Moments of Haven Part 20
X'mas AC197

It seemed like he had only declared "Home Sweet Home" just a few minutes ago, when he had walked in the door, but already he was unpacked, cleaned up, and ready to get on with his life. All unpacked, except for that little pouch left sitting innocently upon his bed. He knelt down at the foot of his bed, folded his arms upon the sheets, set his chin down on his crossed wrists, and stared at the off-white bag for a while.

It stared right back at him.

Finally finding the look it was giving him even more intolerable than one of Heero's withering glares, he huffed, turned around, and moved resolutely down the stairs and into the kitchen, set upon putting away the groceries they had picked up on their way back in from Preventers HQ in the city. They'd been on L2 long enough for them to have cleaned out the fridge of perishables before they had left, but alas, the two of them just didn't eat too much in the way of perishables, and this task, too, was sadly completed in much less time than he would have liked.

He frowned at the dish rack sitting next to the sink. It was filled with clean bowls and plates, and a few utensils, testament of their last meal before leaving on their business trip. He harrumphed to himself, wishing Heero weren't so damnably anal about things. Then he could have spent many a happy minute scrubbing away at nasty, food-encrusted dishes. Ah, well. Since the dishes were already cleaned, he could do nothing but burn some time putting them away, and so put them away he did. And while he was in the silverware drawer, he took the time to make sure the spoons and forks were stacked up neatly. Too bad chopsticks didn't need too much organization.

The small watering pot sat on the kitchen counter. His eyes lit up at the sight, and he brought it over to the sink, filled it up, and made his merry way to the living room, where Henry the hibiscus was waiting patiently for his water. They had a slow water drip system that he had rigged up for their plants, to keep them alive when they were gone on missions and jobs and the like, but he rather liked watering the plants by hand, so now he painstakingly unhooked it, poured the water from the reservoir out into the kitchen sink, and even dried it quite thoroughly before stowing it away again in the small utility closet in the corner.

He shuffled back into the living room to water Henry, dusted his leaves off a bit, and with a fond pat on the crown of his leafy head, moseyed his way back into the kitchen, when, to his delight, he saw the small light on their answering machine blinking. They hadn't checked when they had first come in. If it was all that important, they would have been contacted, even while on the job. But listening to only two people hang up didn't consume too much of the afternoon, either, and nor did the deletion of those empty messages. He eyed the kitchen critically, making sure no task was left undone before he admitted defeat and trudged back to his room.

The bag was, unfortunately, still there. If nothing else, it was staring at him even harder now. He scowled at it, but it refused to be cowed. The scowl transformed itself into a pout, and, refusing to be kicked out of his own bed, he flopped himself down on his back defiantly next to it, and tried to think.

In fact, he did succeed in thinking, for quite some time, too, although not as long as he might have liked, perhaps. It had even been productive thinking, but he just didn't like the answer. With a sigh of surrender, he scooped the pouch up from its resting place, and headed over to Heero's room next door.

Heero was just shutting his laptop down. He'd gotten some recreational work done on the machine, and had just finished transferring the data over to the old desktop array he had set up on and around his desk. It was mostly composed of stripped down, retired Preventers machines, but it really stopped mattering how slow they were when he had half a dozen of them networked together, running his software. He quirked an inquisitive eyebrow at his partner.

"We should probably drop by the Suzuharas', let them know we're back and all," Duo suggested glumly.

"Have you decided?" his roommate asked, closing the lid of his laptop with a gentle click.

"...Yeah." His voice still lacked a significant amount of enthusiasm. He sighed again, and leaned against the door frame. "You know, I thought about just leaving this at her doorstep, ringing the doorbell, and running like hell," he said, tossing the little pouch up and down in his hand. "But it's not like she couldn't guess who left it. So I guess delivering it by hand is just the same, in the end. Although a lot less suspicious. And it's not like I have to tell her anything, you know. She didn't want to find out about me, after all. Just him. So really, I don't know what I'm hesitating about...."

"So are you just going to stand there, hesitating over nothing?"

"Or am I actually going to get off my reluctant ass and go do it?" He pushed himself off the door frame and took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly into his bangs. He was just about to leave when he stopped to glance over his shoulder.

Heero got out of his chair to go with him.

*****

Heero patiently took a hold of Duo's finger, and pressed it into the doorbell it had been hovering over for a few long seconds. "Thanks," the boy with the braid mumbled.

The door opened. "Oh, you're back!" was Ms. Suzuhara's happy greeting.

"Yeah, just thought we'd drop by and let you know...."

"Well, come in! You can join us for dinner."

"No," Duo answered, perhaps a touch too hastily. "No, really, we're fine. We got groceries and stuff and... and really, we just came by to, um, to drop off a souvenir."

