and got that look on his face that said he was 
looking up references to 'datalink cable' in his short-term memory.  
"Oh, yeah," he said after a few moments of silence.  "I borrowed it a 
while back to download a pic off my camera.  I have it upstairs.  Let me 
get it for you."

	He finished up with Kain first, noting a browning tip with a 
frown, before coming my way to head upstairs.  As he brushed by me, he 
slipped his hand wordlessly into mine and pulled me along behind him.

	Hm.  That was new.  Since we rarely went out, it wasn't as if we 
had done much strolling while holding hands.  I don't know if we would 
have if we did.  I took a moment to examine his hand in mine.

	It was a little cooler than mine.  That was to be expected.  
This was Duo, after all.  He didn't put out as much heat as I did.

	It was... comforting, in its own strange, dangerous way.  He had 
taken a hold of my left hand.  He knew I liked to have my right side 
free in case of emergency.  Although I had acquired a decent amount of 
ambidexterity, I still preferred my right side.  Duo, being naturally 
left-handed, had no problems with tying up his right hand.  If it got 
down to it, I guess, it probably wouldn't make much of a difference to 
him.  It was a right-handed world, as Duo had said when I'd asked him.  
He had learned to be right-handed a long, long time ago, so he was about 
equally skilled with both.

	It was... still surprising.  That I would ever be holding hands 
with someone.  It wasn't something I had considered much before.  I had 
thought about it in an academic sort of way.  When I saw people on the 
streets holding hands, or when I thought about what a kid my age ought 
to have been doing with his life.  It just never seemed to be something 
that would fit into my life.

	It was... reassuring.  That things were settling down.  That 
everything in life didn't have to be reduced to a fight or flight 
response.  Here was a piece of sheer frivolity, and I didn't have any 
good reason not to engage in it.

	It was... sort of exciting, too.  The way he tugged me along 
felt like he was leading me to some secret place, even though I knew 
very well that we were just heading up to his room to fetch a cable.  I 
wondered if I would have the same sensation if I were walking side by 
side with him, but the staircase and hallway weren't wide enough to 
freely permit that.  I made a note to myself to try it some time when I 
had the opportunity.

	Our hands slipped apart when he got near his desk so he could 
rummage through one of his drawers, and I waited for him.  "Got it," he 
said, pulling the short cable out and handing it to me.  "Here ya go."

	I reached out to take it, and our hands came close to each 
other.  In his face I saw that tiny hint of nervousness I often saw when 
he wasn't quite sure of something.  It was in the way he didn't meet my 
eyes with his chin held high, instead with that slight downward tilt of 
his head that was by no means coy.  He was probably wondering what I 
thought of the way he had taken my hand into his.  I liked it, so I let 
my fingers brush up against his as I took the cable from him, and 
murmured my thanks to him with what could loosely be interpreted as a 
smile.

	He smiled a much better smile in response.  "Doing the data dump 
from the collective again?" he asked brightly, following me as I left 
the room and headed down the hall towards my own.

	"Aa."  How would it feel if I took his hand in mine and led him 
towards my room?  Would he feel the same way that I did?  Or would he 
feel something special and Duo-like?

	"Why don't you just get some wireless cards for those things?  
Or are they too old to support them?"

	The computer network I kept running in my room was a collection 
of refurbished Preventers' boxes, stripped and connected so that I 
basically had one large multi-processor parallel computing array.  It 
was just another thing that Duo had named.  He couldn't decide whether 
to address it as a singular or a plural entity.  I had tweaked the 
hardware enough to install some of the latest heat-sinks, rather than 
running with fans for ventilation.  That would have been noisy.  The hum 
of one computer I found familiar and comforting.  The hum of six 
computers was just annoying.  "I could force it to support the wireless.  
But I'd rather not."

	"What, security reasons?"

	I built the wireless network inside our home.  I knew the exact 
area of coverage, I knew the strength and rotating frequencies of the 
signal, I knew the layers of encryption it had, and still I didn't 
entirely trust it.  Wireless had inherent vulnerabilities.  Either I was 
paranoid, or I wasn't confident in my own work.  Sadly, paranoia was the 
better answer.

	Duo took my lack of response as a 'yes', and rolled his eyes at 
me.  "Heero, you'd be transmitting over a distance only something like 
ten centimeters.  What could possibly intercept that signal?  Besides, 
you trust the wireless network for a lot of other stuff we float around 
this house, and this is just the data from your pet project, which would 
probably be pretty indecipherable to anyone else anyway.  I think you're 
just too lazy to upgrade them."

	True to a certain extent.  There had been no reason to upgrade 
the array.  We had installed the wireless transmitters for increased 
mobility with our laptops and other electronic devices that took 
advantage of the net access, but the collective didn't move.  But now 
there was a different reason.  "This isn't just my pet project anymore."

	"Oh?"

	I plugged the cable into the collective and my waiting laptop, 
and began initiating the data transfer.  "Une has a developed an 
interest in my research."

	"How did she even find out you were researching something?"  He 
dropped himself down on my bed.  Three years ago, I had found that 
intrusive.  The bed was an extension of my personal space.  Now, I found 
it perfectly natural that Duo be in my bed.  ...  Umm, on my bed.  Or, 
let's just say, in my personal space, shall we?  That's more accurate in 
a general sense, anyway.

	I put my mind back on track.  "She just happened to be 
interested in what I was researching.  She doesn't know that I've been 
looking into the matter for a while now."

	"Aren't you just playing with neural net stuff?  Hence the big 
computer thing?"  He gestured vaguely at the array of hardware.  It took 
time and a lot of processing power to train a neural net of any decent 
complexity.

	"Well, yes, but...."  I paused with a faint surprise that I had 
never mentioned to Duo just what sort of simulations I was running on my 
multi-processors, and that Duo had never asked.  He knew that I had 
developed an interest in artificial intelligence after the war, and 
maybe even why, but it seemed he didn't realize what my current work was 
centered around.  I started out just 'playing around', but after I 
familiarized myself with the topic, I jumped into bigger things.  "But 
I'm studying a particular application of them."

