"Of Rain and Little Red Corvette "

Written By: Jo

Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing and I have nothing valuable. I write for the fun of it.

Rating: PG 13

Warning/Notes/Summary: Written for nataliethompson’s request on fic_on_demand. Angst, hints of death but not the boys, sap. Duo’s POV. I meant for certain spots to be vague. I'm hoping that everyone who reads it draws their own conclusion. Let your imagination run hog-wild i guess.

Pairings: 1x2

Many thanks to the awesome Andie, Lucid Nightmare, and Ryouga for superb beta-ing! If you find any mistakes, they are all mine since I can't resist playing with it after I got back from the betas.

"Of Rain and Little Red Corvette"

 

I always imagine dying a violent death, one involving a gaping head wound and a creeping, seeping, sickly pool of warm blood. I see my face blood-stained and tear-streaked, turning pale as life turns her back on me and death reaches for me eagerly with her cold, clammy hands.

Some times, I think I want to die a violent death to atone for my faults, sins and crime, and to atone for living while many others died. Most of all, I wanted to die a violent death because I imagine I would feel most alive when my almost lifeless body spasms with surges of pain, when I am smiling up at death and let her claim me.

I wanted to die tonight.

I nod politely at the phone number scribbled hastily on a piece of crumpled napkin pressed urgently to the glass. A redhead in the backseat with flawless porcelain skin hangs perilously outside the window with her none-too-sober friends clumsily holding on to her waist and legs. She lifts her shirt in a flash and licks her lips at me, her friend in the front seat, as if stressing her proposition, waves the white napkin at me teasingly.

The little red Corvette revs menacingly and speeds away from me when the light turns green. My heart lurches watching lipstick on the napkin smear over the glass.

It is a gorgeous piece of machinery after all.

Chuckling darkly, amused by my own misguided fascination, I steer my simple, practical, four-door sedan after the red beast. I am more likely to salivate over the car than the redhead with the firm, round breasts and pert nipples.

If she only knew about my inclination, she wouldn’t have wasted her time. If she only knew that I am a hair away from driving into on coming traffic, she wouldn’t have bothered.

The abyssal night is murky and dark, yet unusually comforting. It feels like a glove around my heart and camouflage around my being. After all these years, I still couldn’t shake my run-and-hide instinct when things go bad.

White lines jump frantically into the cones of light projected by my headlights, and then fall rapidly behind. It’s hypnotic and yet purposeful, foisting a pretense that you are going somewhere even though you are never too far away from where you started.

A deep chill unfurls and fat drops of rain spatter, first lazily then fervently, on my windshield. Within seconds the earth is enveloped in thick threads of icy rain, and I am blinded in a shroud of hopelessness. I cock my head and listen to the solemn requiem of rain pelting down on the roof of my car, my fingers waiting to turn on the windshield wiper. The defiant ex-soldier in me childishly challenging the element and foolishly tempting fate.

It’s really like a game, clutching on to life while baiting death that is.

Without hesitation, I turn my face to the left, keeping just one eye on the obscured highway ahead. My tongue, bitter and dry after a night of silence, darts out to catch unsuspecting raindrops shot through the open window. They tasted sweet and electrifying like how life once was.

I barely noticed other traffic on the highway until I am suddenly staring ahead at a sea of red brake lights blinking erratically in a go-stop-go fashion. My foot instinctively falls into the same rhythm, switching between the gas pedal and the brake pedal. Within minutes I am at a full-stop, watching in exasperation, wisps of exhaust gas drifting upward from the tailpipe of the car in front. A minivan pulls up next to me and I immediately roll up my window, putting up invisible walls around me. I don’t mind the freezing rain and the soaked jeans but I do mind being watched.

Prying eyes have a bad habit of judging what they can not see.

Traffic inches forward and bottle-necks around a flipped over vehicle on the right lane. State patrol had secured the perimeter with standard-issued flares that look like spots of blue ethereal fires in the rain.

The rain-soaked night lit up around the scene like an Oz base during a Gundam attack. Dark figures in rain gear and orange reflective vests weave between vehicles and each other under revealing headlights and nerve wracking, flashing red lights.

It is systematic chaos.

A woman in a figure-hugging red dress stands barefoot in the center of the commotion, shivering in the rain with her arms thrown tightly around herself, one of her hands clutching a red shoe with a broken heel. An EMT runs toward her with a blanket then guides her toward the warmth of a waiting ambulance. Behind where she stood, a little red Corvette, the little red Corvette, lies upside down in devastating shape.

