Moments of Haven Part 11
Tears from Heaven

"Heero!" Duo said, exasperation filling his tone. He slid the back door open and stepped out onto the back porch, shivering suddenly as the cold air washed over him. "What are you doing out here?"

"Hmm?" Heero didn't turn around, instead keeping his eyes fixed on the scenery in front of him as he leaned his elbows on the railing separating the porch area from the rest of the small yard. There was a rickety old fence at the end of the yard, and beyond that, it sloped downward, giving them a pleasant, usually wildgrassy view of a tiny, shallow, wannabe valley, although now it was obscured by a blanket of fog that made it seem much more impressive than it actually was. It was a perk of living on the edge of town. "Just watching the rain."

"Uh-huh. Just watching the rain when it's bloody chilly out and you're just recovered from a cold! Get your skinny little ass back in here right now or you'll get sick again," he ordered.

"No, I won't," Heero contradicted absently.

Duo pursed his lips tightly, whether to bite off a cutting retort or to stop from smiling, he didn't know. "Look. You can watch the rain from inside just as well as you can from outside."

"It's better without any glass to get in the way."

"Oh, great," Duo muttered. "The one time he wants to do something zany and irrational, I have to try to talk him out of it." He planted his fists on his hips and took a firm stance. "If you don't get out of this nasty rain, I'm going to tell Ms. Suzuhara on you!"

"Hn."

Duo scowled comically at his partner's back. "Just what is so appealing about a leaky sky, anyway, huh? Bothersome rain, getting everything wet, making it all cold --"

"Use an umbrella. Wear a jacket."

Duo sputtered incoherently for a few moments. "Argh!" he concluded. "What does that stupid rain have that I don't, huh?" he demanded, gesturing angrily at the sedate rainfall.

Heero turned slightly and eyed him with a speculatively cocked eyebrow. "You don't like the rain, do you?" he remarked mildly.

"No, I don't like the rain," he replied with some asperity, folding his arms grumpily across his chest and sticking his tongue out at the oblivious precipitation. "Especially when it's right there right in front of me."

Heero had a bemused look on his face when he turned all the way around to face his housemate. "Why not?" he inquired curiously.

"Why not? It's wet. And cold. And blocks out the sun, and makes the whole day dreary and gray and ucky, and then you've got to haul around an umbrella all day, and then it's tricky!" Heero blinked. "Oh, it's very, very tricky. It knows when you've got an umbrella or not, and rains when you don't. And it tricks the weatherguys so they can never give an accurate forecast. And it ruins people's picnics, and gives people colds! It's always only just enough to get your car dirty, but not enough to clean it. It's mean, I tell you, a completely mean bully!" Heero opened his mouth to say something in the middle of Duo's rather kinetic tirade, but Duo cut him off. "And don't you even start with me about how irrational I'm being!" he finished, with one last wild gesture of his arms.

Heero shut his mouth obediently with a tiny shrug, and went back to watching the rain.

About twenty seconds passed before Duo leaned moodily on the rail beside him. "Of course I hate the rain," he murmured, his energy spent for now. "...I used to love it, you know. Only used to rain when something went wrong with the environmental control systems. And the water was usually rather foul. It was never meant for drinking. It was still a real treat, though, back in the day."

He shivered minutely again, and inched closer to Heero's warm side. Oh, how he hated the cold. "Of course, last time I saw it rain on L2, it was because the explosions had disrupted the power grid in our area," he continued, quietly conversational. "It rained for days after the incident, before they cut it off again. First bath I'd gotten in a while, though."

He paused for a sad, contemplative chuckle. "I hated that rain. It was like it was laughing at me. All those days, we rationed water, and hoped for... for anything, some relief of some kind.... And when it finally came, it was too late. They didn't need it anymore." He took a deep breath to stablize himself. "It didn't even have the common courtesy to be strong enough to put out the fires. And the taste of it was just metallic enough to remind me of blood. I'm telling you, God Himself sent down that rain to mock me."

The soft sound of drizzle filled the air between them before Heero spoke. "Perspective, Duo," he chided gently. "Perhaps the heavens themselves were weeping for their loss."

Duo laughed sharply, desperately, a short bark crossed with a chuckle. "Since I was on a colony, I sort of doubt it. God's too high and mighty to live in an aluminum can.... But it's a nice thought, isn't it?" he added wistfully.