	He looked at me with suspicion in his eye.  "Like what, 
exactly?"

	I don't think it was just coincidence that I never told anyone 
what I was up to.  I thought it was fairly innocuous, but then again, 
I've been told that I'm fairly crazy, too.

	As I prepared to answer his question, I wondered if I had that 
same expression on my face that Duo got on his when he wasn't certain of 
something.  I knew he was going to get worked up over this, so I told 
myself to avoid defensiveness at all costs.  He was a trained terrorist, 
and would attack if he saw a weakness.  "Like the Zero system," I tossed 
out in a nonchalant answer.  Into a heavy silence, my laptop beeped its 
completion of the data transfer, and with a few keystrokes I ran it 
through the visualization and analysis tool.

	"...I'm sorry.  Did I hear that correctly?  Did you just say 
that you're running the ZERO system on that thing?"  His tone would have 
been friendly enough, if the end of his sentence hadn't been ground out 
through his teeth.

	"Aa."  I waited patiently for the outburst I knew was coming.  I 
was shortly gratified.

	"Are you insane?!"  He sat straight up and fixed me with a 
wide-eyed glare.

	"It's not like Zero is going to jump out of the computer and 
take over the world or anything.  And it's just a simulation of it."  Of 
course, I knew that reason would get me nowhere at the moment, but I had 
to try.

	"How long have you been doing this?"  I think his left eye 
twitched, but that may have been my imagination.

	I shrugged.  It was hard to pin down the exact moment I really 
started going through Zero's systems.  It had been my goal from the very 
beginning, realized or not.  "About a year."

	"And you didn't tell me!?"

	I didn't think that 'you didn't ask' would be the appropriate 
answer.  "Tell you what, Duo?  I'm just analyzing the numbers."

	His eyes narrowed.  "Wait a minute.  Where did you get the 
numbers from?"

	Ah, this would probably be an even bigger secret than the actual 
neural net analysis.  Not telling Duo the truth never really occurred to 
me, though.  "I salvaged Zero's core processing unit."

	He stared at me long and hard.  "And you keep that where?"

	"In the storage closet."  The one with the lock on the door.  In 
an unmarked case with a combination lock.  Under the old camo net we 
kept around for no particular reason.  In the back corner.

	There was another lengthy silence, and then he spoke in a even 
tone.  "So... you've been harboring a known felon here in this house for 
a couple of years now, and you never told me?"

	"A known felon?"  Now he was just being dramatic.  "If that's 
the case, then I've been harboring two known felons in this house -- 
three, if I count myself."

	"Our records have been cleared, Heero."

	"So don't I get the chance to clear Zero's?"

	He wore an expression of disbelief.  "Why would you want to?"

	"I know you and Zero didn't get along--"

	"Didn't get along?  He tried to eat me alive!"

	"Well, of course," I tried to explain reasonably.  "The net 
wasn't trained to handle your way of thinking."

	"Well, of course," he mimicked snappishly.  "Zero is a... a 
menace to society.  A danger to one's sanity.  Why are you studying that 
thing?  Want a higher score on the ZSST?"

	That would have been impossible.  My scores were already, by 
definition, the highest possible on the Zero Simulated Synchronization 
Test.  "You think I enjoy being the baseline on the ZSST?  It's 
practically a test of mental instability.  I think the worse you score 
on it, the better."

	"Amen to that.  Zero should be dragged out into the street and 
shot.  With the buster rifle.  Several times."

	"For what?  For being a weapon used in the war?"

	That earned me another burning stare before he threw up his 
hands and fell back onto my bed in exasperated disgust.  "God, Heero!  I 
can't believe this.  Of all the things in this whole bloody world you 
have to sympathize with, you have to sympathize with Zero?"

	The Zero system was more than just a computer program, and yet 
no more than a collection of bits.  More than just a war machine, no 
more than a pattern recognition system.  "Duo," I started, but I wasn't 
sure how to continue.

	"Heero," he answered right back.  He was still staring at the 
ceiling above my bed.  "Zero has got to be messing with your head or 
something."

	"No, he's not.  It's not."  I shook my head at the slip of my 
tongue.

	"He?" Duo repeated archly.  "You haven't had a Zero headache 
lately, have you?"

	"Of course not.  I haven't had one of those for years."  I'd 
only had those while we were in school.  I didn't miss the throbbing 
pain, or the hallucinatory flashes.  "Besides, those weren't a result of 
the Zero system itself, just the neural interface.  Zero wasn't designed 
to drive people crazy, Duo."

	"Oh?"  He sat himself up again so he could look at me.  "Then 
we'll just call it a major design flaw, since it managed to drive 
everyone that used it temporarily insane."

	"That's because it was designed for me!  Having other people use 
it was never a part of the design specification."

	"Oh, so it was only designed to drive you crazy?  That makes it 
all better."

	"Duo," I said impatiently.  "Think about it.  Zero is just a 
neural net.  You know how neural nets work.  When J first created the 
system, he trained it on data sets from *my* exercises.  Its network 
learned how to interpret my perceptions and my objectives, my way of 
thinking, in order to give me the information that I would need to 
perform optimally.  So obviously when you boot it up and use radically 
different data sets as input, you're going to end up with a garbled mess 
as the output.  Your way of thinking, and practically everyone's way of 
thinking, was different enough from mine that it couldn't process it 
correctly.  It wasn't trained to.  That's why you saw what you did."

	He chewed on that for a moment.  "No, that doesn't make sense.  
It drove you a little wacko when you started using it, too, until you 
got used to it."

