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"Thousand words"Written By: ExecutiveShrimp Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, it belongs
to Bandai, Sotsu and associated parties. Written for pleasure not
profit. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: AU, angst, fluff, Lemon, OOC Pairings: 2x1 Summary: Duo and Heero have to share a dorm room
in college and they become best friends. When they discover that neither
has time for, nor interest in a girlfriend, they explore a friends
with benefits relationship. But sex never remains uncomplicated. " Thousand words" Chapter eighteen I heard him get out of bed in the early morning. I was facing the wall and I didn't turn around to spy on the morning ritual that I usually loved to watch. Somehow I could feel him looking at me, at the back of my head. There was no rustle of clothing or the taut, tense sound of shoestrings being tightened. It was silent and it remained silent for a long time. Staring at the wall I hoped he assumed I was asleep and didn't expect anything from me. Talking to him had become increasingly difficult. To point where I couldn't recall saying a single word to him for the past two days. I could tell he still wanted us to be friends, he wanted the closeness we had shared in the past, but he accepted the distance I required. I suspected he knew his actions had hurt me more deeply than they should have; than they would have if friends-with-benefits was really all we ever were to me. He was willing to give me time but I wasn't sure if time was really the solution. I could never forget, so how could I go back? A horrible thought had started to occur to me, that it would be easier once he would leave, once he would go back to Japan. At least then I wouldn't have to look at him anymore and at the same time I wouldn't have to feel guilty about not trying to make this post-trauma friendship work. I didn't want him to leave, I would never want him to leave, but I didn't exactly enjoy being around him, with the situation as it was. There were footsteps and then the door opened and closed and he was off for his run, living his life no different from before. He still went for his morning run, had swim practice in the late afternoons and evenings and spent his remaining time on school work. I expected his grades wouldn't falter. In the meantime, I had been skipping classes and calling in sick for work as often as I could without getting kicked out of school or getting fired from my job. Heero asked me what was wrong the third day I skipped classes and I nearly bit off his head stating that people were allowed to get sick and stay in bed. I was angry at him for asking. Not really of course, I was angry at him for fucking that girl. I stayed in bed until Heero came back for fresh clothes and a towel and left again to take a shower. I stayed in bed until Heero came back upstairs from his shower and fetched his books and headed off to the library to study; in that room, the room. When he closed the door I heaved myself out of bed and got dressed lazily. I went downstairs to make myself an unhealthy breakfast. As I was frying bacon, Nash stepped into the kitchen to get a supersized can of sweet energy drink from the refrigerator to get his morning started. He popped the can open and adjusted the strap of his bag on his shoulder absentmindedly. "Dude, you've been looking like shit lately." "Dude?" I repeated bitterly. "Don't you mean 'chunky'?" He chuckled sheepishly. "Come on man, you know that was all fun and games. And that pic of misses Maxwell was priceless. He owes me for posting that, people actually like him now, it humanized him." I sighed at having him jokingly refer to Heero as 'misses Maxwell'. I always thought it was funny, but the joke had turned bitter and the fact that constant joking like that had caused the kind of crippling insecurity and doubt in Heero that made him assert his masculinity the way he did, made it difficult to stomach. Delayed as my reaction was - lost in my own thoughts - I snapped at him: "Stop calling him my fucking wife, okay! It's not funny anymore!" Completely unintimidated he took another sip of his energy drink and eyed me suspiciously. "Relax, bro. And maybe you shouldn't eat all of that, given your history, you should be mindful of love handles." I turned around and whipped a loaf of bread at him, simply because it happened to be what I was holding in my hand. He ducked in time, the bread hit the wall behind him and he scampered off laughing. I looked down at myself. Eating the way I had been wasn't good for me. It hadn't started to show yet, but it was a dangerous habit from the past that I shouldn't pick up again. The bacon was promptly dumped in the trash and I took upstairs with me an unsatisfying bowl of bland cereal - Heero's cereal. Being heartbroken was exhausting, I realized. Around noon I started to get ready to face the outside world. I knew it was probably better not to skip the particular class that I had at