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"Bad Luck Turned Good "Written By: Zazu Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing, nor do I
own the characters. I have borrowed them here for some fun and creativity,
and this is not for profit. I do, however, own the plot mentioned
here, and any instances that you may find similar to real life events
are purely a coincidence. All of the characters depicted in this story
are adults. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: Yaoi, lemon, angst, Pairings: 1x2x1 Summary: Get together fic. "Bad Luck Turned Good " Chapter 3
“Duo?” Hilde stopped behind him, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “What’s wrong?” she asked, exasperated. “You’ve been in this strange mood for the last two days!”
Two days. That was how long Heero had been gone. Of course, given that Heero told him his mother suffered a stroke, Duo did understand that two days was too little time to expect Heero to be back. But Heero hadn’t even called. Not even to say that he’d safely landed in Ohio.
Maybe he was too preoccupied. Maybe there was a lot to deal with. Depending on how bad the stroke was, Heero could have his hands completely tied.
Those were all excuses that Duo gave on Heero’s behalf, but another one of his inner voices wouldn’t stop repeating something else.
You’re just the hair stylist he slept with.
Duo decided that he didn’t particularly like that voice.
“Duo!” Hilde snapped, gaining his attention again. “This isn’t about that guy, is it? The one you gave the extra appointment to?”
Duo sighed, wondering how in the world Hilde knew.
“What happened?” Hilde asked, setting hands on his shoulders to knead the tense muscles that Duo hadn’t even been aware of.
“He had a family emergency and flew to Ohio. I’m just…worried about him.”
“He hasn’t called, as he?” Hilde said perceptively.
“He’s probably busy,” Duo defended Heero.
“Did you sleep with him?”
Duo didn’t answer.
“You had to have. Or you wouldn’t be so restless. Did you?” Hilde pushed.
“Kind of.”
“What do you mean ‘kind of’? How do you ‘kind of’ sleep with someone?”
“I don’t kiss and tell,” Duo huffed. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. I’m just his hair stylist.”
To that, Hilde didn’t have anything to say. She wanted to tell him that he was probably more than that, but she’d only seen the guy twice and couldn’t be sure.
“Give him the benefit of the doubt,” she finally said. “Maybe he really is very, very busy or preoccupied with his family. We won’t consider him a jerk until he doesn’t call in a few more days, agreed?”
“Whatever,” Duo sighed, getting up and dislodging her hands even though they felt really good. “Let’s close up.”
*****
Heero looked at his phone and sighed. He wanted to call Duo, but he didn’t really know what to say.
He’d just arrived home an hour ago and honestly, he was exhausted. His fridge was full of expired food from the full week he had been away but he couldn’t bring himself to deal with it.
Lying on the couch, Heero couldn’t help but think of the amazing night he’d spent with Duo, even if it had been cut short. Those thoughts led immediately to his quick flight to Ohio and seeing his mother.
Luckily, it had been a minor stroke and his mother was on the road to recovery. But this sudden scare had given her a new perspective in life, and once she was able to tell him what she wanted, Heero had found himself agreeing without thinking it over. All that had mattered at the time was not to upset her, but Heero knew that regardless, he would have given his promise anyway. He’d spent most of his life respecting his parent’s wishes; Heero didn’t know how to do so otherwise.
A grandchild. His mother wanted a grandchild.
Heero couldn’t bring himself to tell her that he wasn’t interested in women. It wasn’t something that Heero was ready to tell her, let alone when she was so ill. But now, he’d agreed to continue the Yuy line as the only son, and unless Duo was able to produce babies…
It meant that they couldn’t be together.
Technically, it was possible to get a surrogate, but Heero didn’t know how his mother would take that. She would want a good daughter-in-law with the package. Then, he wondered if he could just lie to her that they ended up not being a good match after all. Immediately, he felt ashamed that he’d thought about lying to his mother like that.
The first step to dealing with this problem, then, was to break up with Duo.
God, it hurt just to think about that. It didn’t matter that they’d hardly been together; there was a strong connection he felt towards the other man and he didn’t want to lose it.
But Heero couldn’t see any other choice. His biggest problem now, was to figure out what to say to Duo. What could he possibly say, when he didn’t even have the words to convince himself, aside from his filial duty, that this was the right thing to do?
Before he knew it, three days had past and Heero knew that he couldn’t hold it off much longer. He was just heading out the door, reaching for his cell phone to call Duo, when he looked up to see the other man in the courtyard. Their eyes met, and Heero walked towards Duo.
Much to his surprise, Duo brushed right past him. Stunned, Heero turned.