	"I didn't get used to it, Duo.  It got used to me."  There I 
was, talking about Zero like it was a person again.  At the risk of 
sounding crazy, though, I admit to maybe treating it as a sentient 
entity at times.  Then again, I think all of us must have talked to our 
Gundams at some point.  "I changed, from the beginning of the war to the 
end of the war, or even from years before the war started.  From 
whenever it was that J collected the training data to when Quatre 
reconstructed his work, I changed.  Enough for me to receive slightly 
skewed output, but not enough for me to be as affected as you were.  
Trowa and Wufei didn't have as bad a time with it as you and Quatre did 
because they think similarly to the way that I do, or did, and you two 
didn't.  And then after I got a hold of the system, I dug around and 
re-enabled the learning module so that the net would be able to adjust 
its layers appropriately to fit my new input.  That's when we started 
being able to work effectively together."

	He sported a somewhat annoyed, contemplative look on his face.  
His lips were drawn together and his brow furrowed in a pout of 
concentration.  "Maybe," was the grudging concession.  "Still, Zero is 
dangerous, if nothing else than because it could fall into the wrong 
hands."

	"Duo, *we* could fall into the wrong hands."

	"But we could get out of them."

	"Zero won't work properly in the wrong hands, especially without 
a proper neural interface, and there aren't very many of those lying 
around.  Besides, now you're the only person in the world besides me 
that knows the Zero core didn't go up with the rest of the system.  Even 
Une doesn't know I have it."

	"Then why is she having you do research on it?"

	"I've been trying to convince her for months now that they 
should stop administering the ZSST, but she thinks they can get some 
useful information out of the test results.  All it's really doing is 
giving them the wrong impression about the whole thing."

	He rolled his eyes at me, but at least it was better than that 
scowl.  "So naturally you volunteered to provide them with more accurate 
information."

	Well, sort of.  I hadn't exactly wanted to hand over my 
analyses, but I thought it was more dangerous for them to be misinformed 
about Zero.  What if they eventually ended up deciding that Zero was 
something they wanted to use to their advantage?  Zero itself was 
unhelpful to them, but the underlying technology and algorithms were 
very powerful.  "I was thinking that I could provide them with the 
information that I wanted them to have."  I wasn't going to doctor any 
of the results -- I didn't have to.  I just didn't have to tell them 
everything.

	A tinge of amusement fell into his face.  "So doing this for Une 
puts you back on the payroll as active duty, right?"

	"Yes."  Not that money had anything to do with this.

	"So... you're being paid to do research you've already done, and 
you're not even going to give them all of the results?"

	"Well.  Yes."  It certainly sounded shady when he put it that 
way, but it didn't bother me any.

	"Sheesh, Heero."  He flopped himself back down again and 
muttered to himself.  "Of all things, why Zero?"

	I turned back to my laptop to disconnect the datalink cable.  
Why not Zero?  If I started condemning it, then I might as well start 
condemning myself.  Even beyond the fact that it was trained and tested 
with my data, there was the fact that Zero was just misunderstood.  Zero 
had only been put to a single application, and it had been judged solely 
on the basis of that one thing.  No one thought that it had any 
application beyond that, but all it really needed was a chance.

	Yes, call me crazy, but I sympathized with it.

	I wondered what would happen if I retrained Zero with a new set 
of data, something for peacetime.  It would have to be mine, unless I 
wanted to start all over again.  And if it were mine, with my current 
mindset...

	I nearly laughed aloud.  I wondered.  Would it find Duo 
attractive as I did?  Would it tell me the best way to pursue this 
relationship with him?  Would it be able to predict what move Duo would 
make next?

	Even from a purely engineering point of view, I wondered.  What 
sort of outputs would I get with the non-military input before it had 
been retrained?  Would it be able to get from the war application to the 
peace?  How much of a transition would it be, and could its learning 
algorithms accommodate that?

	I liked to think it could.  My own neural net had been able to 
adjust itself accordingly, after all.

                              ************

	Duo spent much of the rest of the day muttering to himself, 
asking the air why we couldn't be normal people that simply had 
skeletons in our closet, rather than weapons of mass destruction.  Why a 
skeleton would be better than a weapon, I didn't really understand.  And 
it wasn't as if he had a problem with all the C4 that was in there.  He 
really needed to accept the fact that we weren't normal people, and 
never would be.

	He did, actually.  He accepted that we weren't, and that we 
never would be, and that we in fact had no desire to be.  But that 
didn't stop him from wishing it in tiny doses every once in a while.  
From what I could tell, it was probably a response to the 'have' and 
'have-not' situation he had grown up with.  As a kid on the street, he 
had probably looked upon the so-called lucky and privileged kids -- the 
'normal' ones -- with both resentment and envy.

	I didn't really need to be normal.  I settled simply for not 
being a freak.  All I wanted was to be comfortable in my own skin, and 
to be free to choose the direction of my life.

	Nevertheless, I indulged him, but only to a limited extent.  
Normalcy was inefficient, after all.

                              ************

	He finally stopped his muttering some time that evening.  I was 
sitting on the sofa in front of the TV watching the news when he came 
in.  He paused very briefly in the doorway to take in the scene before 
sitting himself down on the sofa on my left.  I could tell by the 
comfortable proximity he had chosen that he was informing me that he was 
more or less over the whole Zero thing.  That was good, and we continued 
to watch the news in companionable silence.

	During the stock report, he spoke up.  "You know those black 
knives I have, the ones that fit into my boots?  They're made of 
gundanium, from a piece of 'Scythe's armor."

	The unexpected confession caught me off-guard for a moment or 
two, but I figured it was something he offered in exchange for the 
revelation he had received this afternoon.  One small secret for 
another.  His wasn't particularly earth-shattering -- no offense 
intended to him or Deathscythe, of course.  But it wasn't that he had 
done anything illicit that put the deed on par with my own; it was that 
he had preserved a piece of the machine that had been a part of him for 
so long, as I had.

	It wasn't surprising.  He loved his machine more than I did 
mine.