"Souvenir? You really shouldn't have, boys."

"No, we should. I mean, well.... here." He thrust the bag out at her, and she reflexively took it. "You'll like it. I hope. Merry Christmas, I guess. A little bit early, but not too much.... But anyway, we should probably get going about now. See you later."

Before anyone had a chance to protest, he turned around, and nearly bumped into Heero on his way off the porch. Heero gave her a slight nod in silent farewell before trailing leisurely behind his partner.

A slightly confused Ms. Suzuhara was left in their wake. She watched them get back home first before closing her front door and inspecting the pouch they had given her. There was something small and light inside. Undoing the drawstring, she upended the contents into the palm of her hand, and gasped at the sight of her late husband's dogtags.

*****

Duo was just pulling off the kitchen gloves from doing the dinner dishes when he heard Heero enter the kitchen. The newcomer watched him silently as he washed his hands to get rid of that rubber glove feeling, and when Duo finished drying his hands off with the towel hanging on the end of the counter, Heero thrust his open hand forth and offered him a small rectangular package.

"What's this?" Duo asked.

"I thought about waiting until Christmas," the boy with the messy hair explained calmly. "But then thought that you might appreciate it a little more today."

"Yeah, it has been one of those days...," Duo trailed off absently, inspecting the gift a little more closely. He smiled slightly. It was wrapped in a bunch of old memos from Mark, the annoying co-worker, held together with an optimally minimal usage of tape. Heero did hate wasting things, after all.

"I took it out of the box. Wanted to make sure it worked properly. I hope you don't mind."

"Ah." That would explain why it seemed a bit rounded. "No, no problem at all."

"...Well? Are you going to take it or not?"

"Oh! Yeah, sorry about that." He snatched it up and held it close. "Just like building up the suspense or something, I guess." He looked down at the item in his hands, almost as if he didn't know what to do with it. "...Thanks."

"You don't even know what it is yet."

"Doesn't matter." He hooked a chair out from the table with his foot and seated himself in it. "...Thanks for caring, I guess is all." Slowly, he began working at the tape holding the wrapping together on one side, and with a little effort, slid the object out. He looked up at his roommate, a little uncomprehendingly. "A digital camera?"

"Aa. You like taking pictures, right?"

"Well, yeah, but...," he started, playing a bit with the camera. It was rather top of the line, although he wasn't surprised. It wasn't like Heero to do things in half-measures. It had all the good features and little of the fluff. "You didn't like me taking pictures of you, so...."

Heero shrugged. "I reconsidered."

Duo stopped what he was doing and cocked an inquisitive look at him.

"Well, a digital camera doesn't make a sound when you snap a picture, so there wouldn't be any noise from the shutter. So I might not even know if you were taking pictures of me."

"But... you'd still know someone was watching you, right?" That was probably a skill of both of them that would never go away. "Wouldn't that still make you uncomfortable?"

He shrugged again. "Not if it's you, I suppose. I should be used to you, by now. I think I can be pretty sure that you aren't setting me up in the sight of your sniper rifle."

"Pretty sure?" Duo asked, amused.

Heero dismissed the question. "And you'd still be in the room, no matter what you were doing, and I'd know you were there anyway, so it's about the same."

"Well, I suppose, but..."

"And I think I can trust you not to do anything... not nice with the photos. And maybe you were right. Maybe it's just something I should get used to. At least a little," he appended to the thought. It wasn't something he wanted to get completely used to. That would make him complacent, and he didn't approve of complacency.

"Oh...." He was just reminded how extraordinary a privilege it was to be on the very short list of people Heero would trust with this sort of thing, and he smiled at the feeling. "Well, thank you, then. I'm sorry, I don't have anything for you yet, particularly spiffy or otherwise. But I'll definitely return the favor. Count on it."

Heero shook his head slightly. "No need. You're more than enough as it is." He half-smiled briefly before turning and started walking out the door, leaving a blinking Duo behind him. The blinking soon stopped, however, and a sly grin took its place on the heart-shaped face.

The scraping of the chair being pushed back from the table was about all the warning Heero had before he was grabbed from behind by his partner. With one arm hanging over his shoulder, Duo's head popped up next to his on the other side, while the other arm swung forward and hovered eye-level in front of them, camera in hand.

"Thanks," Duo whispered happily into his ear, and he pressed the button and took the picture, catching Heero's startled expression in the image. The boy released his friend, slid around him, and in his exit of the kitchen, bounced around in a quick 360 and caught another shot of Heero's somewhat surprised face. He winked at him over the camera before finishing his turn in time to avoid running into the door frame on his way out.

Heero blinked a few more times for good measure before a small chuckle was heard from him.

OWARI

 

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