“Duo?” he called.
Duo paused. “Yes?”
“I…What…” Heero stammered. “Are you avoiding me?” he finally managed.
Duo turned slightly, hands jammed into his pockets. “Actually, I thought you were,” he said evenly. “After all, I’ve seen you twice at the coffee shop which means you’ve been back at least two days, and you haven’t called. I was under the impression that you had nothing to say to me.”
Heero swallowed. “No, I…” He trailed off, and Duo began to walk again. “Wait. Can we talk? I can…I do need to talk to you. But not now, I’m on my way to work. Don’t you have to work? We can walk together and…”
“Actually, it’s my day off.” Duo said. “If you decide that you really do want to talk, you know my number.” With that, he stalked away.
Entering his flat, Duo leaned back against his front door with a sigh. He’d been a jerk. When Heero had seen him, Duo’s heart had dropped. He had seen Heero at the coffee shop across the street, and everything he’d said to Heero was truly what he thought. But he knew that he could have been a little less bitter about it.
Bending, he unlaced his black boots and walked to his bedroom, promptly stripping off his clothes. He’d spent the night club-hopping and trying not to think about Heero, although he hadn’t accepted any offers for company. Then, he’d eaten breakfast at a café and decided to go home to sleep.
Hopping into the shower, Duo was glad that he hadn’t really been looking at Heero. He knew that it would have been hard to face a blank or irritated expression on Heero’s face. The way Heero spoke had come across almost hurt, but why should he be the one feeling that?
He was probably imagining things.
True to his word, Heero called Duo towards the end of his workday and asked if it would be convenient to stop over to talk. Duo agreed wearily, not wanting to have to deal with getting home after Heero officially broke up with him, even if they had hardly dated. Being at home left him one less thing to worry about.
The doorbell rang and Duo looked at the door for a moment before getting up to open it. Heero looked a little unsure of himself, but stepped in at Duo’s beckoning.
“Make yourself at home,” Duo said, heading to the kitchen to get Heero a glass of water. The man was still standing by the couch loosening his tie when he returned. Duo set it down on the table beside the armrest and walked over to sit at the other end of the couch.
Slowly, Heero sat down as well.
“How is your mother?” Duo asked politely.
“She’s doing better,” Heero said. “It was a small stroke. She’s expected to make a pretty good recovery.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Thanks for asking. Duo, I know, I should have called you from Ohio.”
“I understand that you were probably very preoccupied.”
That didn’t excuse Heero from holding off calling Duo when he was back in town. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you earlier.”
“You weren’t obligated to,” Duo said, shrugging a shoulder. “After all I’m just…” he trailed off, leaving out the ‘just your stylist’ line.
Wasn’t obligated to? Heero looked over to Duo, studying the carefully blank face. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “For that…and more.”
Here it was. Duo waited, letting Heero speak out.
“I…We can’t be together,” Heero said. He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I’m so sorry, I never meant…I just…” His carefully planned speech vanished, and to his surprise, Duo laughed.
“Whatever,” Duo said, albeit a little hoarsely. “We had a couple of dates, hardly anything serious, right?”
“Right,” Heero echoed after a moment.
“And you probably had the chance to think about it and decided that maybe you appreciate feminine beauty after all,” Duo rambled on. “But who cares, it was just a quick fuck, a bit of a trial, wasn’t it?”
No! Heero wanted to scream. It wasn’t that at all! What was Duo saying? What about commitment?
“Commitment?” Duo asked, and Heero realized that he’d spoken out loud. “Commitment would be you calling me, Heero, to let me know you were safe in Ohio, to have considered that maybe I was worried here. Commitment would be calling me up when you were home to tell me you were back. Commitment is not waiting until you saw me to talk to me.”
Heero didn’t have anything to say to that.
“It doesn’t matter, okay?” Duo said. “I knew it was over when I saw you at the coffee shop and you hadn’t called by the end of the night. And it’s polite of you to come here to tell it to me, Heero, but a phone call would have been sufficient.” He sounded flippant about it but inside, Duo was hurting. Hurting because Heero wasn’t protesting.
But why would he? The man was here to break up with him after all.
“When my mother was able to communicate,” Heero suddenly blurted out. “She told me that the sudden turn of events had her thinking. She told me there was something she wanted and I promised her I’d do my best. And I can’t give her that something with…with you.”
“What, a girly daughter-in-law?” Duo asked.
“A grandchild,” Heero whispered.
