CLOSE PROXIMITY

Chapter 6

Day Two 09:00

Heero stood there in my lounge area, clutching a cell phone like an anchor to reality. I knew he was remembering the same things I was. I knew it.

“Duo,” he said. The emotion in his voice was something I couldn’t read any longer. “That was a long time ago. It’s Wufei we’re talking about.”

Long time ago. Right.

After the stabbing, the kid had been hauled away - Kes, he was called. We never found out if his brother was around, or what the fuck was going on. Judging from the amount of drugs in that place, I had to assume he’d been hallucinating at the time. He was too young for prison, but the authorities way too mentally disturbed to face reality alone. He ended up in a secure facility somewhere, as Heero had confirmed to me earlier, still working the damage through and out of his young, scrambled brain. Far as I knew, he’d had no family claim him, nor any visits from a brother – or anyone.

It had been my fault – of course it had. It was all due to my carelessness. I was complacent – slapdash. I’d done no research on the job before I blundered in; just assumed it was a social issue, that the danger was nothing more than kids’ tears and bruises. I had an affinity with other people, sure – but I’d never come across the naked aggression of a young, addled mind turned to fear and anger. Never thought to check for weapons, or for unbalanced psychosis.

And that, of course, was no kind of excuse at all.

They rushed Heero into surgery, with me following in a state of shock, but they stopped me at the door of the operating theatre. I wasn’t thinking too straight then. I had to be taken forcibly from the hospital, yelling that I had to be with him, whatever the fuck Relena said! Didn’t help my case much. Relena did me the courtesy of holding back on actual handcuffs, but two of her sturdier guys stood either side of me and brought me back to base – with two pairs of very firm hands - to face the immediate internal inquiry. So I never saw Heero when he came out of the long hours in theatre; I never saw him with the tubes and the mask and the bags of blood and plasma slowly dripping into his body. The inquiry went on for days, and my ass got well and truly kicked while they unravelled exactly what had happened. What protocols I’d breached. What standards I’d compromised. What – and who - had gone wrong.

They let me in to see him in the end. He was in a private room by then, still weak, still under the hospital care. And when I got there, ready to sit with him, to care for him, to do all those goddamned things that lovers do for each other – Wufei Chang was already there. And had been, every night since the debacle.

Well, there we have it. Wufei Chang. I mentioned him before, didn’t I?

As far as work went, he’d always been the one to spend the most time with Heero, which was kind of obvious. They both dealt with the militaristic side of things, the battle plans. They’d both been in the services at some stage; they actually knew a couple of mutual acquaintances, even before they’d joined the Project. It was obvious that they’d be thrown together and find that easy enough. Hell, we all admired Wufei – he was a great guy to have on your team, and had always impressed me. He was kind of fierce, though, and he liked to play on that, I’m sure. He wasn’t a guy you warmed to until you knew him better.

I guess, over the months, Heero had got to know him a hell of a sight better than me.

*

The inquiry dragged out its conclusion a few weeks later. I was cleared of all blame – yeah, I’d been under-prepared, and I should have allowed Quatre to brief me more thoroughly, and I should have remembered that every situation has to be treated with the utmost caution. Blah, blah, blah. I was scheduled for some juvenile training and some outreach work with local youth groups, and then Relena assured me the matter was concluded. OK, so I knew where I’d gone wrong, and no-one beat me up more viciously than I did myself – she was smart enough to see that in every one of my scowls. But I hadn’t been responsible for Heero getting a blade in his gut. Not officially, that is.

Sure didn’t feel that way.

And that’s also when things started to change between us. Seemed like every time I found time to be with Heero, so was Wufei. He arranged for Heero to be taken home; he arranged the proper post-operative care. I discovered that everyone thought this was an excellent idea. Relena praised him; Quatre admired his efficiency; Trowa was impressed with his knowledge of medical matters.

Seemed churlish to complain.