My breath hitches and a nauseating feeling spreads in me like ink in milk. Anger and regrets crashes down on me like overpowering waves in a stormy sea, leaving me gasping for air. It seems death has a knack for irony.

I jump when the cars behind honk for me to move along. Snapped out of my stupor, my stormy sea recedes, and suddenly I want to know and I need to know.

I pull out of the highway at the next exit and drive up to a rundown, old-fashion full-service gas station with one of those old fashion phone booth on the outside. The attendant inside the store stares at me suspiciously through the glass door then flips the ‘Open’ sign over to ‘Close’.

I jump out of my car, not bothering with turning off the engine nor the headlights and I dive into the phone booth like a man desperately seeking his lifeline. My heart pounding inside my ears, and my fingers trembling not from the cold but from an overwhelming fear. Time is of the essence, I whisper to myself.

Rain pours down in drowning strands, hammering the roof of the phone booth and leaking through several small holes there. Water begins to pool inside the booth, cigarette butts, a pale yellow credit card receipt and a small plastic bag float and swirl around my ankles. A few wads of gum, all different colors, are arranged in a straight line across the top of the phone panel. An offending odor, a mixture of cigarette smoke, bad cheese, and urine assails me but nothing matters at the moment except for one thing.

One person.

I pick up the sticky receiver and dial home, holding my breath all the while.

Dial tone turns to ring tone amidst the clattering of rain on the glass panes. My heart sinks with every ring not answered. When the machine picks up and I hear my own cheerful-nothing-is-wrong-with-the-world voice telling me to leave a message, I let the phone fall from my grip and lean against the cold, wet glass of the booth. A strangled sob escapes me as I grapple with thoughts of going back to an empty house and an empty life.

I am too late.

Leaving the phone booth, I walk unhurriedly to my car, soaked and drenched to the bones, frozen to my soul. In an instant, everything seems heavier. The weight of my limp braid on my back, the weight of my water-logged clothes, the weight of my water filled boots, and the weight of two lives I crushed carelessly.

It feels just like the many other times I’ve come home. I slip out of my boots in the foyer like usual and I toss my keys in the candy dish turned key holder like usual. But when my coat slides off my shoulders and drops to the floor with a wet thud, I let it stay there in a wasted heap.

The house is dimly lit by streetlights shimmied through rain-washed windows and warm like a home should be. In a month or two it will probably look and feel different.

Making my way wearily through the living room, I stumble and remarkably trip over my own two feet. I let loose a string of colorful curses expecting to fall on my face but instead my rigid body is kept upright by a pair of strong arms grabbing me from behind.

The arms didn’t stop there, one snakes around my chest, the other wraps around my waist and suddenly I am pulled fiercely backward into a warm chest. A warm face comes to rest in the curve of my neck and a thundering beat forces its way through wet clothes, tensed muscles and into my chest.

Stunned and shocked, I struggle, breaking loose of those arms and turn around, coming face to face with Heero. His face veiled by shadows of rain on the windows, looks tear-streaked but his cheeks are dry. His eyes are a deep shade of blue in the dark, burning a fire I haven’t seen for a long while. I swallow nervously and my eyes drift behind him looking for a suitcase, the suitcase I found earlier in the closet, half-packed and hidden behind uniforms, suits and ties.

There isn’t one.

I open my mouth to speak but he doesn’t let me, pressing his lips against mine, soft then hard, gentle then hungry. I let him guide me toward the bedroom in a tangle of limbs and lips, both of us making haste with our hands, leaving a trail of wet and dry clothes behind us.

And I let his fire warm me, take me from out of the cold and into a safe place.

I’ve always felt guilty after sex with Heero but not tonight. Somewhere between the little red Corvette and Heero’s feverish lovemaking, I relented and let my morbid fixation go.

I wanted death because I didn’t know how to live. Maybe it’s time I let him show me.

Lying on my stomach with my braid hanging off the edge of the bed, I watch him as he watches me. Both of us sated and exhausted, but neither falling asleep just yet. I can see his eyes in the dark, not a hint of clouds much like clear skies after a storm.

I touch his cheek with just my fingertips, “stay?”

He draws me toward him until we are once again naked flesh against naked flesh, and pulls the covers up around us, “forever.”

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