“Maybe you should have told your mother that you were gay, Heero,” Duo snapped. “That you couldn’t get it up for a girl! What are you going to do, take some Viagra and get to it, just to give your mother a baby to play with and spoil?”
“I don’t make it a habit to defy my mother,” Heero said. “And I certainly did not want to shock her with that declaration when she’s so ill.”
“So you decided to promise her now and tell her later?” Duo asked. “You want to shock her then and break your promise to her? Is that supposed to be better?”
“The reason I’m breaking up with you, Duo, is so that I won’t break my promise to her!” Heero snapped. “I’m going to try damn hard not to, and I can’t try without breaking up with you first.”
“Thanks for being so considerate to not cheat on me,” Duo said sarcastically. “In case it might have escaped your notice, maybe your mother would prefer that you were happy and not tied down to a girl and a baby that you didn’t want. Because, you know, mothers do tend to want their children to be happy.”
“What do you know about my mother?” Heero asked. It came out angry, because Heero found himself wavering and he didn’t like the feeling.
“Well, I wouldn’t know about any mothers, Heero, because I never had one!”
Heero’s eyes widened. “Duo, I never meant to come across as…”
Duo slid across the couch and pulled Heero in for a kiss, pressing Heero down against the back of the couch. For a moment, Heero gave in, but then he turned away to break the kiss.
“Duo, please,” Heero gasped. “Don’t make this difficult. Trust me, I’ve considered lying to my mother and getting a surrogate mother but I feel ashamed just thinking about that lie! Gods, Duo, that’s why I took so long to call you! I needed to figure out what to say to you because I had trouble convincing myself!”
“Please, Heero,” Duo murmured into Heero’s ear. “Don’t do this. We’re so good together, aren’t we? Just because of her words, her want, you’re going to let this go, let us go? What about your happiness? Why can’t she care about that?”
“And why shouldn’t I care about her happiness?” Heero asked.
Duo hauled Heero to his feet then, shoving him bodily to the door, grabbing Heero’s briefcase along the way. He opened the door despite Heero’s sudden resistance to leave, then threw the case out. He pushed Heero out, then bent to grab Heero’s shoes and threw them out too.
“Duo!” Heero came close again.
Another push had him stumbling over his things strewn on the floor, and then Duo looked at Heero, his eyes bright with unshed tears.
“I guess my happiness, our happiness, accounts for nothing, right? Who cares about the orphan? After all, I’m just your damn hairdresser,” Duo said. “Go make mommy happy and proud, Heero. Go make your little family.”
With that, Duo slammed the closed the door. Heero rang the bell, several times then knocked on the door.
“Duo, please, I don’t want to part on bad terms.”
Duo stumbled away from the door and went to his bedroom, slamming the door shut and throwing himself across his bed. With his face buried in his pillow, he couldn’t hear Heero’s voice and righteous reasons anymore.
*****
Who cares about the orphan?
I do. That was what Heero desperately wanted to tell Duo. Did Duo believe that he wanted to break up? It was the last thing he wanted, but did he have a choice?
Maybe it was better like this. Duo could stay angry. It could be for the best.
After all, I’m just your damn hairdresser.
Gods, Duo was so much more than that. Surely, he didn’t believe that?
Two nights had passed since Duo had shoved him out the door. Heero couldn’t sleep. He wracked his brains for a solution, for something, but the only choices were obvious. He could forget Duo and try his best to create a little family for his mother, or he could forget his mother, be honest, and pray that Duo would take him back.
On the third night, he dreamed that he was in bed with Nicola. He aroused her with his touches and she aroused him with hers. But as the dream progressed and he neared completion, Heero looked down and saw Duo beneath him, eyes closed, face contorted in passion.
He jerked awake to feel the evidence of his climax in his shorts. And he knew then that perhaps he didn’t have those choices after all. He wasn’t capable of creating a little family, nor a child, at least not in the traditional way.
Maybe it was time to be honest. But if he had to be, he wished with all his might that he would have Duo’s support, Duo’s warmth close to him when he did.
For the rest of the day he mulled over his decision, and finally decided to leave work early to find Duo. So he made his way to Spellbound and entered the salon.
Hilde looked up. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked.
“No. I just wanted to speak to Duo.”
“He isn’t in today.”
“It’s not his day off is it?” Surely, Duo didn’t have yet another day off so soon?
“No,” Hilde answered.
“Is he ill?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
Heero knew that was true. “Will he be in tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure, sorry.”
Knowing that he wasn’t going to get any more information from Hilde, Heero thanked her and left. Pulling out his cell phone, he dialled Duo’s number only to reach his voicemail.