one o'clock, we were getting our grades for a recent project and if my emotional state had clouded my abilities and led to a poor grade I should make good use of the opportunity to beg the professor for leniency and understanding. After a hot shower I hurried upstairs in my towel, leaving a trail of wet footsteps. The shower had taken a little longer than it was supposed to. I needed to make haste. With my jeans unbuttoned and unzipped around my hips and wearing a wrinkled shirt fresh from the clean pile of laundry not only inside-out but backwards as well, hopping around in untied shoes - without socks - I tried to tame and braid my hair. I frowned at the messy, matted and still damp result in the mirror. It was a physical strain not to let myself fall backwards into my chair and give up on trying to make it to this class for all the wrong reasons. I stumbled towards the door and when I opened it I nearly fell backwards with fright as there was a person standing right behind it and I hadn't been expecting that. Hilde had her fist in the air. She had been about to knock on my door and looked startled herself, although more composed. Comically she held her fist up for a stretch of time before putting both hands in the front pockets of her jeans, adopting a shrinking, apologetic stance. "Hey." "Uh... Hi." It had been a while since I had to deal with her and honestly time had healed my wounds, but the scars were still ugly and even though they no longer hurt, they did still make me resentful. "I haven't been seeing you around a lot lately." I was unsure if she was referring to me skipping a lot of classes as of late or if she was talking about the coincidence that we haven't been accidentally running into each other since the party at our dorm house. Ambiguously I shrugged and replied: "Yeah." "I think it's really time for us to talk," She asserted. I scrunched up my face. "Why?" It wasn't like I detested the idea, but I didn't understand the timing. Especially since I hadn't even been giving her much thought these past weeks, I had other things on my mind. For me, the encounter came out of the blue, but it seemed she had really been thinking about this. "Because we have less than three months left before graduation and I want us to get the chance to fix things between us before we all go our separate ways." "Fix it?" She sighed. "I don't mean for us to get back together. I just want us both to make our peace with what happened. I'm afraid that if we leave it as it is, we will both deeply regret it one day. We used to be friends, after all, right?" "Of course we were," I emphasized the past tense. Getting a little combative - exactly the way I remembered her from when we were, indeed, great friends - she pushed right past me into the room and turned around with her hands on her hips. I sputtered incoherent objections until I finally managed: "I'm kind of in a hurry right now." She looked at my disheveled clothes. "Obviously. But what's the big deal? You've been missing a lot of classes anyway." So she had noticed. Reluctantly I closed the door and leaned back against it. I folded my arms in front of my chest and stared at her expectantly. I knew there was no point trying to convince her to leave on her own accord. Unless I dared to risk being caught dragging a kicking, screaming and cursing woman out of the dorm house I was going to have to suffer this little talk. It was easier just to bite the bullet. And part of me knew she was right, it would be better to resolve things between us, but it was all happening a little too soon and a little too untimely for my liking. She grabbed Heero's desk chair and maneuvered it so she could sit down and face me. She paused, to regain her composure or to rehearse her point one last time. I knew Hilde as impulsive and chaotic, traits that had often gotten her into her trouble, the fact that she was giving this careful consideration really confirmed how important this was to her. "First off," She finally started, "I really want you to understand that I am not doing this with any kind of intention of starting up another romantic relationship with you." "Good." Because I'm a fucking fairy, so it wouldn't happen anyway. "That being said... last year, I was so in love with you that I had to have you. I had to keep you close and I was willing to go to any extreme. I don't know if you know what that kind of love is like..." "I do now..." I muttered. She gave me an odd look, but then continued: "Then you know that sometimes love can make a person do crazy things." She shook her head and corrected herself: "No, the fear of losing that love can make you do crazy things." The whole 'losing love' topic was a little raw and painful for me, so impatiently I asked her to get to her point. "I know it sounds like I'm just making excuses for my behavior. That's not what I want. I just want to explain to you what happened and what was going through my head. I think... I think it might help you move on. That is all I want. I don't