"Or perhaps the rain signified an end and a beginning," Heero continued helpfully, holding his fingers out in the rain for a bit. "Or maybe a piece of space junk hit the colony at just the right angle." He brought his fingers back to his lips and tasted the small droplets that had gathered there. "Not metallic," he judged. "But I still wouldn't recommend drinking it. And in any case, rainbows come out after rainstorms. And clouds --"

"Alright!" Duo laughed, much more calmly this time. "Geez, enough already. Next thing you're going to tell me, heaven's rainglass is half full, not half empty."

"A few day's rain wouldn't have been enough to deplete the level of water appreciably," he responded matter-of-factly.

Duo shook his head hopelessly, following it with a heavy sigh. "I guess it's about time I forgave the rain, eh?" Heero answered with an agreeable silence. "Hn, I thought so." He squinted up at the curiously bright, cloudy sky. "Okay. Fine. I forgive you. Even if you were being mean to me," he muttered at the end.

"Duo," Heero reprimanded lightly.

"Alright, fine." He assumed a properly contrite air. "I'm sorry I was mad at you, rain." He took another deep breath of the cool, cleansing air, and with the exhalation, purged himself of the lingering resentment. "I'm going to let go now," he declared resolutely, and with an inward calm. "Smack me if you think I'm backsliding, okay?" he directed towards his friend.

"Of course."

"Well, gee, you could at least sound reluctant or something."

"Hn."

"You're just a warm and fuzzy little optimist, you know that? Who'd have thunk it? And you sure know how to ruin a guy's good sulking wallow in self-pity, too. How the hell did you lighten my mood?" he demanded. Unsurprisingly, he received no answer. "Hey, know any jokes? Like, ones you actually find amusing?"

Heero grunted affirmatively.

"Tell me," he requested eagerly.

"I don't think you'd like them," Heero warned.

"Try me."

"There was an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, engaged in a contest to build a structure enclosing the largest area they could with finite material."

Duo suppressed his incredulous laughter. "You're joking!"

"Yes, I am. Isn't that what you wanted?" Heero retorted dryly.

Duo buried his face in his hand, but a wide smile was still evident on his lips. "Damn. Where the heck did you get your sense of humor, Heero?"

"Odin."

Duo blinked and uncovered his face. "You weren't supposed to have an answer for that, Yuy," he accused.

Heero shrugged. "Both Odin and Dr. J had a wonderful appreciation of irony and a certain jaded, cynical wit. Odin used to say that you had to learn to take a joke, because life was a joke. A joke being played on us by God every day of our lives, and if you couldn't learn to take a joke, and learn to play along, then you'd never get very far in life." He gave an appraising, sidelong glance to the other, accompanied by a quirk of his lips. "You two might have gotten along well."

Duo chuckled. "Yeah, maybe. Sounds like a guy I can relate to."

The light rain continued to fall, unmindful of the two young men standing together on the back porch in companionable silence.

"Hey, don't leave me hanging here!"

"Eh?"

"So there was an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician in a contest. What happened?"

Heero blinked. "You just want to see if I made that up on the spot, don't you?"

"Well, maybe. But I don't think you did, really. And if you don't tell me the rest of it, it'll drive me insane. So if there's an ending, I wanna hear it."

Heero sighed. "The engineer built a structure, but being an engineer, it was built very sturdily, so it encompassed practically no area at all. The physicist, being a physicist, built something that didn't work in a non-ideal world, so his collapsed. The mathematician built a tiny little square and stepped inside it and said, 'I define myself to be outside this structure.'"

It was Duo's turn to blink, right before a silent laugh ran through his frame. "You know, funny thing is, I actually do find that amusing, in a terrible, geeky, 'God I'm embarassed to admit I actually got that' sort of way. You," he poked Heero in the arm. "You are nothing but a big, fat, optimistic geek!"

The tremor of laughter started something, and now he shivered from the cold again. "Ack! And I'm a moron! How dare you distract me like this!" He turned Heero around, planted his hands against his back, and pushed the pliant teen towards the door. "In. Now. If you get sick again, I'll never hear the end of it!"

The last words heard before the door closed behind them was Heero claiming, "I won't get sick."

OWARI

to ms. fleming, whose stimulating thoughts on haven made me itch to write something.

 

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