“Duo? It’s Heero. I really want to talk. Please, tell me you’ll listen to me, just this once? Call me back. Please.”
He hung up and decided to go to Duo’s apartment.
Ringing the bell, he waited impatiently for an answer. He saw a flicker of movement at the peephole, but the door wasn’t opened. He knocked.
“Duo, I know you’re in there,” he said. “Please, I want to talk.”
Duo leaned his forehead against the door. “What, Heero?” he asked, tired.
Heero would have preferred speaking to Duo face to face, but he knew that he didn’t have the right to demand that from Duo.
“I’ve…decided to take your advice and be honest with my mother,” he said. “Do you…Will you support me?”
“Sure, man,” Duo said. “Go for it.”
Okay, so maybe Heero hoped that Duo would fling open the door when he heard those words, but honestly, did he really think Duo would do that?
“I’m sorry I hurt you, Duo. Your happiness is important to me. It’s very important to me. I know I didn’t realize just how much, and I can stand here all night giving you feeble excuses about how I was worried about my mother and tired from flying out and back in and going right back to work, but that’s not what I want between us. I only want truth between us, Duo.”
Duo didn’t say anything, and when the door still wasn’t opened, Heero spoke again although he didn’t know if the other man was still listening.
“I want to prove to you just…just how much you matter to me. I swear, I will tell my mother the truth. That’s what she deserves from me, too. Nothing less than the truth. It might not make her happy, but what is false happiness? Please, Duo, give me another chance to prove to you that I care. I really do. You’re more than just my hairdresser. Tell me you know that?”
The door was unlocked with a click, and Heero had to force himself to stand still and wait for Duo to open the door.
To be honest, Duo was having trouble doing so. He wanted to be the priority. He wanted to be the first to the man he loved. But maybe that was because he didn’t have his own family? Maybe he didn’t know what it was like to have to care for someone else like that?
Or maybe he did, because more than anything, he just wanted Heero to be happy.
“Are you sure this is what you want, Heero?” he asked, his hand on the doorknob. “Because I don’t think…I can take it if you came back and walked away again.”
“I swear to you, I will never, ever walk away,” Heero said. “I want nothing more than to be with you, because your happiness, no, our happiness, counts for something. No, it counts for everything!”
“You’re absolutely sure?” Duo asked.
“You’ve had me under your spell since the first time you washed my hair, Duo,” Heero said. “I’ve been spellbound since that moment.”
The door opened. “That’s the corniest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Heero stared at Duo and immediately reached out to cup his face. “What happened?” he asked, shocked at the bruises he saw, at the split lip.
“Will you believe me if I said that I fell?” Duo asked, shutting the door behind Heero.
“Do I look stupid?” Heero asked, examining Duo’s wounds.
“I was upset, okay?” Duo muttered. “I wanted to beat the shit out of someone after I managed to kick you out. I wanted to forget the pain on the inside. I wanted to take it out on someone. And I ended up getting the shit beat out of me. At least I managed one of my three goals and forgot the inside pain.”
Heero looked away. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
“It wasn’t your fault. It’s not like you hit me.”
“I may as well have!”
“The other guy wasn’t much better off, and the only reason I ended up like this was that his friend joined in.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“It’s supposed to,” Duo mumbled. “Seriously, Heero. You’re sure that you’re…here to stay?”
“Well,” Heero said. “I do have to fly out to Ohio…to talk to my mother. I was kind of hoping you could come with me, but now I don’t think it’s the best idea, at least not until you look a little better.”
“Go with you? I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have a mother,” Duo said. “I don’t know how to talk to one, deal with one. For all I know, she’ll hate me because I’m the reason you’re not out there starting a little family.”
“If I were capable of it, Duo, it would have happened with Nicola.”
“Are you going to tell her that?”
“If I have to,” Heero said with a grimace. “The point is, I want you there, to show her how happy I am. And…the moment she expresses that she dislikes you, we’ll leave.”
“Heero, I really don’t think…”
“Please?” Heero begged, gripping Duo’s hand. “I want you there with me. It’s…a scary prospect to go to her with something like this. Maybe…I need you there to pick up the pieces of me when we’re done.”
Duo pulled Heero close, hugging him tightly. “Okay,” he murmured. “I’ll come, and make sure that if it comes to that, I’ll pick up every single piece and put you back together.”
Heero wrapped his arms around Duo and inhaled the scent of the man who held his heart. With Duo beside him, he knew he would have the courage to face his mother and tell her the truth.
He owed it to her, to Duo…
…and to himself.
- TBC -
Chapter 4 |