need you to forgive me, I just need you to have all the information, so you won't end up wondering and filling in the blanks yourself, which would only leave you with more resentment, I think." She was starting to ramble, but it was exactly how I remembered her and I kind of liked hearing her fast paced, sometimes disjointed words. I raised my eyebrow at her. Seriously, get to the point, I thought. "When I told you I was pregnant, I didn't lie," She blurted. "It wasn't the truth, but I didn't lie. I really thought I was pregnant. I had missed my period and I was feeling ill. I had switched to new birth control and I thought that maybe it hadn't been working properly. I wasn't going to tell you, not until I had gone to a doctor, or had taken a test. I was afraid of what a positive result would mean for my life. I- I felt like I knew, I was certain, but still, to have it become real like that, that scared the shit out of me. I kept postponing it the way you postpone going to the dentist, even as the cavity starts to hurt. In the meantime, I felt you were drifting away from me. The same way you always drift away from girls. As your friend, I had seen it happen before, I had seen from the outside what you started to behave like once you had gotten bored with a girl and our relationship started to look like that more and more every day." I had broken a lot of hearts in my past. Something I had started to feel guilty for. If I had only realized I was gay sooner, I could have saved myself and many girls a lot of heartbreak. "When you invited me to that coffee shop," She chuckled bitterly, "Your 'break-up-coffee-shop', I couldn't..." She took a deep breath. "In that moment, I felt like I was about to lose the love of my life, but end up with his baby anyway - to raise all by myself. I didn't want to tell you at first, that I shouldn't force you to stay with me for the wrong reasons, but then Relena-" Of course. "Relena convinced me that I should tell you, that it would be best for all of us. All 'three' of us. She filled my head with these stories about how amazing it could be; a little family. And that, in the end, it wouldn't matter that you were about to break up with me, that having a baby together would make you fall in love with me all over. I wanted that. Because I loved you so much." She leaned in to touch my knee. I practically squirmed. "When I told you, you were shocked of course, but you were so happy." It was at that point that she started to cry. "I really thought we would be happy together." "But then? When did the lying start?" I bit, I was unaffected by her tears. Honestly, Hilde could cry at the drop of a head, during our deceitful relationship she had proven herself to be an excellent actress. She sighed. "I went to the doctor not long after I told you." "How long?" I insisted. "Less than a week. He tested me and told me I wasn't pregnant. He explained that the change of birth control had affected my hormonal balance, which had caused me to skip a period. The sickness... he said it had probably just been stress, or a mild flu or something." I snorted. "Why didn't you tell me that, when you found out?" "How was I supposed to! Jesus, Duo, you were so excited, you might've taken up knitting, to make baby clothes!" "Oh come on, don't try to sell me the horse crap that you lied to me for months for my own sake." "Of course not! I was selfish, okay?" She admitted with trembling lower lip. "I know I was selfish! But at the time, all I could think of was that image of a happy family being torn to pieces. We weren't going to have a baby and I knew that once that would be revealed, I would lose you. I didn't want to lose you. I wanted to hold on to that image. I still wanted that, I still wanted you as my future husband and the father of my children. I knew the truth would come out eventually, but I figured I would have some time to figure out the best way to tell you and perhaps get you to stay with me. But time went by so fast and pretty soon we were past the point when I could tell you without making you hate me, so it was... easier to stretch the lie as long as I could." I took a deep breath. I wasn't sure if I believed her, if I should believe her. That was the saddest thing about the lie she had fed me - and fed me so convincingly - I couldn't trust her anymore. I wasn't sure what to do with this information, whether or not it was truthful. It all seemed rather pointless and useless and irrelevant in my life the way it was. I could tell she was expecting this news to rock the foundations of my existence, but I felt underwhelmed. The only real, honest impact it had on me was the realization that I shouldn't let Heero go back to Japan before sorting things out between us, even though it was easier to just let him fade away and wait for the painful ache in my heart to dull. No good could come from doing things just because they are easier. I could continue to ignore him and pretend to myself that I hated him, but that was no solution as there