	Out of the corner of my eye, I could see he still had his 
attention seemingly focused on the screen in front of us, meaning that 
he didn't want to make a particularly big deal about it, so I merely 
acknowledged his words with an "Ah" and let the quiet understanding 
slide into place between us once more.

	As the business report began, a part of my mind continued its 
perpetual monitoring of Duo's presence.  He twiddled the end of his 
braid idly with one hand.  I knew that if I touched that hand with my 
own, it would probably still be slightly cool to the touch, an idea made 
strange only by the fact that I could feel the warmth of him by my side.

	Was the warmth imaginary, I wondered.  We weren't sitting all 
that close to each other.  Was he warming some element of me other than 
the physical?  That was entirely possible.  Was it that I could just 
feel him next to me, and I automatically translated that into a warmth?  
It could even have been that having him near me was raising my own 
internal temperature, in fact or in perception.  Whatever it was, it 
warmed me.

	I considered that instead of sitting in front of the TV watching 
the news, I could have just surfed the net and read the news.  That way, 
I could have gotten only the information that I was interested in.  On 
the other hand, I could have missed something in not reading about the 
things that I was not interested in.  And of course, there was Duo.  
Watching the news was something we had often done together ever since 
moving here.  Human company was nice sometimes.

	When the world news report broke for local news, Duo started the 
next short conversation with a chuckle.  "Don't most normal people sit 
down and watch movies with each other or something?"

	"But the news is good," I felt obliged to point out.  "It's 
important to stay informed."

	"Well, I'm not saying that it's not good," he was quick to 
answer.  "Just that the news is... well... not fun, anyway.  People 
don't get together to watch the news."

	"We do."  Although we didn't 'get together' so much as end up 
together on the sofa.  "We both keep up with the news.  Why shouldn't we 
do it together?  It would be very impractical for us not to share the 
TV."

	I could feel the expression on his face without looking.  
Something told me I was probably missing his point.  Perhaps he was 
trying to imply that the news was not romantic or something?  Which, to 
me, didn't make sense, since I didn't think it mattered what was on, so 
long as we were doing it together.  Perhaps this was just another one of 
his 'normal' things, another fine example of how 'normal' got in the way 
of rational behavior.  Surely people in relationships did things that 
people not in relationships also did.  Our watching the news together 
didn't preclude us from watching movies with each other or the like.  
"If there's something else on later, then we can watch that, too," I 
offered.  I hoped 'something else' would consist of something 
interesting or informative.  I didn't care for most movies.

	It was little more than a tiny puff of breath, but I thought it 
may have been a sigh.  I wasn't sure if it was a good sigh or a bad 
sigh, although his following voice leaned more towards the former than 
the latter.  Of course, with Duo that was hardly a sure sign of 
anything.  "Yeah, sure."

	I waited patiently for Duo to give me some more hints.  
Sometimes it seemed as if he was thinking about our relationship even 
more than I was.  Considering the fact that Duo always told me that I 
think too much about everything, that was rather impressive.

	Strange, how our positions had switched.  I don't think I had 
ever been so relaxed about something.  I always wanted things to have 
details, for there to be a plan, except in this one instance.  This was 
a matter that was, sometimes, almost terrifyingly important, too.  I 
wondered how I could let it slide like this.

	Part of it could have been because I really did think it would 
work itself out in the end.  We knew what direction we were trying to go 
in.  Yes, plans were good, but I also knew that sometimes, things went 
best if left by themselves for a while.  Some things couldn't be rushed 
or forced, or even predicted.

	The absolute conviction I held regarding that made me add 
another mark to the 'love' column in my mental tally.  It was more of a 
habit than anything else; the conclusion seemed somewhat foregone by 
now, given the preponderance of evidence.  Still, I was just neurotic 
enough to keep on counting.

	I noticed Duo fiddling idly with the remote control, turning it 
over and over again in his left hand.  He was considering something.

	I had learned a few things in the war.  Sometimes, it was 
pointless to make a detailed plan, because all too often a plan crumbles 
after the first engagement.  It was important to stay flexible, just as 
it was important to keep the big picture in mind.  I underwent a 
revolution in thought after I reorganized myself and placed peace as the 
ultimate goal.  After that, each little battle didn't seem so important 
anymore.  Yes, each got us just that much closer to the end, but it 
wasn't a complete failure if we lost one, or if things didn't go as 
planned.  Things got easier and flowed more naturally after I let go.

	So one could say that I had let go once again.  React to a 
situation when it came up, and make a few efforts to keep us pointed in 
the right direction.  It was rather liberating.

	The remote control almost slipped out of Duo's hand, but a swift 
twitch of his fingers put it back where it belonged again.  He must have 
been considering something interesting.

	Of course, Duo was probably a part of it.  He had a way of 
mellowing me out.  It was true when I had told him that the universe 
sometimes seemed to fade away when I was with him.  None of it seemed 
quite so important anymore.  He had this ability to ground me in the 
here and now.  He gave me perspective.  He reminded me that there was a 
*me*, a me that didn't have to rush out and react to everything that was 
going on in the world.  None of it was urgent right now, so it was okay.

	Colony news came up, and Duo stretched rather conspicuously.  
Kindly not hitting the side of my head with his right elbow, he lifted 
both his arms above his head and swung them out in a wide, lazy arc, and 
when they settled, his right arm rested across my shoulders.

	A snicker ran through my mind.  Hadn't I seen that on a 
television commercial somewhere?  Ah, Duo, getting caught up in cliché 
again, and I wasn't afraid to tell him so.  "That was lame, Duo."

	Having been studiously not looking at me, it wasn't hard for him 
to duck his head a little and convey an image of embarrassed 
bashfulness.  "Sorry," he muttered contritely, pulling his arm away.

	I clamped down on the hand retreating from my far shoulder with 
one of my own.  I didn't mean to imply that the gesture was unwelcome, 
only that the execution lacked style.  If he had wanted to put his arm 
around me, he didn't have to do it with such unnecessary flair.  "Next 
time, just do it," I advised him.