They must all have looked at me and thought, “What the fuck?” I’m sure they did. I know how they all saw me – to them, I was an easy-going guy, plenty of infiltration and interpersonal skills. But nothing more pragmatic than that. Damn all else in the line of battle, where it counted. And, wait a second – hadn’t it been my fuck-up that had put Heero in the hospital in the first place?

OK, so no-one ever said it. But no-one denied it, either. And when Heero turned those deep, dark, weary eyes on to his Chinese colleague and ‘thanked’ him for his help…

It all stuck in my throat like I’d swallowed a grenade.

I knew things were on the slope, sliding relentlessly down and away from me without knowing what the hell to do about it. I felt like I’d lost his attention – I’d lost his care. His respect. He never said anything that specific, of course; he never argued with me about it. And hey, I never caught him and Wufei doing anything other than hugging - and let’s face it, we were all fond of that, as support and comfort and a gesture of solidarity –

But it seemed to me that he withdrew his respect from me and bestowed it elsewhere. That can be a betrayal, even without fucking – can’t it?

*

I was still living with him. When the heavy nursing stuff faded into general daily care, it was entrusted to me; obviously they thought I could cope with the occasional change of dressing and some mild physiotherapy exercises on his shoulder. Whoop-di-doo. But whatever - it was a relief to push aside the spotlight that had been glaring on us. Heero told me how pleased he was that the inquiry had concluded in my favour; he told me he wanted to put it all behind him. He rarely spoke of it again.

In fact, he was as damned quiet as always. And maybe more so.

We still ate and drank and slept together - still fucked like bunnies – though pretty gingerly at first. We were as drawn to each other as always – but wary. He’d lost a lot of blood, and there was still an impressive scar along his torso, angrily red and shining with fresh new skin as it started to heal. One night, lying naked and lightly sweating in his bed, I followed the impulse to kiss along it. He winced, and it felt like he flinched away from me. In my heart, I knew it wasn’t from any kind of pain.

Despite the illusion of returning to normal life, things felt bad. I felt as if we couldn’t be closer, physically – but we couldn’t be further apart. He was withdrawn; he moved around the apartment as if he were the only one there. Damned disorientating - and I had no idea what to do about it except get angry. I’d thought I’d be OK once the inquiry found me innocent – I thought I had my lover and my friends behind me. But it seemed I was a little more shaken than I thought I’d been; I felt more vulnerable than I’d ever been before. And with no support of my own, no-one to tell my troubles to.

The guys were sympathetic, I must give ‘em their due. But I needed Heero. Badly. I needed him to have forgiven me, to have understood, to help us move on, to reaffirm the fact that I was living with him and he was damned happy about it all. OK, so it wasn’t a conversation I expected to have without some serious prompting. And I had no taste for that. I lay beside him at night as he slept and felt like we were in separate rooms. His naked body was only inches away from me – and if I touched it, he’d roll over to me with an exhalation of hot breath on my skin that sent goose bumps down to my toes. But even the sex was shadowed with a hint of desperation – as if neither of us was sure what it was all about any more. As if this was only a lull before the storm. As if it were only a matter of time…

Before it turned sour. Yeah, I’m good with the pithy analogies.

*

That physical break, while he was in the hospital and I was facing a panel of suited and booted Departmental executives - it sundered far more than our domestic routine. Heero bore the scar, and I bore the guilt. It was like he knew it, like he found it a struggle to be with me. He swung between being frustrated by me and being angry with me. We couldn’t get over it. Relena refused to put us on a mission together, though Heero was recuperating anyway.

And didn’t it just seem like every time I arrived home, Wufei was there already? Calling in with plans and briefings for future missions, bringing Heero some interesting articles on modern weaponry. Could have been swapping GI Joe outfits for all I knew. He even answered the phone a couple of times when it rang and neither of us could reach it immediately. What sort of familiarity was that in a guy’s own home?