was no truth to that. I still loved him, that is why it would have to resolved. And therein lay the difference between my traumatic break-up with Hilde and my traumatic break-up with Heero. I didn't love Hilde anymore, I never even loved her to begin with, not in the way I should have. "So..." She drawled uncomfortably. I had let the silence drag on for a little too long. "That's what I needed you to know. And I needed you to know I am sorry." "I believe you are sorry," I replied and said no more. The implication that I didn't believe the story as she had confessed it to me was clearly hurtful to her, but she seemed to accept that she could not expect anything other than distrust from me. With a sigh I took hold of the doorknob. I didn't have to hurry to my class anymore, it had already started and coming in late would not aid the sole reason I would have had to attend the class, namely to grovel in hopes of improving a grade. But I wasn't eager to prolong the uneasy encounter with Hilde. Understanding that I wanted her to leave she got up and stood in front of me. "I hope you'll find the girl you are looking for," She mused wistfully. "I'm sorry I wasn't her." "I'm not looking for any girl," I stated dryly. I didn't worry she would fully understand the implications of my comment, she would just figure I wasn't looking for a relationship. After all, the entire student body appeared to be aware that 'player' Duo Maxwell hadn't been dating anyone for a long time. She offered me a sad, apologetic smile. Completely unexpectedly she leaned in. With my eyes comically wide I watched her face near mine and then I felt her soft lips against my own. It was in that exact moment that the door to the dorm room swung open suddenly. From the corner of my eye I could see Heero standing in the doorway. Hilde couldn't pull away in time to spare us the embarrassment of being 'walked in on'. With her head ducked between her shoulders she muttered a poor excuse of a greeting at my roommate as she slid past him, out the door and left with hurried steps. I turned my head to look at Heero. He was still standing there, dumbstruck, with the doorknob still in his hand - his white-knuckled hand. He was staring right back at me, his expression betrayed everything as he looked me up and down. With sadness, anger, fear and jealousy he observed my undone jeans, my inside-out shirt and my tousled hair. I knew what he was thinking and I could see the questions in his blue eyes. I prevented myself from acting on my first instinct, which was to sheepishly ensure him that nothing substantial had happened between Hilde and I and that the disheveled clothes were a mere result of my vain attempt to make it to class on time. With a biting tone I made an ambiguous apology. "Sorry you had to walk in on that." Casually I moved back to the desk and dropped down in my seat. I busied myself with decluttering the surface. "What was she doing here?" He questioned, closing the door behind him. His voice was flat and monotonous, which I knew meant he was upset. "She wanted to make things right between us." Expert at a game of pretend I decided to demonstratively zip up my jeans, even fumbling with the button to make sure he noticed what I was doing. I enjoyed giving him a taste of his own medicine. It was clearly as bitter a discovery as mine had been. With a naïve spark of hope I wondered what that meant. "She wanted to get back together with you?" "No, I don't think she is looking for a serious relationship." My phrasing was careful to enforce the image of me and Hilde that must have been plaguing him. "But you had sex with her?" He asked incredulously and the tone of his voice went up to a high, hurtful pitch. I swiveled around in the chair, forming my expression into something unreadable. "Why do you care? You fucked that girl in the library." At that remark he cringed like I had just punched him in the gut. Even though I ultimately wanted to restore our friendship, seeing him in obvious pain did make me feel vindicated and I continued: "You wanted us to be over, right? That's what that little show was about," I got up from my seat and took a step towards him. "Right?" He looked down at the carpeted floor, his expression confused and distraught. "So what if I fuck Hilde? Or Mandy, or Sasha?" I took another step closer, watching him shrink, ducking his head between his shoulders. "Or Rick or Steven?" He looked up at me, his eyes wide and shocked at my very near coming-out. Then he looked back down again. It was clearly difficult for him to look me in the eyes, especially with me standing so close to him. I could feel the tension between us. We were both panting softly, our hands balled into fists at our sides. "Are you jealous?" I didn't expect him to respond, but he did, with a meek: "Yes." His honest reply startled me and I felt some - if not most - of my anger dissipate in favor of a nervous kind of hope. I looked down at where I suddenly felt his hand on me, his fingers barely touching the