	His head turned to half-look at me in surprise, but he swiftly 
returned his eyes to the screen in front of us, as if looking at me 
might make me change my mind, and slowly, his arm began to untense and I 
didn't need to hang on to his hand so hard.

	Analysis of the arm around my shoulder began immediately.  It 
was just there.  It didn't feel like it was ready to fly away anymore, 
and it didn't feel like an uncomfortable burden pressing down on me.  
The weight was just enough to convince my shoulder muscles to stand down 
and relax.

	His arm curved inwards, as if to draw me towards him rather than 
push me away.  There was a sense of belonging associated with that pose.  
The gentle pull of his presence silently invited me in, and I thought, 
go with the flow.

	I scooted over a bit to cover the distance between us and made 
myself comfortable against his side.  A faint smile tugged at my lips 
when he nearly jumped at the sudden full body contact, but he adjusted 
soon enough, as I knew he would.  This wasn't the first time we had been 
so close together.

	I'd always appreciated it before.  Just being near him.  It 
happened on occasion.  It was like... driving through the city and 
hitting half a dozen green lights in a row.  I didn't store up each of 
those moments as precious and treasured, but I did mark them as rather 
nice.  It just never really occurred to me that I could have done 
something to make these nice times happen more often.  I just 
appreciated them as they came, and neither sighed over ones past nor 
looked forward to the next with eager anticipation.

	Duo was the cuddler of the two of us.  I thought maybe he was on 
to something.  A physical touch held more significance to him than it 
did to me, but nevertheless, I was, surprisingly, finding it quite 
pleasant myself.

	Maybe I just liked it because he liked it.  He didn't think I 
noticed that soft flush that was creeping up his neck when I told him to 
leave his hand where it was, but I did.  I liked that I could do that to 
someone, that with all the things I've done and seen, I still had the 
power to invoke something good and innocent and pure.

	Maybe I was just human.  Evolution has crafted in us a 
biological imperative to replicate and forge life-long solid bonds.  One 
or more of those required close physical proximity.

	Maybe it was nice to be this close to someone and not have to 
perform a threat assessment.  Hopefully, he wasn't performing one 
either.

	Maybe it was nice being reassured that he was here for me, and 
that I was here for him.  We were in this together, and we were even 
leaning on each other and keeping each other upright, just as we said we 
would.  And he was solid and tangible.  I liked solid and tangible.

	Maybe, maybe, maybe....  In any case, it just was, and it was 
good.

                              ************

	That night, when the news was over, we did some channel surfing 
and ended up watching a documentary on arctic ground squirrels.  It was 
both interesting and informative, an excellent mix.

                              ************

	A few nights later, I found Duo out on the back porch, leaning 
against the wooden railing as he looked up at the stars through a light 
drizzling rain.  Earth may have been our home, but space was still in 
our blood.  I joined him on the porch and noticed a slight chill in the 
air.  Duo had an impressive tolerance to the cold, but he felt it 
nevertheless.  That prompted me to stand a little closer to him than I 
really needed to.  Then, since I was there, I figured I might as well 
get behind him and lean on the railing, too, and quite coincidentally 
keep his back warm with my chest.  That would be the simplest way for me 
to cover the most surface area.

	In days past, this wouldn't even have occurred to me as an 
option.  My subconscious processors would have eliminated the choice 
before it had ever presented itself as unacceptable and inappropriate, 
and I probably would have ended up standing close by his side instead.  
It was interesting to see what my mental filters were no longer 
screening out.

	He seemed rather amenable to the idea when he leaned back 
slightly, a quiet, contented sigh added in greeting.  He otherwise said 
nothing, satisfied with the view.

	"Last year, you were annoyed with the rain," I observed, 
speaking over his shoulder.  "You don't seem to have any such problem 
this year."

	"Well, yeah, sure," he conceded easily.  A little too easily.  I 
could hear an incoming jest.  "If it cools things down enough for you to 
have to warm me up."

	"There doesn't need to be rain for you to get cold," I pointed 
out.  Duo was in a near permanent state of goosebumps, although that 
didn't necessarily reflect his temperature.  I think it was a skin 
condition.

	"It doesn't need to be cold for you to warm me up."

	Well, yes, there was that.  I closed the distance between my 
hands a bit to wrap him more tightly, then noticed that my hands were 
getting a little bit cold.  If it were just me, I probably would have 
put them in my pockets, but then I would have just been leaning on Duo 
rather than holding him or anything.  Running through the options in my 
head, I decided that one pocket was as good as the next, so I removed my 
hands from the railing and slid them carefully into the front pockets of 
Duo's pants.

	He twitched in surprise, but after careful monitoring of his 
reaction, I determined that he didn't mind, so I left my hands where 
they were.  When the edge had been taken off the chill of my hands, Duo 
stirred.  "Hmm.  That seems like a good idea."  He wormed his arms 
beneath my own and blindly groped my behind for a bit before finding my 
back pockets and wriggling his hands in there.  I probably twitched more 
than he did, but he was probably going more for shock value than 
anything else.

	Our current position made me remember something, and I shared it 
with Duo in a soft chuckle.  "What's so funny?" he asked.

	"I like pockets," I said, an echo of a sentiment expressed not 
so long ago.  "You can put things in them."

	He laughed, and his fingers curled involuntarily with the 
action, eliciting another startled twitch from me.  "What on earth 
possessed you to say that, anyway?  Did you see Suzuhara-san's face when 
you said that?"

	I shrugged as well as I could with my hands anchored in place.  
He couldn't see it, but he could probably feel it.  "It seemed like the 
thing to say at the time.  Besides which, it seems like I was right."

	"Mm-hmmm," he smirked.  "It seems you *can* put things in 
pockets."  He quite pointedly flexed his fingers and tugged me briefly 
more closely against him.