But that was the point – it no longer felt like my home. It felt like Heero’s – like it was, of course. He invited whoever he liked – I was just a guest who happened to have a key. He never told me anything else. I was restless; I went out a lot. Couple times Relena couldn’t get hold of me when she wanted to, and there were mutterings about me being unreliable. Whereas Wufei Chang gave the job the kind of single-minded commitment that I just didn’t have the time for – and damn me if I didn’t hear that comparison more than once.

Though not from Heero. He never harked back to the attack; he never called me unprofessional or useless or careless. I heard it only in his silence – in his lack of defence on my behalf. And his preference for someone else’s company over mine.

He just wasn’t there for me any more. His eyes were hot over me in the day, and at night his hands were as amazing and possessive as always. But he didn’t smile so much; he scowled at me a hell of a lot more. My attitude was irritating to him; my lack of paperwork suddenly seemed a crime against the state. So I went out a lot more – sometimes I didn’t come home. Well, not to his.

It sounds pathetic now, just cataloguing those months after the attack like that. Was it fair? Was I fair? Like I said, it felt to me like a betrayal – that he had no more respect for me than to think I’d put him in danger; to think that I couldn’t work as well as he did, as thoroughly as he did, as successfully as he did. Everyone had been angry with me – and suddenly he was angry too. And it felt a fuck of a sight worse than any Departmental inquiry.

But however much he blamed me, or hated me, or despised me – and fuck, I didn’t know what he might have been thinking – that was no reason to turn to someone else.

He’d nearly been killed. I tried to bite my tongue. The important thing was to get him fit again, and back on active service. Mission Dove was progressing on its way, despite the personal tribulations of the Project Team, and we all had to be ready for whatever was required. Perhaps I thought that when he was physically OK again, things would settle back down.

Perhaps I was a fool.

Basically, we were a time bomb, fuse set and ready to blow.

*

Back in my rocky, mean little trailer, I heard the snap of the cell phone closing. I waited for a minute or so, but Heero didn’t speak again.

I focussed back on him. He looked pale - really ill. He stood still as a rock, his eyes staring at me but his mind elsewhere. I wondered if he had delayed shock, and I was startled by the ripple of distress in my own body. Then he stirred gently and seemed to become aware of me again. “Wufei’s still critical – it’s an emergency operation. It’s his leg - they’re not sure about his leg. One of the main struts of the building fell on him.”

“Shit.” I felt sick. Guy didn’t deserve that. “And a bit of a bummer, being stuck here, eh? You can’t go visit him. Take grapes and flowers; hold his hand.” Hold whatever…

I could feel Heero scowling, though I’d dropped my eyes like I had plenty of better places to look. “Don’t be pathetic, Duo. I know what road you’re driving down, and I can tell you, it’s no more fun now than it was before. I’ll say it just once more - we’re not together. Wufei and I are not seeing each other.”

I suppose I could have said I was sorry they’d broken up. But then – I wasn’t. And Heero would’ve known the lie for what it was. He couldn’t have spent all that time with me without learning just a couple of my little ways, could he?

“Um… OK. What was the trouble then? Too many long nights out in the field, while you sat at home collating his notes? My partner doesn’t understand me -?”

“Don’t you ever fucking listen, you idiot?” He stood, abruptly, and his voice was raised now. Guess I’d got the response I wanted. “We’re not together – we never were -“

“So how come he was at the apartment with you when it was blown up? Kind of late to be working on Department business, eh? Just what kind of business were the pair of you working on?”

“I told you! We were investigating the attack on Relena. The day before, someone had sent her a package impregnated with some kind of poison – a fairly unsophisticated device, but that was partly why no-one thought to check it out thoroughly. It blew up in her face, and it was only Cissy’s quick thinking that got her into the medical room in time to clean it off.” He dismissed the shock on my face with an impatient wave of his hand. “And everyone knew what we were working on – Relena did, Quatre did. It was an official Departmental directive. We had security – we were in contact with the office. Hell, Quatre even had one of his guys with us for a couple of hours, earlier on - that kid who dropped me off yesterday. What category of hot date does that fit into?”