loose fabric of my shirt in an insecure, indecisive way. He looked scared. Scared of me and scared of himself - of his own feelings. "Why did you have sex with that girl?" He refused to look at me, but he started to pinch the fabric between his fingers until eventually he grabbed a handful of my shirt, twisting his fingers into it. He wasn't tugging me closer to him, but he seemed to want to make sure that I wouldn't leave either. "I thought that if I had sex with a girl I'd feel-" With a look I urged him to finish that thought. "Different," He finished rather meaninglessly, but he elaborated: "I thought I wouldn't want you anymore." I was breathing harshly through my nose at that point. I inched closer to him. "But you do still want me?" Heero looked at me again, his eyes honest. "Yes." I took the final step forward, pressing our bodies together. I felt the tip of his nose against my chest and then under my chin as he kissed my neck. My hands were twitching at my sides, twitching to touch, but I needed him to understand something first: "I'm still angry with you." I felt him nod. "You broke the rules." Another nod. "I was really hurt by what you did." "I'm sorry," His voice was a pathetic whisper. Yearning for more closeness and more intimacy, I got a little overzealous and pushed him back against the frame of the bed and put my hands on him while I ravished his mouth. My hands were everywhere, like they had a mind of their own but couldn't decide where they wanted to settle. Eventually I used them to squeeze his buttocks and grind his pelvis against mine and I loved how we both moaned in unison, equally desperate. Soon I started tearing clothes off him; literally tearing. Neither of us were bothered by the ripping sounds as I rid him of his button-up shirt and the long sleeve T-shirt underneath. He returned the favor and ruined my shirt as well. I was actually quite turned on by the way the fabric tore away from my torso, grazing my heated skin. My jeans were undone again and easily pushed down to my knees and I felt a wave of excitement surge through my body as Heero disconnected our mouths and kneeled down in front of me. I let him kiss the outline of my erection through my briefs but then I decided: "No, turn around." My request confused him but he didn't object. He turned around, leaning his elbows on the mattress of the lower bunk. I knelt behind him and put my hands on his hips. I felt him shiver with thrill as I rocked into him, my arousal pressed between his buttocks. After a few thrusts I couldn't take it anymore and I unzipped his jeans and pushed them down his thighs along with his underwear. As I got my own out of the way I asked him: "Were you safe with the girl?" "What?" "Did you use protection?" "Yes." I nodded, too eager to really worry about it. "What about you, were you safe with Hilde?" He inquired. "I didn't have sex with Hilde." My confession surprised him and probably only made him feel more guilty about what happened at the library. "I don't want Hilde. Or Mandy, or Sasha, or Rick, or anyone. I only want you." He moaned, pressing his face into the mattress. Since the lube was within reach I got it from the drawer of the desk and used a liberal amount, I accidentally used so much that most of the cold liquid dripped off the head of my dick before I pressed it against his opening. When I pushed into him slowly he let out a deep moan so loud it was a good thing the sheets and the mattress muffled the sound, or else someone might have heard. He felt so good. No one had ever given me more pleasure. My hands started to wander again while my hips remained unmoving. They slid up his back and stroked his sides, felt the ribs underneath the skin with each hitched breath. When my hips started to move it was in long, deep, powerful thrusts. Heero's erection, dripping with need, swung back and forth between his legs. With one arm around his waist I pulled him upright, his back against my chest. I grabbed his chin and made him turn his head so I could kiss him over his shoulder. The kiss was sloppy and uncoordinated so I paused my movements to focus on teasing his tongue into a battle, a battle he eagerly participated in. He was threatening to win too if I hadn't cheated by distracting him; running my hand up his chest and pinching and rolling his nipple between my fingers. My hand traveled back south and enclosed around his cock, at which point he broke the kiss and could do little more than moan against my lips. I knew we were both ready for release, so I started to pound into him again and as I fucked him he fucked my hand. "Is it better than with a girl?" I asked his breathlessly. When he didn't answer I bit his earlobe to get his attention and restated my question. "Shut up," He groaned and added on the verge of anger: "I'm not gay." "That is not an answer to my question. Is it better than with a girl, Heero?" I demanded, picking up the pace, getting him closer and closer to the edge. "Tell me baby, is it better?" "Ah! Yes! It's