	Setting my chin down to rest upon his shoulder, I took a moment 
to savor the coziness before remembering why I was looking for Duo to 
begin with.  "I was wondering if April wasn't the best place to set your 
birthday, Duo."

	"Hm?  Why's that?"  He turned his head a little to try to look 
at me, but since the side of his head was currently set against the side 
of mine, that was rather difficult and he quit almost as soon as he 
began.

	"Because Relena's birthday is also in April, just a little 
before yours.  We've been invited to her estate that weekend, 
incidentally."

	"Oh, well, that's not fair.  Okay, so maybe she had first dibs 
on April, but still."

	I could envision the pout I couldn't quite see out of the corner 
of my eye.  "That would also mean it's nearly the anniversary of the 
beginning of Operation Meteor, and of the day we met."

	"We met on her birthday?  Oh, yeah, that's right.  I remember 
someone mentioning that.  That would have been why she was wearing that 
pretty blue dress of hers, the one that she ripped up making bandages 
for you that day, you big inconsiderate meanie you."

	I raised an eyebrow in my defense.  "It was hardly my intention 
that she ruin her party dress that day."  Who knew that Relena would be 
trying to save me?  I often thought that she was odd enough to have been 
a Gundam pilot herself, if she hadn't been born on the pacifist side of 
the fence.  The rest of us ex-pilots certainly had our own 
eccentricities.

	"Whatever," he dismissed me breezily.  "That would also mean 
that it's right around the time I hauled your ass out of that hospital, 
isn't it?"

	"You assisted in my escape," I re-phrased mildly.  I would have 
gotten out of there eventually, without his help, one way or another.  
It was his fault I was there in the first place, although I suppose I'm 
glad he intervened.  I really don't know what I would have done with 
Relena.

	"So if there's something I've always wanted to know, it's this: 
why the hell didn't you use the parachute?"  He nudged me with one of 
his wrists, as if to remind me that I wouldn't be able to run away 
without answering.

	"Hmmm," I stalled.  Why indeed?  I closed my eyes for a few 
moments, flipping through the memories trying to recapture those long 
seconds in freefall, but there wasn't much there to hold on to.  "I 
don't think I was thinking very much at the time."

	"Oh, no, you're not going to get away with saying you were 
lightheaded from the blood loss or something."

	"No, I mean... I don't think I was really thinking anything at 
the time."  I remembered running down a hall, Duo shouting to me that he 
was going to make an exit for us, falling to the floor right before the 
explosion, and then that wild leap into nothing.  I remembered that 
feeling as my upward momentum was reined in by gravity, that single, 
breathless moment of weightlessness before the plunge, and I think my 
mind stayed there for a while after I started falling.

	I couldn't say with any degree of certainty, but it must have 
occurred to me then to preserve myself in that moment of freedom, to 
simply let go and not think at all about the burden that had been placed 
upon my shoulders.

	"Nothing at all?" Duo repeated incredulously.  "Come on, even 
with me screaming at you to pull the cord and all?"

	"I don't remember that."  Life probably came rushing back to me 
when Relena called out my name, only at that time it wasn't really my 
name.  It was a code name I had received for a mission.  It was the name 
of a man martyred for a peace that I was fighting for.  That must have 
snapped my mind back to the present.

	I didn't like not knowing exactly what had been running through 
my mind at the time, if anything at all, but I thought this was a 
reasonable approximation of it.  Why one voice and not the other?  I 
don't know.  That little piece of history has been lost to me.

	"Great," Duo complained with good humor, and I could hear a roll 
of his eyes in that statement.  "You haven't been listening to me since 
the day we met.  Hey, did I ever apologize for shooting you?"

	"No.  I wouldn't expect you to."

	"Good, 'cuz I ain't gonna."

	I squelched my natural distaste for his poor grammar.  "I would 
have done the same in your place," I assured him.  "Only I wouldn't have 
missed."

	"I didn't miss."  He punctuated the flat statement with a 
squeeze of his hands, as if to remind me who was boss at that moment.  I 
suppose I could have squeezed him back in retaliation, but my hands were 
in his front pockets, and I wasn't prepared to go there.

	I settled for a grunt of acknowledgement.  Duo was a sharp 
shooter.  He could have gotten a head shot in if he had wanted to.  I... 
I don't know if I would have wanted to or not.

	We stayed for a little while longer before a thought occurred to 
me, motivated by the idle way Duo's fingers were moving against my 
buttocks.  "Duo, does this qualify as 'groping' me?"

	That startled a delighted laugh out of him.  "What, you mean 
this?"  With a definite grope, he won from me a partial jump and a 
reflexive squirm, and despite the initial reaction, I realized that I 
was actually finding this whole situation quite comfortable.  I even 
found a small, shocked smile on my face, and that just made me want to 
smile even more.  What a remarkable thing.

	He laughed again, and I could feel it against my chest.  "Yeah," 
he agreed.  "That would be a grope."  He turned his face to catch my 
expression.  There was room to do so, now that I had moved my head in 
some strange attempt to get away from his playful fingers.  I could only 
retreat so far, though, and there was a pregnant pause as we looked at 
each other with only a few centimeters to separate us.  My most 
prominent thought at the time was that I had some hair hanging in front 
of my eyes, and I would have shaken my head to move them, only I didn't 
want to lose that sudden connection we had.

	The easy-going smile slowly faded from Duo's face, but moments 
after his expression turned to one of wonder, he blinked and jerked 
away, managing to get us both turned with the motion and heading towards 
the back door.  "We should be getting back inside," he declared.

	I called his name in surprise, almost tripping over my own feet 
with our awkward positions.  Our hands were still firmly rooted in each 
other's pockets.  It didn't help when he stopped suddenly in front of 
the door and I nearly crushed him against it.  "Open," he demanded 
imperiously.  It wasn't quite clear whether he was addressing the door 
or me, but I reacted before the door did and reluctantly extracted a 
hand from his pocket to perform the task.  As he dragged us across the 
threshold, leaving me barely enough time to get the door closed again 
behind us, I thought that I would really like to have another 
opportunity to establish that connection between us again.