My anger was still simmering. “Far as I remember, you’ve never needed hearts and flowers to enjoy a good fuck –“

“Duo!” He was yelling now. Only a foot away from me, fists clenched at his side. Just like the old days. “You are so damned childish!”

“Shit, and you’re so damned smug!” I yelled back, and from the shock in his eyes, I knew I’d hit home.

“Leave it, Duo – now!” he warned. “You never could hold your tongue.”

“And maybe you couldn’t resist holding something a whole lot more intimate, right?” I breathed pure venom. Things were escalating. “Maybe something attached to some other guy’s groin!”

For just one, shocking second, I thought he might hit me. The fists flexed – but his arms stayed by his side.

“So maybe I was tempted!” His face was very flushed now. “Maybe I found it rewarding, being with someone who wasn’t out partying all the time, someone who was there more often than not –“

“So maybe the welcome was a little less frosty for him!” I was incensed now, almost beside myself. “Maybe you opened up a hell of a lot more to him – after all, there’s so much more to share between the pair of you. How was the pillow talk? Full of boyish dreams of guns and bombs? Gives a whole new meaning to Wham!Bam thank you ma’am! And so much more rewarding than my sorry little disaster stories -”

Heero’s voice was a hiss - had I forgotten that he was easily a match for me when it came to a verbal fight? “And maybe, yes, it was more rewarding than your pointless jealousy, and your ridiculous melodrama, and –“ His voice caught in his throat; it was convulsing with fury. ”You stupid bastard! You stupid, stupid –“

We were struck dumb almost at the same moment, as the same thought obviously crossed our minds. Our stupid, selfish minds, obsessing over old ground, old wounds – self, self, self! And I was the worst culprit of all – I and my vicious, hyperactive, destructive temper. My fucking, fucking temper…

I looked at Heero, stricken. Wufei had been my friend – friend to all of us. Still was, dammit! And he was lying in a hospital bed, maybe losing a limb, maybe never coming back to us as anything like his strong, single-minded, high-principled, unpretentious self. And both he – and the man in front of me – had barely escaped with their lives.

“Duo –“

“I’m sorry,” I blurted, speaking at the same time as his strangled groan.

And I was.

For so much, I couldn’t have listed it in a day.

*

God knows what we might have said and done then, but events overtook us anyway. In the frozen silence following our outburst, Heero tilted his head away from me, and his eyes hardened.

“Did you hear that?” he murmured.

I bit back the ‘Hear what?’ response that I’d normally have quipped, because a comment like that from him merited my full attention. He had the same background and training as I did, after all. I listened, carefully. Nothing specific, but what I did notice was the absence of noise – the trailer park seemed unusually quiet for an emerging morning, even if most of the inhabitants were normally out and about by now, on whatever nefarious occupation they chose.

And now I came to think about it, I’d not heard the dogs barking since I woke.

I caught Heero’s calculating eyes and I nodded. Our arguments were forgotten, kicked to the side like a used candy wrapper. He started to move slowly around the room, working towards the outside door of the trailer, dodging round the window as he passed. “Duo,” he whispered. “Where’s your weapon?”

“I’m on suspension –“ I started to shrug.

“Fuck that,” he hissed. “You had a private licence anyway.”

I smiled, a little grimly. Guess he knew me better than to think I’d live out here without adequate protection. My hand dropped to a pile of magazines beside the couch and peeled out a rather useful little handgun from underneath ‘Heavy Metal Monthly - February’. He grimaced at my less-than-sophisticated security precautions, but I saw an equivalent weapon in his own palm. I didn’t know which Department file that had been hidden in.

He stood to the hinged side of the door and put his hand flat on the thin metal sheeting.

“Um…” I thought I ought to try one last whispered attempt to save him from himself. “We should call the Department, Heero. Quatre said no external interaction, remember.”

And then the smallest, weariest smile teased at the corner of his mouth. My heart lurched at the memory of it, in different circumstances. “I’m with you, Duo Maxwell. Since when were you external interaction?”

So what was I to make of that?