better!" Possessively, I continued: "Then promise me you won't fuck another girl while you're with me." He groaned and hissed as the pleasure built. "I won't! I promise." "Because you're mine," I growled. There was no reply - so no objection either. He threw his head back. His mouth was wide open, so I was expecting a scream, but the only sound he emitted was a sharp gasp and I felt him get impossibly tight around me and the warmth of his release leaked over my hand. With a satisfied grunt I followed him over the edge. I held him against me tightly, my arm wrapped around his heaving chest, his slick back against my sweaty chest. I kept stroking my hand up and down, milking him. I couldn't explain why, but I loved feeling him come in my hand. I loved being able to make him come in my hand. I had my nose buried into the damp hairs at the nape of his neck and I whispered: "Don't ever cheat on me again." It was not a threat, it was a plea. I wouldn't be able to handle it. Perhaps 'cheat' wasn't even a fair word to use, giving our 'arrangement', but it felt like the right word; it matched the hurt I felt. He didn't say anything, but he covered my hand with his and it reassured me. I held him tighter to me still and kissed his neck. He allowed the closeness longer than he ever had in the past and I took all I could get and I took it greedily, but eventually he said that we should take a shower, so with difficulty I detached myself from him. We both got dressed in yesterday's clothes and took something clean from the closet and our towels with us. I was perfectly aware that Heero had intended for us to shower separately, there were two bathrooms in the dorm building and they were both unoccupied, since most of our dorm mates were still in class. But of the little time we had left together we had already wasted so much, so taking separate showers was not what I wanted. With the coast clear I snuck into one of the bathrooms after him, before he could close the door and lock it. Heero took a step back and looked a little concerned. "What are you doing? Use the other bathroom." I purposefully locked the door behind me and started to strip again. "This will be my second shower today, yours too. That is incredibly wasteful. We should shower together, to save water. Really, I'm being completely selfless, I'm only thinking about the environment." He quirked an eyebrow at me and watched me - butt naked - inch past him in the tight space and step into the shower stall. I turned on the water, at a comfortably hot temperature and kept my back towards him. I could hear nothing over the cascade of water hitting the tile at my feet and as I started to count the 'Mississippi's' I realized he could have left, I had certainly given him the freedom to. A smile spread across my lips when the shower curtain was pulled closed and I could feel him stand closely behind me, trying his damn hardest not to let our bodies touch. "Stop hogging the shower spray, mister environmentalist!" He eventually called with chattering teeth. I turned around and pulled him closer towards me, effectively pulling him under the warm spray. "Better?" "Hn." I chuckled and leaned in for a kiss. It was only meant to be a short and sweet peck, but it was apparent Heero wanted more. With his hands cupping my face he prolonged the kiss and he leaned his nude body against mine. I moaned favorably against his mouth. "Mmm, I like this," I managed between kisses. I imagined what it would be like to live like that forever - a real life, not a student's life. We would have a nice house and I would get him to stay in bed late with me during the weekends. When we would wake up the first priority would be to make love and then we would shower and maybe make love again. I would make him unhealthy breakfast foods and he would complain and he would get me back the next day by serving me oatmeal. I was rudely awakened when Heero abruptly ended the kiss and reached behind me for our personal bottles of shampoo on the little shelves. "We're wasting water," He informed with mischievous eyes. I smiled at his playfulness but watched him work the shampoo into his wild hair with a bittersweet taste in my mouth. It would never be like that; the way I had imagined - the way I hoped it could be. I had him back now, but it was only temporary. Heero hadn't changed, he still believed he was straight and it didn't matter if that was true or not; as long as he believed that to be true it would stand between us, it would make the distance between Japan and the United States seem that much bigger and unbridgeable. We were doomed to end as pen pals as long as Heero was too rigid to accept change - and I knew Heero well enough to know he was particularly rigid - but I wasn't going to waste the time we had left until them. Until then he was mine and he'd better accept that. I grabbed his chin and tilted his head up. I smiled at the white suds in his hair and leaned in for another kiss.
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