Moments of Haven Part 76
X'mas AC198 - Part V

"It's time to get out of bed, Duo."

"Don't wanna."

"Why not?"

"Comfy." He snuggled more closely into Heero's warmth.

Despite being quite awake himself, Heero blinked firmly against the urge to doze off again. It wasn't as if Duo was incorrect in any way. "It's Christmas."

"I know."

The response had been a little bit less than enthusiastic, even more of a groan than just a bland statement of fact. "Is that why you don't want to get out of bed?"

After a little groping, Duo found the edge of the blanket and pulled it over his head.

Heero decided that was a 'yes'. "It'll be Christmas whether or not you get out of bed."

He felt Duo's sigh as a breath of heat through the flannel of his pajamas. At length, Duo tugged the fluffy blanket down again and confronted Heero with bright, hopeful eyes. "Can't you just bring me Christmas in bed? We can have a glorious Christmas, just you and me, baby, right here, all day long. Maybe all morning long," he conceded, downgrading his expectations to something a little more realistic. They didn't have a proven record of stamina yet. "And then we can just fall back to sleep until this whole day is done and not come out again until tomorrow."

Again, tempting. But not in the plan. "Well, you might need to leave the room to use the bathroom."

Duo's expression fell into a grumpy frown. "You're such a party pooper, Yuy."

"We've already established that I don't approve of wet spots."

The compressed line of his lips twitched, and then erupted into a snicker. And then a pout that Heero had managed to break him so easily. Renewing his intentions to not move, Duo resnuggled himself against Heero with a disgruntled 'mmrph'.

The two of them worked together very well, most of the time. And sometimes, one or the other of them was just a stubborn bastard. It was what made them good Gundam pilots, really. But logic helped, too. "It's not like there's a tree outside waiting to jump you. It's just another day, just like the rest of our days here."

"You shouldn't have brought it up, then."

"I thought maybe it'd encourage you... but I guess I was wrong."

"'s okay, baby." He patted Heero's chest in conciliation. "Happens to the best of us."

Heero smiled where Duo's determinedly closed eyes couldn't see. "You keep calling me that."

"Hm?" His brain was far too occupied trying to pretend that it wasn't morning for him to figure out vague references to things, but he did so not like leaving a puzzle unpoked, so he spent a few seconds to mull the matter over. His eyes snapped wide open when it came to him and he scrambled into a less intimate and more panicked and apologetic position. "...'Baby'? Shit, I don't mean it like that, Heero! I really don't. I'm sorry, I didn't realize I... I'm not trying to imply something! I--"

"It's okay... 'baby'." The word didn't fall off his tongue nearly as easily as it did Duo's, but he'd wanted to try it anyway. It did have a sort of catchy twang to it, though. "I don't mind."

Argh, how could he not mind? It would drive Duo nuts if someone said that to him all the time. He had it lumped in with people calling him 'sweetie' or 'cutie pie'. "But... you know that I--"

"I know that you're not trying to imply anything, Duo," Heero interrupted, shifting until he could rest his back against the pillows. You don't say it deliberately. At least, that's not what it sounds like to me."

Duo shook his head vigorously. "It's not. I swear it's not. It just... I don't know, it just comes out. If I think about it, I guess... it was just something I heard around a lot. But..." After a little more thought, he made an unpleasant face. "But it was really casual, like it didn't mean anything at all."

"I know," Heero murmured, nodding even though he hadn't experienced a similar colloquialism in his youth.

Duo shook his head again, moving up so he could sit beside his partner. "No, I mean... it was casual. Too casual. And, well..." He paused to fidget, pulling the blanket up to cover himself partially. "You know. We're... we're not like that."

Heero pulled the necessary slack on the blanket on his side, then tucked it in over Duo's near shoulder, rubbing that shoulder soothingly while he was there. "We're many things, Duo. We don't have to be so... 'not-casual' all the time. So far as I can tell, you usually only call me 'baby' or 'babe' when you're not being serious. Or occasionally when you're frustrated with me. Either way. It's okay. You're not whispering it in my ear like you think it means you love me or something. It's not even a pet name or a nickname, I don't think. It's just something you stick into your sentences sometimes, the same as 'flyboy' or 'buddy' or any number of other things you used to call me. That's all."

So many options had opened up once they had taken that step down changing their relationship. Duo supposed that it was only natural their terms of reference suffer some alteration as well. But it still bugged him. Many of the names he'd used to call Heero in the past had spawned from a certain rebellion, a snarky attitude with a whiff of scorn he had hoped he'd left behind. If he wasn't being serious when he said it to Heero, then maybe, maybe it was okay. So long as it didn't mean that he wasn't taking Heero seriously, which was the connotation it had in his head, so why was he using it at all? "If that's it, you shouldn't have brought it up," he muttered uncomfortably, leaning against Heero's shoulder.

"That's it," Heero repeated, finding Duo's hand with his own beneath the covers. "I just wondered if you were even aware of it. That's all."

Duo was going to be very aware of it now. "You need a better hobby, Yuy."

Oh, he had a very good hobby already, thank you very much. "Hey, this means that now I get a free pass to call you something somewhat questionable."