                              ************

	Little instances like that one continued to occur with a slowly 
increasing frequency.  There seemed to be a slight, but definite trend 
of anxiety increasing over time as well.  I understood one, but not the 
other, not for a while, anyway.

	One night, I caught him thinking too hard about us again.  I had 
just walked into the living room to find Duo slouched deeply on the 
sofa, staring at the ceiling as he thought.  There was a section of the 
newspaper lying ignored beside him.  He greeted me with a question.  
"So, um, how should we be around Relena?"

	We still had several days before we were scheduled to fly out to 
visit her.  "The same as always, I imagine."

	"Well, yeah, okay, but does that mean the same as always as we 
were before, or the same as always as we are right now, or what?"

	"The way we were before is the same as we are right now.  
Roughly speaking," I appended when I caught his glare.  It was something 
of an oversimplification, so I hastened to explain.  "We all agreed that 
this was just an extension of the time before, didn't we?  So we're 
still acting about the same as we did before, only now, once in a while, 
when we're by ourselves, we have our little moments."

	He considered that for a little while as I ran a fingertip over 
the top of the bookshelf and inspected the accumulation of dust 
particles.  It was not within acceptable limits, so I fetched the duster 
from the corner and cleaned up a bit.

	It wasn't that we had gone out of our way to hide anything.  We 
had just always been private people.  Furthermore, our newly altered 
relationship was still figuring itself out.  We didn't need any 
additional external factors to throw off the delicate balance we were 
maintaining.  It wasn't a secret; we just kept it to ourselves.

	Duo evidently came to a similar conclusion.  "So we get to give 
Relena the same runaround that we give Suzuhara-san?"  He turned around 
in his seat to peer at me over the tops of the seat cushions.

	"That would only be fair," I agreed.  We would hardly want to 
favor one over the other, or let them both in on it entirely.  What we 
had was still ours and ours alone, and for some reason, that made me 
tingly.  Tingly was... different.  But still rather pleasant.

	"What about the guys?  They're going to be there, right?"

	"Probably.  Relena would have invited them."

	"Well, I don't really want to feel like we're hiding something 
from them...."

	They were our brothers, our comrades-in-arms.  I understood what 
he was feeling.  And yet, that tingly feeling made me seek a compromise.  
"What if we just wait and see how long it takes for them to notice?"  
That implied that we would tell them eventually, but it would be up to 
them to determine when.  And in the meantime, we wouldn't have to think 
about it.  Besides, we weren't even one hundred percent sure where we 
were going with this.  Maybe ninety-nine percent sure, but not one 
hundred percent, and it would be irresponsible to report on something 
before then.  Strictly speaking, we still hadn't engaged in anything 
sexual in nature, after all.

	"Don't ask, don't tell?" he mused with a smile.  "I can do that.  
I promised Relena that we were going to get a little payback in, right?"

	"Something like that."  I had certainly agreed to no such thing, 
but I suppose it was as they had pointed out: Duo and I seemed to 
function as a single unit.  The thought didn't bother me nearly as much 
as it might have in the past.  We definitely didn't share one mind, even 
if we did tend not to be at odds with one another.  We were both fully 
capable of functioning as separate entities, but there were definite 
benefits to be gained from merging our efforts.  And Relena, by her own 
reluctant admission, did need someone.  "But I don't think you'll find 
the right kind of person at this gathering.  I believe it's a small, 
private party."

	"Ick, yeah, I certainly wouldn't want to set her up with one of 
us.  She needs someone outside of us."

	"Someone normal?" I asked dryly.  Although if it were one of us, 
then I wouldn't have to spend as much time performing a background check 
and monitoring his behaviors and activities for anything suspicious.  I 
trusted us.

	"Yeah, someone normal.  She needs someone that can just sweep 
her off her tired feet and give her flowers and candlelit dinners or 
something.  Something to help get her mind off of work."

	"Is that all he would be good for?"

	"Of course not.  Hey, why haven't you given me any flowers, 
hmm?"

	"Why haven't *you* given me any flowers, hmm?" I retorted.

	"Hey, I asked first," was his 'witty' reply.

	"Hn."  I happened to be standing next to Henry at the time, and 
he happened to be blooming.  Duo would seriously hurt me if I plucked 
him for something so frivolous, so I picked Henry up, wicker basket and 
all, and offered him in Duo's direction.  "Here.  Flowers."

	There was a mildly amused outrage on his face.  "Heero," he 
reprimanded with mock-sternness.  "You can't just treat Henry like he's 
some... some *thing*!"

	I ignored the obvious flaw in the logic of that statement and 
put Henry back.  As an afterthought, I rotated him one hundred eighty 
degrees so all of his leaves would stop turning in the same direction 
towards the light.  "We can get Relena some flowers for her birthday," I 
suggested, proceeding to the coffee table and picking up the journal of 
artificial intelligence that I had originally come into the room for.

	"Well, that's not very special!  It's only special if there's no 
reason at all for giving her something.  Besides, flowers die.  Cacti 
are forever."  He picked up his newspaper and followed me into the room 
Relena had termed the 'sitting room'.  The television was in that room, 
but we didn't primarily watch TV in there, so it would have been 
illogical to name it a 'TV room'.  Personally, I preferred being in 
there at night, rather than the 'living room', because there weren't any 
large windows opening on to the street in front of our home.  I always 
felt conspicuous knowing that I was silhouetted by the light against the 
curtains in the front room.

	"I'll agree that cacti are practical," I answered, settling down 
on the small sofa to read.  Duo sat down beside me, tucking his feet 
beneath him comfortably.  He was turned slightly in my direction.

	"Yeah, flowers at a funeral or something, I can understand.  But 
who would really want their love to bloom and wilt like a rose?  Why 
should we associate love with death any more than we already have to?"  
He was not in the majority as someone that had a strong association of 
love with death.

	"You can make potpourri afterwards," I offered.

	"That's just like, nice-smelling memories or something.  Just 
memories.  It's not the same at all.  I wouldn't want potpourri!"

	"You'd want a cactus."  He seemed a little nonplussed by that 
repetition of his own words.  "What happened to normal, Duo?"

	He fidgeted a little, masking it as getting more comfortable in 
his seat.  "Well, maybe I'll save normal for other things.  Like... 
like... you know.  All those boring little cliché things you see in bad 
movies and stuff."

	"Like that yawn and stretch thing you pulled?" I asked him, 
amused.

	"Ahem."  Then he blinked and continued as if that moment hadn't 
been trite.  "Sure.  But there's, like, teaching a person how to play 
golf, or shoot pool or something, and getting behind him, all up close 
and personal with your arms around him and stuff, only in our case it'd 
probably be more like how to shoot a gun, except that we both already 
know how to do that.  So maybe... pulling that silly 'let's pretend 
we're a couple' thing to fool persons X and Y-- no, wait, too late for 
that.  Okay...."  I watched him as he thought, and there was something 
in his expression, something about the way he pursed his lips, the way 
his eyes got narrow, that I found appealing.  Charming?  Cute?  
Something.  "Oh, here's one that's lame.  You know, when one person is 
eating something or another, and there's crumbs or sauce or something on 
the person's face, and the other fellow wipes it off.  That's a good 
one."

	A whim hit me, and another whim made me decide to execute the 
first whim rather than dismiss it as a passing thought.  My hand reached 
out to mold itself to his cheek, my thumb brushing up to the corner of 
his mouth, which had reshaped itself into a small oh of surprise.  In 
the short silence that followed, I felt my expression warm for him 
without my willing it.

	"I think you forgot the sauce," he whispered with just a tiny 
bit of breathlessness.

	Have you ever had a moment when things sort of click together?  
When you know with an absolute certainty that *now* is the right time?  
It's sort of like having to target an enemy suit without the benefit of 
the automatic tracking system, when there's this moment when you know 
that if you press the button right now, then you will hit your mark.  Or 
it's like piloting a shuttle through the atmosphere, and being able to 
tell when to fire or cut which engine just by the feel of the controls 
beneath your hand.

	I had a moment.  A moment as clear as a prompt from Zero, and it 
said, 'do it.'

	I did, as best as I could.  The insistent rightness that rang in 
my head wasn't harsh or urgent, so I closed in on my target slowly, 
cautiously, until there could be no doubt as to where I was heading.  My 
hand gently held his head still for my approach, but I was pleased to 
note that there seemed to be no resistance.

	Halfway there, a random thought flitted across my mind, and I 
solemnly, softly shared it with him: "Sauce would ruin the taste."

	His eyes widened, I was almost there, and moments away from 
contact it occurred to me that I didn't know what to do when I got 
there, so I decided that perhaps some light reconnaisance would be in 
order instead.

	And then our lips touched, and where were the fireworks, the 
explosively electric sparks that were supposed to accompany first 
contact?  All I felt was a warm, delicious heat that smoothly spread 
outwards from my middle and on to my extremities, but I was far from 
disappointed.  It felt comforting, reassuring, strong and steady.

	There wasn't much involved in what was, I suppose, our first 
kiss, simple though it was.  Our lips brushed against each other 
lightly, as if in delicate appreciation of the unique feel and texture 
of that skin.  My eyes hadn't slid shut all the way, but I found that I 
hadn't paid any attention to the visual at all, so absorbed I had been 
in the sensation.  I blinked my eyes back into focus as well as I could 
on his face, still so close to my own, and I could only wonder if my 
expression was similar to his.  I set my forehead against his and he 
seemed to come back to awareness with the action.

	"Who needs normal and cliché?" I asked, strangely delighted by 
the way I could feel the words in the air from my mouth bouncing back to 
me from against him.  I could feel his breath tickling across my skin, 
and it relaxed me, more than any fire through my veins could have.

	He smiled and nodded slightly, bringing me with him in an echo 
of the gesture.  Another one of those delightful flushes was spreading 
under his skin.  "Point taken.  You know, this takes a load off."

	"Hmm?"  I pulled away from him slightly to get a better look at 
him.  He did look oddly at peace.

	"Not having to worry about this whole 'first kiss' thing 
anymore.  Somewhere along the way, I started wondering if this was going 
to be my birthday present, or if it would happen before we met up with 
everyone, and if it would change the way we acted, and... oh, lots of 
stuff."

	"Ah.  Well, we can call this a birthday present if you like."

	"It's not my birthday yet."

	I couldn't help the smile that tugged at a corner of my lips.  
"Guess we'll just have to do this again on your birthday, then."

	A glint of mischief appeared in his eye.  "You know, we're not 
really sure when my birthday is.  Guess we'll just have to do this every 
day, just to make sure we get it."

	Admittedly, I didn't try too hard, but I could find no fault in 
that logic.  And then I believe he was hinting that we didn't have to 
limit it to once a day when he leaned forward to brush our lips together 
once more.  It wasn't quite as hesitant as the last time.  He pulled 
away with a light chuckle.  "Your lips are a little dry."

	I tested his comment by rubbing my lips together.  They weren't 
chapped, but they weren't soft as a baby's bottom, either.  "Hn.  I'll 
do something about that," I promised.

	"Just for me?"

	I could think of no other benefit to it, so I agreed.  "Just for 
you."

	With a satisfied little smile and a small sound of pleasure, he 
turned himself a bit and scooted right up against me so he could read 
his paper in comfort.

_________________________________________
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Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
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http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 11/27/2002 01:21:24 PST