"...Uh-oh."

The corner of Heero's mouth took on a mischievous tilt. "Don't worry, Duo. You've nothing to fear from me, love." Ooh, that rolled quite pleasantly. It seemed likely there were other possibilities floating off in the distance as well, just waiting to be discovered.

Duo punched him in the arm, obviously having different ideas. The exasperated sound he made turned into a sigh. It lingered in the air for a moment before he wriggled toward the side of the bed. "Come on. Might as well get this day over with."

*****

Quatre muffled a yawn before greeting them as they entered the room. "Merry end-of-war day, guys."

Duo let out a short bark of laughter. Yeah, that worked for him. "Merry end-of-war day to you, too. What's for breakfast?"

"First thing you think about, Maxwell?" Wufei asked dryly as he watched the morning news.

"Hey, growing boy and all that, right?"

Trowa straightened from where he'd been leaning over the back of the sofa and eyed him from his slightly superior height. "Really?"

"Shut up or I'll kneecap you."

"Thirst for violence, too?" Quatre quipped. "Does that go well with breakfast?"

Duo shrugged. "Hey, I coulda said something 'bout how only Heero's gonna know how much I grow, but I thought it was too early in the morning for innuendo."

Heero glanced at him, mildly puzzled. He figured it out a second later with a silent 'aha' expression and turned away again.

Quatre caught it and smirked. "Worked up an appetite overnight, did we?"

Or maybe it was never too early for innuendo. Duo snorted. "Yeah, the kind that even Heero here can't satisfy. So what's for breakfast?"

"We were thinking about heading to the diner around brunchtime."

"Ugh, god, people? You want to be around people today?" That was enough to kill his appetite.

"What's wrong with people?" They'd been to the diner before and not had any problems.

"Do you know what day it is today?" Duo demanded.

Hadn't Quatre greeted them with an announcement of the day? "Yeah, I know. Seems like a good day to be out and about, don't you think?"

Blondie obviously wasn't getting his point, Duo thought. "What if there are, I don't know, what if there are carolers there or something?"

"Since when are you afraid of carolers? Surely they sing better than Heero does?" One day, he'd have to hear Heero for himself, rather than taking Duo's word for it. It was difficult to imagine Heero being bad at anything.

Duo took a half-step forward and stood protectively in front of his boyfriend. "Hey, only I'm allowed to make jokes like that."

Quatre peered over his shoulder to Heero. "Are you going to take that from him?"

"Why would I want to give that privilege to more than one person?" Heero asked blandly. Why would he ever need more than this one person?

"Because it would help me?"

"That argument only works if you're him."

"Damn." Even his hated doe-eyed innocence hadn't been able to win Heero to his side. That would make this debate a little more difficult. "I've got to get me one of these."

"Yeah, well this one's taken," Duo said, clutching at Heero's arm. "Get your own."

Duo was awfully possessive, Quatre thought, even though he hadn't said a thing about borrowing Heero. "Gee, what happened to the Terran Commune, Duo? Suddenly, you're not so keen on sharing, now that you've realized what that actually means."

"Hey, no one ever said I had great community spirit." Actually, he kind of missed it a little. Haven was still a great place to live, but a little bit of the community spirit had faded once everyone had settled back into the lives that had been disrupted by the wars. Well, he supposed that sort of fantasy land of openness and generosity couldn't last for long.

"Your Christmas spirit seems to be lacking, too," Quatre chided. "It's the season of giving, Duo."

"Yeah, giving, not taking. So-- oh argh! Did she just say what I think she just said?" he interrupted himself suddenly, glaring at the reporter on the television screen.

"What?" Wufei asked, glancing back at them for a moment. The local holiday news had just finished up, and now the anchor's attention had turned toward the obligatory retrospective of the events that had transpired on this day past.

"Argh, she just said it again!" He pointed an accusing finger at the image of the reporter blithely going about her duties.

Confused, Wufei reviewed the last few sentences in his head. He hadn't heard anything objectionable, so he took a stab at it. "What, 'heroes of the war'?"

"No. 'Ultimate sacrifice'! Ugh, I hate that phrase!" The severe frown he wore convinced them of that.

"Well, you have to expect them to pretty things up a little for broadcast media, don't you think?" Quatre said reasonably. "At least it sounds noble. It could be worse."

"That's not what I mean. Well, yeah, that part's annoying, too, but I guess for the kiddies at home, let's not bother them with the gruesome details. No, what I find more annoying than that is the utter naïveté in that phrase. 'Ultimate sacrifice'." He made another sour face. "Pbfft. You really think your life is the worst thing you can give up?"

Heero touched his hand to Duo's elbow to remind him of his presence. "For most people, maybe it is."

"At least it's a sacrifice," Trowa interjected. "That's quite a step up from not giving anything at all, which is, for most people, all they give."

A brief silence fell over the room, but given that that left only the video montage assembled from footage of the final battle in space to fill the void, it didn't last long. Wufei turned the TV off. "Not like they'll tell us anything we don't already know," he murmured unnecessarily.

TBC...

 

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